Monday 19th July 2021Blog from The Edge - 3

Water

Precious water - you realise the importance of it when you haven’t got it! After 2 weeks of a mere cold trickle for a shower, we now have 2 super duper brand new showers, spilling out powerful jets of hot water. It turns out that there was a fault on the solar panel and the filter was clogged.

Outside, Paulo our lovely neighbour, delivered the lesson of the Levada system to us. We get a time slot every week to fill our 2 water tanks - to be used for the gardens.  He gained permission for us to get an extra flow to flood the orchard where we’re going to plant numerous fruit trees.  

This week will see us burning all the debris from the orchard and garden in a makeshift incinerator (we’re not allowed to burn without one), then there’ll be lots of weeding - and finally planting.  

So far we have purchased a range of fruit trees:

3 lemon, 3 lime, 2 avocado, 1 orange, 1 guava, 1 fig, 1 olive, 1 grapefruit, and we’re waiting for 3 mango trees 😊. We already have a few banana trees.  Can’t wait to get planting!