In August it is difficult in Espargal not to write about being hot and collecting carobs because that's what nearly everyone is and does. The fields are thick with thwacking branches and dropping carobs while the roads groan with grundling tractors. Everybody is out picking carobs. Serious carob pickers -
farmers with plantations - start at 6.30, take a break for lunch and go out again in the afternoon, returning with tractors piled high with sacks, often with spouse perched precariously on top. My spouse isn't into perching but she's a jolly good tree climber, here being assisted by Kayleigh, the daughter of visiting friends.
Jones and I permit ourselves a relaxed picking regime, generally an hour or so after our morning walk and the same again as the day cools down. The dogs helpfully wee on the carobs to show us where they lie, assistance that Jones would much rather do without. She goes armed with two mini-rakes to remove the surprising
amounts of dog poo that collect under the trees. By the end of the week, we have a respectable load of carobs to take down the road to Ermenio's cellar. The approach to his cellar is via the workshop on the upper floor. We carry the baskets through the workshop and then tip the carobs into the cellar through the hole that you can see below.
Right now, the cellar holds just a few cubic metres. By the end of the picking season in a couple of months, it will be brimful. Some farmers stack their carobs in sacks but it takes more strength than I've got to hoist a 40kg sack of carobs on to a pile higher than one's head. The question farmers face is whether to sell immediately to one of the local dealers or to hang on in the hope of a better price later.
With the carobs safely deposited, Ermenio led us to the mini-museum that he has been building up in his wine cellar one level below. Most of the old implements on the walls we'd seen before. But we hadn't seen was his growing collection of natural sculptures, derived from the stumps and roots of a wild bush.
He cleans and dries the stumps before varnishing them, to produce the amazing ornaments that you can see on the barrels. He was merely enhancing nature's handiwork, he remarked, for no human artists could render such interesting shapes. As is customary on such occasions, we raised a glass to one another's health before taking our leave.
I have to confess that I generally find the local wines a bit rough but Ermenio's home-produced fortified wine is something else. He'd added grape-spirit and sugar in roughly calculated proportions to his red wine to produce a port-like blend which I found most acceptable. My appreciation must have showed for we came away with five litres of it.
Next door to Ermenio reside the Faisca family, who are also hard-working farmers. While Joachim is out on his tractor, his wife, Natércia (an anagram of Caterina, from the poet Camões), is often to be found tending the superb array of flowers that she cultivates in front of the house. Barbara stopped to ask her about some unusual ones and came home with several of them.
To my astonishment, Natércia turned out to be a reader of my blog. She'd been using Google Translate to turn the script into Portuguese, she said, but had recently been unable to - a problem that was, fortunately, easily resolved. But I did wonder what Google (and she) made of my less conventional constructions and made-to-fit words.
On a change of theme: Each time we go out, Russ drags his blanket from the back patio on to the cobbles and proceeds to chew holes in it, generally with a little help from his playmate, Barri. For a time Barbara and our ever patient house-sitters tried repairing the damage. But the time came when there wasn't much left to repair.
In fact, when we returned from supper in Loule last night, there wasn't anything left but shreds. Better old blankets than Jones's garden! Last night's outing was to a new Indian restaurant that's just opened. The food was good. Jones is particularly fond of Indian food - she likes it hot; I'm a mild man myself - and I imagine that we'll be going back.
What else, you might ask. Well there isn't any else. This is the Algarve in August. We're bracing ourselves for next week's heatwave and that's quite enough for the moment.
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