Deeper into Rural Portugal!

Hi everyone,
So I actually wrote this on Monday but I couldn't get online until now. After this will soon follow the post for the last few days.

it's been a while since I last wrote but things have been relatively busy yet unexciting
Tuesday morning consisted of a couple of hours at the grandmother's coffee shop followed by cutting and collecting more branches and bracken for the goats. After a typical lunch of kale soup, salad and salted cod we drove over to a nearby village and spent the afternoon collecting apples from their orchard - again for the goats. The evening was spent milking before heading back to the coffee shop for dinner - basically the same as lunch but the fish was made into fritters.
During the night there was a huge lightening storm which lasted for hours. We were all kept up by it - me because I love lightening storms and everyone else because the thunder was so loud it was almost impossible to sleep.
In the morning all was calm again but it was a pretty quiet day with not a lot of work. Just milking, refilling water buckets, distributing some more of the food we'd cut the day before and organising bailing twine...I think we spent an hour winding lengths of it onto a long stick before we gave up and milked again. By this point it was raining again so there was nothing else to do but finish up and eat.
On Thursday after milking we helped moving breeze blocks to the new little shed Agnostiho is building to cover the well. The breeze blocks are used for the first part of the roof so we spent a good amount of time hauling wheelbarrows of blocks around as well as doing the usual  feeding, refilling water, etc. Nothing exciting but lots of good hard work.
Friday was day off number 2 but it was about as eventful as any other day. My morning was spent getting ahead with reading for Uni, learning some more from Mr Holmes and generally pottering about. I made a salad with some food I'd been given the day before then I got on with some more productive things - sewed up a few holes in my clothes, did some washing, swept the floors stuff like that. Around 5pm I was able to go to the cafe with the internet and had a nice walk down while it was still hot. I spent about an hour online before a new lightening storm appeared. It was fine until the storm was right over the village, afterwards though things went a little down hill. Lightening struck the power lines the the backup generator wasn't working so well either. The internet obviously went off and after about 20 minutes of waiting j decided to call it a day and head home. Unfortunately the storm was still overhead and with no jacket I started out to brave the weather. As I got to the door the bar owner insisted I take his umbrella but I still kept up a fast pace on the way home - being caught in a lightening storm with an umbrella isn't great either!
By Saturday morning the weather had improved but it still looked a little dubious up on the hill. Instead of driving lol the way to the normal spot for the goat food we just drove to their nearest other bit of land with only the small trailer - much better than taking the big one and having it only half full as the rains start. We ended up making two trips since the weather held out despite the constant tears from the daughter - some were deserved after getting scraped and scratched by branches and sticks but I couldn't even figure out what the problem was half the time. We ended our second trip as the wind started to pick up and headed back for the house. It was nearby an since Agnostiho had the petrol strimmer he decided to walk and carry it while Anita drove the tractor. Since Kiara stayed with her I had the trailer to myself so I spent the ride lying on top of all the branches trying not to bounce out but enjoying the tearless, peaceful drive back. We finished up for the day with milking and dinner at the grandmother's before parting for an early night.
Since I was leaving that day Sunday morning was spent packing up my stuff then returning the borrowed umbrella to the cafe with the internet. Typically nobody was there but Figueiro is the sort of village where it doesn't matter so I left it at the door before heading to the grandmother's cafe for coffee. Anita and Agnostiho arrived with Kiara around 11am and after saying goodbye we headed east. They had offered to drive me to my new project since it wasn't too far away and they hoped to swap ideas and knowledge concerning goats with my next hosts who have about 120. We stopped for a snack in the supermarket then headed off to our meeting point. It turned out the projector wasn't actually around and he didn't mention the proposed knowledge swap to the worker who picked me up so they missed out there but I think they enjoyed the slight change of scenery and when I left they told me to contact them if I didn't like the new place - they would come and bring me back!
I did have a good time with them although the language barrier was a bit of a strain sometimes since Anita had to translate everything from her third language - English - to her second language - Portuguese - and visa versa  but considering how I was the first helpXer they'd ever had they managed pretty well.
So, I arrived at my new project on Sunday afternoon after a bit of a meeting point mix up - we stopped a junction short of the place the worker, Fredrico,  had stopped. The quinta is a few miles up a dirt track, really up in the hills. It's totally off grid and runs on solar power and drinking water is collected from about half a kilometre up the currently dry river. The goats are walked up and down the hills during the day and guarded by traditional Portuguese shepherding dogs, one of whom is apparently rather aggressive and only subdued when Fernando - the owner - is here  which he isn't... it turns out he's away seeing family for a couple of days or something like that.
Staying at the quinta at the moment is Jerome who I'll mention first since he's currently snoozing on a rock nearby. He wants to try shepherding here first before possibly returning to France to take up a proper job working with goats in the alps. Next is Caroline, a forestry student from Brighton who's here getting some hands on experience for a while before driving her van back to England and returning to her coursework. Then there's Elizabeth (although the German spelling might be somewhat different). She's studying linguistics near Berlin but she seems to be quite interested in sustainable living too and is here to work on her knowledge of that as well as Portuguese. Since I haven't met Mr Boss Man yet the last person to mention is Fredrico. He's been here a year but working properly as opposed to volunteering. He's travelled a bit but still has some pretty impressive travel dreams to achieve such as travelling from Portugal to India hitchhiking - now that would be one amazing trip...although I think there's a couple of countries which could make it veeeery difficult to complete. If any of the above read this I hope you don't mind the very brief, first impression descriptions!
Anyway, yesterday afternoon was mostly spent meeting the people, goats and dogs and giving Elizabeth some dreadlocking tips before a pasta salad dinner, some time 'enjoying the ambience on the patio' and an early night.
This morning we were up at 6.30 - it turns out its pretty cold here in the morning - and started work around 7.30. Jerome and Fredrico headed off to the goats while us lasses spent the morning cutting the long grass with sickles. Rural Portugal really does seem to have been lost in time - crops and grass are still cut with scythes and sickles, water is often collected from the village fountain or a local spring and no one seems to know or care about the outside world. But I seem to have gone off topic...again. We worked until around 1pm with a half hour break before finishing for day which is the general schedule around here. So this afternoon I've  just been chilling out, wandering around a bit and writing. But now I'd better go and see if I can connect to this WiFi network or all this writing will have been in vain!
I shall tell you more about this interesting little place soon so until next time!