TRYING TO SAVE ORPHAN LAMBS - BOTTLE BABIES - VISITNG THE HIGHEST POINT OF PORTUGAL SERRA DA ESTRELA

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

Together Mariana and I, along with my father Clinton and my brother in law Lloyd, 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 mid summer time as we visit the highest point in mainland Portugal, the Serra Da Estrela mountain range. Marianas parents visit us from Marianas home town, Sesimbra, so I enjoyed a week of sightseeing and regional food with my parent in laws.

I begin by introducing myself alongside my two little bundles of hard work, I mean joy... Our two little orphaned lambs that came from Sr. Pintos farm last week, their mother rejected them in the first few hours of life, so we agreed to take them off Pintos hands to give them a fighting chance as being bottle lambs.

I begin by thanking our Patreons and more specifically Carrier Beyer, a lady who is sponsoring our two little bottle babies, Carrie chose the names of these two adorable lambs, Carrie for the girl and Terry for the boy, named after her and her son, thank you once more Carrie, we really appreciate the gesture, I know the lambs do too.

After that, Mariana, her parents and I go to the mountain, situated just above Covilha, the university town set in the foothills of the Serra.

Once we climbed 1993 metres to the tip top of the peak we took a little walk round and went inside the artisanal shops that exist there. Filled with lots and lots of regional produce, people flock from all corners of Portugal to visit these shops on their tours through the lovely country. In the winter time this mountain is half filled with snow, metres deep in some places, it is this way for three to four months of every year. It even has the only ski slope in Portugal!

Next we turned the cameras off for a while, due to Marianas parents being somewhat camera shy and went to a restaurant before returning with all of our mountain cheeses, pork, chouricos and corn bread, back home again to Fundão.

Once on the farm I picked some eggs up from the chicken coop. Took them into the kitchen and made everyone some afternoon tea, a nice big Spanish omelette, or tortilla. I explained a little about my recipe and how I personally like to cook this dish, a very varying dish made differently by lots of different Spanish cooks and varying over regions.

Once the tortilla was eaten by all I made my way up to the sheep barn with the two little lambs, Carrie and Terry, for the time has now come for them to leave the comfort of the house and be introduced to the flock of sheep and their new home, the pasture. Of course they are too small to be fully integrated into the flock still and the safety of the wooden picket fence inside the barn gives them enough room for comfort and privacy, but with all the added benefits of smelling and seeing their future flock mates.

I bought a bucket feeder (as they rinse the bottle dry every few hours and it is difficult to keep up with their high feeding needs!) and the bucket feeder can hold much more milk and free our aching arms up somewhat. It does however have a flaw, flies can enter and spoil the milk replacer. So luckily one of my dear friends gave me some advice, Pippa told me that a simple shower cap over the bucket keeps any nasty flies and such out of the milk, wow, what a great, simple piece of advice for someone rearing bottle babies! Thank you once again Pippa, you are amazing!

At the end of the day I give a little recap about the week and the goings on around the farm and elsewhere on our journeys. Just outside the barn alongside Rose and her daughter Rosemary (as I gift them an apple). An amazing week with family, good food and friendship. I give a little thank you message to the Patreons and inform them of my 5,000 subscriber thank you parcels being sent out. I hope you like the parcels content!

Have a lovely week everyone!

See our journey to self sufficiency / permaculture / organic farming as expats 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!

Hobby farming in Fundão
-Growing vegetables, raising meat and foraging on our cherry farm in Portugal.

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