Two weeks into farm life I expected to be learning about farming. Instead, I’m learning about people. The other volunteers are kind and open, and it feels like we’ve built an easy rhythm together. The kitchen fills with rhythmic chopping, music humming from the speaker, and laughter rising over cards or a board game. Mealtimes are always my favorite parts of the day- unhurried and satisfyingly homemade. I find myself laughing a lot at the table, sometimes so much that my stomach hurts. We’ve been eating so well - of course still lots of olives, olive oil, and bread, but also the lunches and dinners have all been amazing. One night it’s a bright grapefruit, beet, and avocado salad; another, a golden cauliflower cake pulled straight from the oven. There’s tortellini soup, rich dal makhni with turmeric-roasted cauliflower, tofu palak paneer, and bubbling mustardy cheesy cauliflower. Miranda has an extensive spice collection that makes it fun to experiment with, and I’ve also discovered my new favorite cookbook (Ottolenghi) while taking advantage of her large cookbook collection. I’m cooking with things I don’t ordinarily cook with like marmite, lime pickle, and preserved lemon. This stretch of time has been almost entirely meals without meat, gifting me perspective in new creative dishes that are so tasty and nutritious. It helps that everyone here loves to cook, and there’s always something new to learn in the kitchen.
Miranda’s husband has returned from a trip, and his presence has shifted the dynamic of the house in a welcome way. He’s interesting and pragmatic, making him easier to talk to and get direction from. Still, the times where it’s just the four of us are always appreciated and we’ve luckily been getting a lot of it lately. I’ve overall felt pretty satisfied with the experience - we eat really well, the work is only 4 hours a day and the expectations are reasonable, the volunteers all get along well, and it’s a safe environment. But Hannah and Jasper are more negative about the overall experience, which I think is beginning to influence how I see things too. Firstly, after having moved to Portugal 10 years from the US, Miranda and Kristir are just now beginning to learn the language. Without speaking the language, there’s only so much involvement that one can have with local life and we’re definitely missing the culturally rich component that I hoped could come from living with a local family.
They’re also not happy with the type of farming that we’re doing, which can be described as hobby farming. Miranda and her husband bought this abandoned Quinta and have spent the last 10 years pouring into it as their renovation project, which is impressive but this means they’re not interested in making this a production farm- it’s their personal project. The work we do is to maintain the Quinta, rather than growing anything for output besides a little bit of olive oil they sell.
Our workdays consist of us pruning trees, painting trees with lye or copper to protect them from the heat, weeding, hauling piles of brush, and overall general care for caring for the gardens and large plot of land they have. The work is only 4 hours a day, and given that it’s somewhat physically exhausting manual labor, I think the 4 hours is a good amount of time. But on the other hand, I don’t think I’m learning much about farming in the ways that I expected. Nevertheless, it’s a satisfying routine for mind and body to spend the morning working outside, getting to see the fruits of our labor at the end of each day.
I spent my birthday here, and it was very sweet because the other volunteers paid for my birthday dessert, which was an assortment of Portuguese cakes from our local town restaurant. It was a really relaxed and wholesome day full of good conversation around the table, showing each other funny YouTube videos, eating delicious food, and hilariously getting sung to- the happy birthday song in danish.
During the weekday, the four of us rented bikes to pass some time after work. One of the days Sydney and I set out with the goal of biking to Spain. We passed through lush green countryside dotted with rolling oak, cork, and olive trees. The sun was shining its soft, late afternoon rays and there were few cars out. Just us, the cows, horses, countryside, and a mission to reach the Spain Portugal border only 10 miles away.
The way home proved to be the opposite of the relaxed journey there.
We chose to go a different way home, deciding that it would be nice to see different scenery on the way back. According to Google Maps, this new route was only a few minutes longer. We admired the sunset along the border river as we biked past it, still feeling like we had plenty of time to make it home by dusk. We biked for ten grueling minutes fighting off hundreds of water gnats flying in front of us, so many bunches of them that I had to look down while biking instead of in front of me. The tiny bugs flew all around us, in our mouths if we dared talked, in our eyes, and up our noses. Finally, we reached the end of the path and it was time to bike inland back towards Elvas. Except, the route Google Maps was telling us to take was a non-existent private property trail with huge gates up all around it. Our only option…retrace our steps back along the river trail through the bugs.
Because of our detour, it was starting to get dark on the way back, and we had 30 minutes left on the ride. Although not ideal, no big deal. Except, our 30 minutes turned into more than double that as we encountered another detour with Google Maps telling us to cut through a huge hill that also looked like private property. Fully dark at this point and without street lamps, we turned our phone flashlight on with one hand and biked with the other. I could tell Sydney was getting nervous about riding in the dark, but we both remained positive and rejoiced when we finally saw street lamps and a clear path home. The screw loose part of my brain was having a lot of fun with everything not going perfectly right, and getting to take the unknown path home. It was a rewarding challenge, that small bit of fear along the journey making it exciting. We returned home just in time for dinner - after 20 miles of biking undulating terrain, some of which in the dark, I’m sure anything would’ve tasted great. But this night especially, Jasper’s chicken soup was one of the best I’ve tasted. I don’t think Sydney nor I spoke more than 10 words during the meal, both sweaty and exhausted.
I have one more week left at the farm, and no more bike rentals here but probably a lot more good meals and games to be had. I’m feeling like 2 weeks would’ve been enough time here. Although I’ve had a lot of fun and rewarding moments, overall I’m feeling ready to reunite with Jovan and soon start our travel journey together in entirely new countries.
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