Late October 2005

We had rain!! A whopping great storm (which flooded the house that we're living in) followed by some more persistent rain for a couple of days. Great news. Further rain sees the river start to flow a bit although not yet a raging torrent. Desparately need more but its a good start.

Well, still waiting to get the JCB man in and on the job. Meanwhile, we decide to get on with putting an anti-pig fence up to preserve the main parts of the finca from further destruction. Some areas are too vertical and/or too overgrown to do much about. We'll have to come back to those later. I can assure you that putting a fence up on this terrain ain't easy. We have to hire in some labour to get the posts whacked into the ground, cemented where needed, string the wire fence and barbed wire along the bottom to discourage those piggy snouts for heaving the whole thing down. I'll be glad to get it done. Once done we can put an inner fence up to protect our veggie terraces from the smaller muntjacks, mongeese, genets, foxes and any other munching critters.   

Hey! The great yellow earth-eating monster turns up unexpectedly. House, what house? We are now proud owners of a great big hole in the ground! I've movie shots of the old house coming down - all quite dramatic.

Here is the JCB edging its way up the hill. Look out little house!

Oops! 

We're now hoping that the local police or Guardia don't turn up to see what is happening. There must be some mistake officer! Fingers, legs and eyes crossed.  

Now that we have a hole, which is much bigger than we anticipated, we need the technical architect (Salvador) to come and design our foundations for us. I wonder how long this bit is going to take.

We had a pile of old roof tiles that had been removed from the old building some years ago. These are worth a bob or two and they needed moving. Trouble is they are home to all the creepy crawlies that feature in nightmares (well for me anyway). I carefully picked up each one to see what may be underneath before moving it any further. There's about 1200 tiles so it took me quite a while. Worse thing was a sleepy wasps nest.

November 1st. Still waiting to secure the services of Salvador meanwhile I've been hacking back some undergrowth and Anne has been trying her hand at some dry stone walling on the lower terraces. All useful jobs whilst we wait to get down to the real business.

During October the chestnuts are harvested and this area is big on chestnuts. The locals turn up at the chestnut co-operative with sackfuls. We have a few trees but, with the drought, general neglect and insufficient watering our harvest isn't worth the effort and even the pigs aren't too bothered! Should be better next year. 

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