Finally freed from shackles of a thesis deadline at the end of July we arrived back in Portugal by the first days of August. This time, with Ruth sharing the driving and Hector entertaining Nikita nd Kira in the back of Cora, our van, chockered to the brim with newly acquired stuff - including a couple of ebayed kayaks, dingies and other essential items for a building project.Since then, August has been a whirl of activity and new arrivals, leaving almost no time to return to this screen to capture some lost moments. Before too much more happens I feel bound to commit something on "paper"
People sharing land and food with us this month so far:
Ruth and Hector (Scotland)
Leen and Meat (Belgium)
Sophia and Heather (England)
Miriem (Galicia / Espagne)
Ricardo, Germana, Michele, Gaia (Italy)
Machado (Portugal)
Paulo (England / Elven Kingdom)
Shawn (USA / Europa)
Huchi (Brazil / London)
August week one:
Ruth embarks on kitchen repairs and upgrades, like linking the sink up to a drainage pipe which we dug across the terrace and left dangling onto the next one. 
In other words, we just shifted the problem 10m away, so now we need to collect this grey water and build a mini irrigation line from it to the veg bed.
Nikita and Hector start on the solar hot water panel (we'd bought the silicon pipe when back in Scotland - about one third the cost of local copper). 
I'll post more about this when it's up and running, but basically it's a 4 square meter panel: a sandwich of silicon pipe tied on with wire between 4 sheets of metal, painted black on the exposed surface. We'll need a 12v pump (run of a small solar photovoltaic panel) to move the water between the panel and the hot water tank. It's based on a Solartwin system, invented in Scotland (yeh!) and proposed here by Simon Sharpe, who runs his own renewable energy company out here.Week two
Sophia and Heather arrive and join the house clearing gang as we pull down any remaining walls, internal plaster and ceilings.
We discovered various new bamboo fields and decided it was time to raid them for our emerging village. Handy for light weight ceilings or roofs, but only over a limited span.
More soon
