Spring tease and snow dumps

Know that feeling? The sun is shining, you're out scratching around in the garden, and your feet start complaining to be in those clam, sweaty winter boots. That's when you remember,... off with those boots and, after a dive into the deepest parts of your warderobe, … into your sandals.
Naked toes giggling from the sensation of fresh spring grass. Spring flowers! That's how last week started.
And then,... 35cm of fresh powder snow, bamm! What a tease. Goodbye sandals and welcome back snow boots.
So far February hasn't really been the sunny month we were hoping for (to stay on track of our full planning). Last week spring seemed to be having another go at pushing aside old man winter. Alas, the old man kicked back with a blizzard-deep freeze-mega snow drop combo.

Not much for us to do but sit it out, make the best of spells of rain and snow.
Our kitchen sink has a brand new and shiny tadelakt surface to replace the worn down clay plaster and the entrance hall to the kitchen is being remodeled.
Sunny days in February means weeding, pruning fruit trees and berries, cleaning up patches of garden and a daily round of collecting stones to dry stack little garden walls.
We've opened up space for 17 new fruit trees and as much berry plants, so last week we made the trip to Patras to go tree shopping!
At sea level spring is already in full swing. The sides of the road are full of cute little yellow flowers and patches of anemones, daisies and wild calendula and the almond trees started to flower.

For now, we can still make the trip down but there's a chance we soon won't make it to the “civilized“ part of the world anymore. Both access roads to Seliana are at many spots at the brink of collapsing. After the massive downpours of snow and rain this last month and a half, the roads are dotted with boulders and rocks, clay and earth eroded down from the mountain flanks.
Worse still, because of the complete lack of policy in road maintenance and planning and a “don't care” attitude towards durability (a complete absence of any kind of guttering resulting in rivers of water that continuously flood the road), the road, at three or more places is just slowly collapsing into the valley below.

In and around Liveloula, ponds and brooks appeared. The old dried up river bed to our north side has a proper stream and a collection of waterfalls. It flows over our road over the lenght of 100 meters, steadily washing away the top layer, leaving only the calcareous bedrock underneath and creating an ever more bumpy ride out. We already made the decision to order a truckload of road base gravel as soon as the stream and the road dry up.

At least the soils are getting a good soak and we can expect enough water this summer. We finally understand why our neighborhood is called “Messolongi, or in the middle of lagoons”

Last week, our friend and neighbor Amber celebrated her birthday with a Mexican theme party. We al turned up in our fanciest poncho's, sombrero's with plates of tortilla and beans, and aye caramba, with the help of some charcoal and bees wax, we even grew amazing Mexican style mustaches!

New ponds around our area....

our road is a river

Ooops....

whoever comes driving, stay on the side of the mountain, even if the road 'looks' repaired...

Greek approach: quick fix...just throw some dirt in the hole

the chickens got  a new chicken castle

tadelakt

tadelakt

and more tadelakt....

on the left side our shiny, new tadelakt kitchen surface and on the right a present from our friend Christa, a hay-madam, for shortening cooking times for beans, lentils, rice etc

new shelves in the entrance

maybe  they will be friends one day!

where to keep the trees when they are waiting untill they can get planted and it's freezing outside, in the bathtub off course

Mari came to help us on planting day and is digging the hole for a black fig tree

Anemones!!!!

We have some extraordinary chickens, they made a 2,5 yolk egg...

Blossoming almond trees in Patra

Bijschrift toevoegen

Enjoying the spring with Katarina!

Mexican craziness

Moustaches!!!!

 

 

26 degrees this afternoon, so, bye, bye snow!!

Weather forecast for the whole year?

Here we go again, I'm writing, so it's raining. What about going out to work in rain boots and a with a coat on you might ask? Nah, we're integrating too well for that. You'll never spot a Greek farmer on the land when it rains. Why would they go out and get wet? Tomorrow or if not at least the day after the sun will shine again and the work will wait until then.
Most of our farming neighbors are wasting the rainy days in the kafeneion, the village bar, drinking, smoking and fiddling with their kobeloi. bored to the bone. We've not taken our integration that far yet and so we use the rainy days to patch up our kitchen and the house. Natural materials are wonderful to build with and to live in, but they do need a bit more maintenance.

This year we're testing an old folklore wisdom. We've carefully written down how the weather was from the first of January to the 12^th. The lore says that the weather on the 1st of January mirrors how the weather will be in the month of January. The 2^nd of January shows how February will be, the 3th of January is for March, and so on. It's been correct so far, the 1th of January having brought a lot of snowfall, this January must be about the wettest one we've seen so far. We've been blessed with over 300 mm's of snow- and rainfal this month, and there's signs of it everywhere. The lowest part of our land has turned into a small pond, a part of the road up to Liveloula has turned into a river, water is flowing over the road for about 100 meters. Another small lake appeared next to our chicken land and standing in the garden, one cannot ignore the rumbling of the wild river that runs about 100 meters down from our land.

January 2th was a wonderful sunny day, so February looks promising, having had some relaxing days inside, we sure are ready for it!

Not that we've been couch potatoes for the whole month of course. Just this last week, we had a series of biodynamically great planting days for root crops and since we came back from Holland and Belgium with 25 kilo's of organic onion sets, roughly 6000 little onions and a whole lot of garlic ready to go in the soil we went full speed ahead in the gardens whenever it was dry.
Weeding beds, building new stone walls, running around with manure, mulch materials and so far about 2500 onions and garlic are planted. Planted, now in January?
Yep, as long as it's not too frosty, planting onions and garlic is fine all throughout winter.
These onions were begging to be planted anyway, they were forming their little roots which we didn't want to see dry up.

I'll cut this weeks blog short here, having to get ready for Greek class. Yeah, it's finally happening, we are following proper Greek lessons! Turns out that we've got a real language teacher in the village, and so today, a jolly 5 of us immigrants in Seliana are meeting for the 4^th time for Greek language class, part of which is a full on immersion in village gossip. We're getting to know all the saucy details of many generations of Selianites!

adding another few layers to the compost heap we started to make just before the big snowfall

having fun?

rainy days are always good for making soap

lavender flowers on top

lavender - sage - rosemary soap, have summer smells inside your shower...

new variety of gigantic garlics that we are planting

this is next to our big fig tree on the land up, last year it had corn, beans and pumkins, now we are planting garlic and onion in these beds

but first we will make sure to secure our nutrition in the soil by making stone walls that counter the slope

 

Done! Weeded, fed, planted and mulched with olive leaves in the bottom and straw on top.

and that's how our peas that were sown in October emerged from under the snow

Happy baby garlics

One of my favorite looking cabbages, the pointy cabbage

and always enough rocket salad in winter

flowering since Christmas, outside on our patio, our beautiful Helleborus

Seen before how Brussels sprouts grow?

Whoever visited Liveloula last year has seen probably how our kitchen workspace was deteriorating

enough is enough, off with it and now a good fix

to be continued....

Great news for all those missing our blog this last year and a half. It's that time again in deep winter, that time we are locked in the house, snowed in with nothing to do but look outside in awe for the mountains' winter dress, keep the stove going and the wood pile flowing. Time to make plans for the new year, enjoy the memories of last year and focus some energy on writing a new chapter in the book of blog.

We had an 80cm snow drop that has blanketed the land for the last 17 days now, bringing the promise of sufficient water next summer. For you romantics, yes that means we are totally snowed in. There's no service cleaning our 1,5km dirt road. We've plowed through a couple of times on foot to meet the neighbors. Great cardio, gets the circulation going!

In the gardens, the cabbages, Brussels sprouts, leeks and rocket salad are tucked away carefully under a layer of pure white. No immediate problem for them, nor for us thanks to the pantry and storage containers filled with fresh eggs, home made salted bacon, an assortment of fresh cheeses made by our friends, garlic, onions, carrots, potatoes, pumpkins, beet roots, fresh and dried beans, all sorts of pickles and salsas, tomato sauce, chutneys, dried fruit, walnuts, olives and capers. How would you call the pizza with all those ingredients?

Keeping the stove going in the kitchen also means a lot of hot water for showers because the stove also heats up water. No other month this year will we enjoy more hot showers!

Picture this, Chenny, her tummy full, feeling cozy and rosy, freshly showered, sitting feet up against the warm stove, a notebook on her lap. After immersing ones self fully in winter mode, being somewhat more lazy, watching films and series, finally an undeniable urge arises to do something useful... Could that be some lingering Calvinist indoctrination...?
I was even cleaning our kitchen windows this morning. Weird huh?

Winter being the time for reflection and planning, there are so many streams of thought. This time tough we wish to focus mainly on abundance rather than worry about scarcity.
In the case of this marriage between our lives and the project, that means not thinking too much about our last savings we feel we need to inject in the project over the next years, but to focus on the abundance we are floating on, abundance born out of the projects successes.

Apart from all the material abundance mentioned above, the water, the wood, the food and all the comfort it brings, like warmth, strength and health, we also identify a growing abundance in knowledge and experience and the endless wealth of beauty and peacefulness surrounding us.

Acknowledging and highlighting all these gifts we plan to put Liveloula on the map hoping to be a beacon of positivity and light for those looking.
First of all we aim to keep updating this blog, to dust off our Facebook page and to set up a new website.
We feel there is still a growing interest for natural living, natural building, natural gardening.
People are curious about medicinal, therapeutic, and edible wild plants, home made medicine and cosmetics.

Hopefully this year, we can announce some fun and interesting events for anyone to come and participate in. To enable us to host groups of people to attend these events, to come and enjoy the project and it's environment, to come play and learn, we are planning a big move this year. Our huge van, our first house and home as we arrived here 6 years ago will be put back on it's wheels and will be hauled to a new spot. On it's current location, we plan to build the most wonderful, cozy, natural and durable, covered outdoor living quarters.
The plan is made. Scouting for hands, feet and more has begun. Consider this your invitation and call for action!
Completing this new “hangout”, Liveloula will once more have a beautiful space to host visitors and volunteers and to keep growing into homestead, coaching and learning place, haven of peace to take refuge, and find simplicity, good company, great healthy food and who knows, a welcoming home?

poor chickens, where is the soil? snow covered soil is really boring for them

whatever it takes to get your legs away from the cold snow!  only one black and grandmother Truus (the white) don't care

only some of the brussels sprouts plants are still visible in our veggie garden

snow avalanche behind the house, good!, it means our roof has the right angle to get rid of the snow, before it gets too heavy for the roof to bear

view on a snowy valley and Liveloula in the middle