OUR PORTUGUESE FARM HOMESTEAD - BUILDING A PIGEON LOFT / DOVECOT - SELF SUFFICIENCY CENTRAL PORTUGAL

Описание: Hi there! I am Joseph.
I have been an expat living in central Portugal along with my beautiful girlfriend Mariana for six years now.

Together Mariana, my father Clinton and myself, would like to show you a bit of the daily goings on around our Portuguese farm / homestead / smallholding and all of the work we are doing whilst renovating, starting building projects, working with our livestock, DIY and trying to grow our little families own food!

In this episode we welcome you to join us in early Autumn as we spend a chilly morning and somewhat warmer afternoon doing some day to day tasks and chores on our cherry farm in central Portugal.

I start by introducing myself along the side of our main cherry orchard with my best friend, Mitzy the dog. We talk about the changes in temperature and the now necessary addition of a coat on a morning out on the farm. I explain how I had been given a gift of four lovely birds by my wonderful neighbours and dear friends.

I make my way back to the farm house to show you the crate in which the birds were given to me, four big beautiful young pigeon squabs. Lovely little birds but I of course have nowhere for them to go. So we must make a pigeon loft for them to sleep in.

Straight away my father and I get to work building a dovecot or pigeon loft up in our sheep barn. A perfect place for the pigeons to go as they need to be penned inside an aviary with indoor and outdoor access. The need for an outdoor part is so that they can begin to learn their surroundings over the next few weeks. Then once they have learned this, say in around six to eight weeks time, we ca open up the doors and give them free reign of the farm, where they will fly around, forage for wild food stuffs then make their way back to the barn for shutting in every night. A perfect long forgotten homestead poultry staple. One that needs minimal care, minimal cleaning and next to no feeding.

Once the dove cot was finished we are able to go down to the vegetable patch by afternoon, grab ourselves some lovely cabbages, celery, onion and carrots. Take them back to the farm house in our wicker baskets and cook ourselves up a nice cabbage and presunto soup. Please consider making this super simple recipe, I am sure you will like it!

Shortly afterwards, we take a trip back up to the pigeon loft to see how the little guys are doing after their first afternoon spent outside (up until now they have lived in a barn and do not have a home location set in their mind, so this should make training these young birds where they live a little easier.

At the pigeon loft I speak a little about the week we had. I express my passion for Autumn with the return of fire season starting imminently, meaning outdoor cooking, camp fire side, mushroom foraging and the leaves turning colour all just about to start! I cannot wait for the weeks to come.

See our journey to self sufficiency / permaculture / organic farming living in Portugal, trying to produce as much of our own food planting vegetables, growing fruit trees as well as looking after all our animals, such as our chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, quail, rabbits and sheep - Shortly pigs too!

Growing vegetables, raising meat and foraging on our cherry farm in Portugal’s Beira baixa, Fundão

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