Burra Maluca

Nina Surya wrote:
"Wild fires is a “normal” thing here … 
We need to cut down every spring all grasses so that if the fire cones it doesn’t spread and we have installed sprinklers around the houses ... 
Else there is not much you can do."

I'm going to share some of the official recommendations for protecting homes from fire in Portugal.

The deadline for land clearing 50 meters around houses and 100 meters around settlements is May 31st 2025.

FUEL MANAGEMENT DOES NOT MEAN ELIMINATING ALL VEGETATION. The aim is to prevent rural fires, as well as prevent their spread.

For your family, for your home, for your village, for you, for everyone comply with the fuel management rules!

Fuel management - is the reduction of vegetable and woody materials to make it difficult for fire to spread vertically (from the herbaceous layer to the shrub layer and, in turn, to the crown) and horizontally (throughout the various layers).

A tree, provided it is pruned and there is a distance of 4 metres between its canopy and that of other trees, and more than 5 metres from the house, does not need to be cut down.
Fuel management is mandatory and must be carried out within a range of 50m around buildings or facilities (houses, yards, warehouses, workshops, factories and other structures) located in rural areas.

This fuel break (strip of land cleared of combustibles) is measured from the exterior wall of a building or structure.

In the case of population clusters (10 or more houses) the fuel break must be widened to 100 metres.

All owners, tenants, users and entities with land in the list of parishes, even if they are not the owners of the buildings, must perform fuel management.

After the aforementioned deadline, city councils will be entitled to clean scrublands in lieu of the owners, who will be obligated to provide access to their land and to pay any expenses incurred by the city council.

The entities responsible for road, rail, electric and other networks, as well as the managers of industrial areas, campsites, logistics centres and other infrastructures, are also required to perform fuel management.

I got up early the next morning. I watered the garden, moved the grey-water pipe to the orange tree which was threatening to abort a lot of tiny green fruit because the weather had turned so hot and would probably be appeased by a good dose of water, picked some greens and herbs to go with lunch, put yet another load of laundry on to wash and then retreated back indoors before it got too hot out there.

Rosa had decided to put her recently untangled pink thread to good use and make something out of it. She sorted herself out a pretty gold-coloured crochet hook and settled down by my side looking thoughtful as though she had something important she wanted to discuss so I let her take her time and talk as she felt ready.

"Mum," she asked after a few minutes, "what I don't understand is that Negredo must have known that Gwen was in the bottom of the laundry basket because he hangs out in there all the time. But he seemed to be trying to stop us finding her by persuading us to spend all that time rummaging in Austin's old stuff in the other room."



I'd never thought of that. Rosa was right.

"Maybe he was just being naughty, as per usual, and wanted an excuse to go and have a rummage." I suggested.

"No it's more than that. Do you remember how he leapt into the basket when you started to play the recorder? I think he knew that the music would call her out and he was trying to keep her in there."

"Maybe he was trying to protect her." I suggested.

"But we wouldn't hurt her. Why would we hurt your own memories?"

"Well maybe he was trying to protect me! She did nearly swallow me up after all..."

Rosa concentrated on her crocheting for a while.

"I think that's part of it. But there's more. It's like he was trying to protect himself too. But I never understood exactly who Negredo is. Are ravens another sort of dragon? Is he a part of you? And if so, which part? And why is always so naughty?"



Oh now there was a big question, and the fact that there was a huge part of me that didn't really want to face it pretty much said it all...

Gaurī Rasp wrote:***I would be afraid that birds would fly into this reflective film. Already too many birds crashing into windows and dying.

We did have issues with birds flying straight into the west-facing window when we first moved here, but fitting a fly-screen has completely solved the problem. We fitted it before the reflective film so I'm not sure how that would have effected things without the screen.

But yes, point taken!

leo oord wrote:ola
I am not skilled enough to build it on my own. I live in Mondim de Basto, north Portugal.

Maybe you can learn the skills yourself. Have you ever laid bricks? Maybe start with a bit of wall somewhere.

If you start your own thread here on permies you can post your experiences there and we can all join in with advice and talk you through it.

Mondim de Basto is too far away for us to be of any practical help to you, and the skills needed aren't so great that you couldn't learn them yourself if you are physically capable.

He actually came back with two of them, as the firebox is quite long and narrow, and they will actually both fit so long as any remaining hot coals are pushed to the back of the firebox out of the way.

I'm imagining some awesome winter meals, either with individual meals cooked in separate pans, or maybe using them as serving trays and cooking different things in each. Which might be easier as I suspect (but I'm not sure) that one end of the firebox will be hotter than the other so cooking two similar things might be tricky without one of them getting over-done.

They each came with a cute little wooden board to stand them on too.

I'll try to remember to take photos when the time comes...

jordan barton wrote:How i have gotten them to eat them if by first cutting them with my electric trimmer and than drying them for a day or so in the sun. This seems to take the sting out and the goat will eat it then.

In my experience all goats love nettle hay. But in Wales it was 99% guaranteed that if you cut nettles it would then rain.

As for fresh nettles, my experience is that the goats would sniff them on the way past every day for weeks then all of a sudden they'd eat them like crazy for 24 hours and then leave them again. I never got to the bottom of what triggered them to start, or stop, eating them.

Carla Burke wrote:Maybe rescuing the duck to make it as to something that won't receive the type of hard use it's seen, so far? Added to a cushion or something like that?

I thought about it for a while, and then consulted him.

It's going to become the top, visible layer on a pot holder!

I've been hoarding bits of worn out clothing for ages so I'm sure I can find enough layers to make a good one. It might even work out with the pink-edged camo patch as the back layer. Or maybe if I completely de-construct the T-shirt I can find enough fabric in it to make at least most of the layers to make a safe-pot holder...

Experiments will begin shortly. It's too hot to work outside anyway...

This is one of my son's work T-shirts.

It was his favourite because it had a duck on it, so when the belly area started to sprout holes I used a bit of one of his old camo work trousers to patch the whole belly area. And edged it in pink just so he can wind his workmates up...



But last time it came over for laundry, the back of it looked like this...



I think it's time to let it go.

I'm going to rescue the camo patch so I can use it on another shirt, and I might rescue the duck motif, though it does have a couple of holes in. Seems a shame to waste it though...

I thought about my recorder again, the one I'd had when I was a young girl. I had some very distinct memories of carrying it around with me on the farm, playing it to the sheep and the wildlife and the fish in the river. We had moved from the farm when I was nine and I had no memory at all of playing it when I was living on the council estate. And no memory of choosing to let it go either.

I let my mind wander a bit and tried to relive some of the memories. And then it came back to me.

I'd spent the last few weeks of the summer holidays getting ready for the move and also for the new school year. We had a list of things we had to take to school - pencils, pens, a ruler, a dictionary, that sort of stuff - which had to be put in a suitably sized box and taken in with us on the first day of term to keep in the classroom. I'd been given a really nice sturdy box labelled 'White Horse' which I guess originally had bottles of whisky in it. I'd put various favourite things in it that I could use at school - felt tipped pens, a sticker book about birds, a couple of reading books. And my recorder. Every Sunday I would be taken to a religious meeting with my mother, which at the time I believed was a good thing but looking back it was little more than a brainwashing cult which she never got out of. My brother had refused to go, supported by my father. But on that particular Sunday they'd had a bonfire while I was away with my mother and when I got home he was smirking at me and informed that all the rubbish in the house had been burned. Then when I went upstairs I saw that the bag of rubbish I'd cleared out was still there on the floor of my bedroom where I'd left it to be collected. And the white horse box full of all my treasures had disappeared off my dressing table. There is no way I will ever believe it was an accident - that smirk had said it all. And to make things worse the dictionary in the box had been a gift from my grandmother, who gave me a huge telling off when she found out I'd been careless enough to allow it to be burned.



I think I lost a lot of faith in a lot of people at about that time. And then I had to leave the farm and move to town and it felt like my whole life had ended. OK, but I was nine years old and things can seem a bit overly dramatic at that age when you still think that adults are infallible and life should be fair.

The dragon that was wrapped around my legs raised her head and looked at me for a while, but she didn't seem so threatening any more.

I gradually thought of all the reasons I knew that had caused that rivalry, but whilst it did me a lot of good to look back at them half a century later, I suspect that those reasons don't really need to be aired publicly. Suffice to say that history can have a habit of repeating itself if you don't get to the root of things. I can deal with those memories myself. I think...

Meanwhile, Rosa had successfully untangled the pink thread and wound it up neatly ready to make something with.



And my memories dragon had very quietly and gently decided that I'd unearthed enough for one day, unwound herself from my legs and slithered back into the laundry basket.

Sooooo many questions.

Were the batteries new? How are you charging them? Are you keeping records of how many times you charge them and how long they last?

It looks like there's a towbar fitted - how much can it pull?

What are the tyres like on slippery ground? Is it possible to swap them for more grippy ones?

How many goats can you carry in the back? (reliant robin van can carry four adults and four goats so long as you don't get caught...)

How much wood can you carry in it? How many bales of hay/straw?

Can you use it to charge batteries for cordless tools? Or are there power outlets for non-cordless ones?

There will be more I'm sure...