a beautiful summer

so here we are again! it was a lovely summer with a bit of everything in it !
First and foremost the band-saw !! after 20 and more years of inactivity we managed to restore this band-saw that my great grandfather bought in an auction in 1951 ! we went from this cutting

step by step

to this !!

the house is finally out of the cast !!!

we also made a terrace in the back of the house which even became a open air cinema

the garden was again plentiful

the animals grow in size and number and along the way we also learn something.

and the project of the winter has landed, a house on a trailer ! took out the rust and painted it and packed it for the olive season.

good food, friends and beautiful views made this summer special !

 

dark, surrealistic times

so we stay at home and we blog…. :-p haha !

over the last year we ve been mainly focusing in maintaining what we have, getting better at that, and not so much in growing, there was not so much building, not so much planting, a lot of olive grove work, accounting and dealing with off the farm issues.

so here go some of the highlights in photos

the sheep family is getting bigger, they found a home too, so all is well so far…

minutes after the birth of the first small ones

mums and children out eating..

and booly the bulldozer guarding the house!

the foxes killed a lot of chicken last year, when we tried real free ranging so we re back in protective mode

heavy pruning, half the grove last year and half this year !

major works in the garden, a complete upgrade

 

a very good olive harvest with a few but creme de la creme pickers 😉

 

a few constructions

so much good food and preserves

sweet and normal potatoes, onions, cabbage

little pets as usual

and beautiful landscapes that make the soul find some shelter in this insane, virtual society we live in…

 

Christmas trees !

what do you do on a rainy autumn when you have no olives to pick ? …well the following:

design the farm of Paliomylos

then start the works and implementation of the plan by uprooting around 60 olive trees this year

then preparing the soil for planting, processing and gathering the wood

and then off course planting the new trees just a couple of days ago ! mainly almonds but also other fruit trees like apricots, peaches, plums, etc totaling around 50 for now. We also started planting the fence. The planting will continue throughout the winter and early spring and i ll keep the blog updated with that.

apart from this big project that will take a few years to setup, part of the team has been putting a lot of energy in the winter garden which is back after 4 years and its looking beautiful !

 

some experimentation with biochar stoves

and last but not least at all, our 3 new little sheep

so this is what we ve been up to, together with a lot of amazing cooking and food preservation and good company 🙂

 

Transformation !

a lot of time passed, too many things happened, many amazing people, a very fruitful summer with a lot of creative work and good times! the photos will say the story, this time with no comments. Next post will come sooner !

 

THE Seminar

Mediterranean Permaculture Seminar in Paliomylos ! 5 days of learning and having fun. The teachers Tina Lymberis and Fotini Georgousi combined in perfect harmony and delivered a seminar full with knowledge that misses nothing from a complete 13day PDC in a way that brought only smiles, hugs and positive energy to the 30+ people that stayed in Paliomylos this last week.

For the team these days were rejuvenating and all the ideas and encouragement gave us a huge boost for the big works that are coming up.

So there was theory

practice

and design !

In the meanwhile in the house, preparations for the seminar occupied most of July together with the normal gardening, food processing and construction work.

till next time, photooos !

 

 

 

Spring harvest

Hello !

the summer is here and the garden started already giving

the end of spring brought a lot of food for now and preserved for later. Lentils

garlic,

a lot of mulberries that gave us jam, syrup, vinegar and hopefully tsipouro !

and some of the first fruits from the farm

Building continued this last month on the north part of the house

We were honored to have a visit from the green witch Robin Rose Bennett who shared with us her knowledge about the medicinal properties of herbs

That s it for now, I leave you with more flora and fauna photos

The return of the gardens

Life is normal finally in paliomilos after the storm of the olives. the focus now is on the gardens and the house and some things here and there.

Inti and jeroen have done an amazing job this year on the garden side, rejuvenating the soil and restructuring the shape and irrigation.

apart from the main garden we have some extensions this year with the hugelbeds, which are looking really good

garlic, onions fields, chickpeas and a 3 sisters (corn, beans, squashes) field

With the huge harvest comes a mountain of olive leaves outside the olive oil press, so we decided to built a Jean Pain compost to have extra hot water of more then 50 C !

This year we went big with grafting and were very successful with pears and apples on wild pear rootstock, plums and apple on plum and quince, but still not successful on citrus which will try again later in the summer.

Now we focus on the house, renovating and adding some extra functionality

and off course we had to clean the olive branches, pile the wood and we took out a few sick trees and we are going back to that in October

More on house updating on the next post !

After The Harvest

this harvest was a landmark… not only for us, but many areas around Greece had the biggest harvest ever, this year. After the olive oil olives, we had a month of “rest”, during which…

we got more chicken, electric fence powered by a solar panel and now the chics are free ranging for the first time. Apart from eating free, they work for us by weeding and fertilizing the garden.

after the chicken had finished their work we moved them and sheet mulched this part of the garden

started Hügelkultur (more on this in the next post) and finally the summer nurseries took off.

In the last week of February the Kalamata olives were ready to be picked as the cold receded and they un-shriveled. We called a team of friends to help out and in two weeks we picked 10 tons of Kalamata finally completing this Odyssey that started on the 4th of September, half a year ago.

a party followed to celebrate and start the After The Harvest era in paliomylos

Now we rest and enjoy the spring, full of flowers as you ll see in the following photos, and therefore the bees allowed us to steal for the first time a bit of honey since they have so much food right now

till next time, enjoy the Spring !

olive…

olive, olive, olive and another olive…. and then another one and another one, and after that an olive… and yesterday olive and today olive and tomorrow olive.. 80 tons of olive…

5 months picking olives from sunrise to sunset (sometimes with no lunch break)… we (Inti, Jeroen and myself) just see and speak olive now ! and no, no it s not over yet ! in March we continue with the Kalamata olives that have shriveled from the cold now… another 3 weeks of olive to complete this enormous production.

a big thanks to all that helped out this year ! the people is who made this task bearable in the end, so thank you all !

The dutch team arrived in the beginning of October, brought everything we were missing in the house, build their home in a day and never missed an olive

apart from olive… we had a bit more of harvesting,

some planting

and a lot but a lot of cooking…

i leave you with some more non olive moments from these last 5 months, till next time !

The bandaloop (deck)

A short but very important post. For the last two months we ve been working on the canal behind the house that used to bring the water to the watermill, 200 years ago.The final part was the work on the upper level.

The landscape of Paliomylos is now very different, a special place, the Bandaloop (deck), has been added to the farm and we had to celebrate this with a big party and good friends and family.

On the side of the building work, we put together a bike powered version of the flour mill.

That s it for this month, next post will come late as for the next 4 months we ll be picking olives, all the best !