Friday, December 29, 2017

December 2017 blog 2 — 'Tis the Season!

Gorgeous waterfall just a 5 minute walk from the Creek
Just a few days before Christmas we received our most exciting news yet, and the best Christmas gift we as Cara Creek Eco Lodge could’ve wished for. All the architectural plans got the final stamp of approval by the regional council with only a few very reasonable stipulations to fulfill in the final submission. The local council’s approval depended on the regional council’s approval, so it was a huge relief, and celebration that the regional council approved. Rory will be working with an engineer to prepare the final “technical” drawings to submit; however, the approval of the architectural plans means that now we can start building and renovating the existing ruins per our plans without any worries. 
General Topographic Plan
In addition to our faithful and longterm workawayer Gary who is happy and willing to brave out the (not all that harsh😉) winter months with us, we had three additional lovely German girls from www.workaway.com spend a few days with us just before winding down for Christmas. The 3 girls were such great workers, helping us with our endless amounts of mimosa trees to be moved and chopped and split and stacked into firewood. They enjoyed the nature of the work, camping out despite the cold, and spoiling Hank, Hugo and Harvey. Then they spent their afternoons off exploring the trails along the rivers using the bicycles and hiking up to the waterfall. It was a pleasure to have them and we're looking forward to the Spring when we plan to have a lot more!
Come March we plan to be prepared to host up to 15-20 workaway volunteers. Read more about it on our workaway page here, and please spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested. In short it's an exchange of free rent in Central Portugal on a river, optional morning yoga/meditation, and 3 meals a day for 5 hours per day of help Monday through Friday. By Springtime there will be lots of fun jobs, not to mention lots of learning about natural building! Please spread the word to friends who might be interested and put them in touch with me as I'm beginning to recruit people now to come volunteer for Spring, Summer and Autumn of 2018! We welcome any length of time from a week or so to a few months -- family and friends included as always😉 !!
Some of the building work to come now that we have approval include the renovation and extension of ruin #1, the renovation of ruin #2, a natural swimming pool, five new small accommodation homes and a new building (my personal favorite) — an ellipse shaped yoga studio with an unbelievable view of the river and valley. All will be built, renovated, and extended with solely natural materials — stone, clay, lime, cork, hemp, wood, earth, and sand. Once built we’ll remain totally off-grid — solar for electric power and water heating in the summer, our own water mines on the property for drinking water, the river and rain water collection for irrigation, and wood burners for heating and hot water in the winter. And eventually we hope that the food will solely come from our garden.

Our plans for the ground level of ruin #1 include a cozy seating area, the office/reception and small area selling local goods. On the middle level we’ll have the kitchen and dining area which will extend out in wood, and have the capacity to fit 30 people. And finally, we’ll also be going up one more level. We’ve tossed lots of ideas around for that space, which will have a gorgeous view. For now we’ve settled on a larger indoor area which can be used as another nice space for meditation, workshops, or to just chill out and read.

Ruin #2 is going to be renovated into the largest accommodation we’ll have. Probably to start out we’ll graduate from the canvas tent to that. But down the line it’ll be large and luxurious accommodation for guests and/or for teachers/instructors bringing their clients to Cara Creek Eco Lodge for retreat weeks. For now though we have our canvas tent very cozy and comfortable! Hugo thinks it was set up just for him😀...

Living on the property continues to give us better perspective and insight into our designs and ideas. We’ve been brainstorming designs for the natural swimming pool together, and also had a rethink about the area where we originally planned for it to go. Rory and Gary have been clearing mimosa trees from that area so we can get a better vision. And come January we'll be collaborating again with our friends from Waters Edge who will be developing our ideas and beginning constructing it. 

What will make it a natural swimming pool is that the filtration of the water will be done by plants in a pool the same size as the one for swimming. Our latest idea is to make the 2 pools symmetrical in the shape of a leaf. The swimming pool “half of the leaf” will be an infinity pool looking off one of the terraces down into the valley. Of course the water going off the edge will be re-introduced into the filtration system. The “stem” of the pools will be the steps down into it. Some of the sketches have been based off images of leaves like this one, but stay tuned for this idea evolving as it is one of our newest ones:).
Besides buzzing off of the approved planning permission we had a very quiet Christmas spending it with just the two of us and the doggies… We had lots of time to day dream about designs and all that is to come in 2018. It was also nice to have some time to reflect on 2017 as we approach the end of our first full year in Portugal. Many times we felt like we wanted our property hunt, our plans, our dreams to move faster, but everything has worked out so far in it's own way. 



Thanks for following along with our adventure, and we wish you all the happiest and healthiest of new years! Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more photos and more frequent updates of how building is going at Cara Creek Eco Lodge.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

December 2017 blog 1 — Learning Curves of Living at Cara Creek

Autumn has briskly turned to winter at Cara Creek Eco Lodge — just in time for us to settle into living down here full-time. Despite some frosty nights, we’ve only fallen in love with the property more being down here day in and day out. Brainstorming and tweaking our ideas comes even more naturally since we’re on the site pretty much all the time. And the excitement of what it will be is a constant. 
Because Cara Creek Eco Lodge’s valley is South facing, we’ve found it to be lovely, sunny and warm on the top terraces even on the chilliest of days. We fully understand now why they built the existing house where they did. It’s the first spot on the land to see the winter sun in the morning and the last spot to bid it farewell in the evenings. Good news for our soon to be renovated and extended kitchen/dining/reception building! 

Settling into our upgrade — a large canvas tent with a wood burner — has better acquainted us with the property. First, we set up on one of the lower terraces close to the river. Although it was lovely sleeping so close to the sounds of the river, we were waking up in the morning with frozen dew settled on our top blanket. With the lower winter sun, the bottom couple of terraces aren’t getting much sun these days, so the tent was never really thawing out. Plus we realised that it’s definitely a few degrees cooler at night near the river. 
We spent a couple of hours last Sunday moving the tent up to one of the top terraces which thankfully is not so frosty. We had the help of additional work-away volunteers who were here for the weekend from Porto. They were here over the Summer and are very interested in our project as they’re studying uses of natural resources in University. We love having them, and so does Hank for some extra attention! We hope to have them back again on their summer holidays.
We were also fortunate to have three volunteers from The Netherlands on a “work-holiday” a few weeks back. They helped us strip bark off trees which will be used for posts, and chop and split fire-wood. Gary, being the gardening expert volunteer that he is led us all through transplanting some Oak trees to help them flourish. Come Springtime the tulip bulbs put in around the Oaks will pop up too. 





A lemon tree and orange tree have also been planted on the terrace directly in front of what will be the kitchen/dining/reception. In the Springtime we’ll be planting an herb garden along the edge with some flowers to cascade off the terrace wall. We’re fairly certain about the hot tub going on that terrace as well since it will be convenient and sustainable to easily heat the water from the stove in the kitchen. Plus the view of the river now that more trees are cleared is breathtaking! But every plan at Cara Creek Eco Lodge is evolving as we go so we will see.
Speaking of plans — preliminary plans from the local Council have been approved, and soon we’ll hear back from the Regional Council. Come the new year things should be full speed ahead on building. With the help of our accountant, we were kept busy over the last several weeks preparing our application to submit for a “Rural Tourism Grant” which will help fund building of our project if approved. It was especially fun writing up the “memoria descritiva” as it’s called here, in which we described what makes our project unique. We described the natural and sustainable ways of how it will be built, and also how we plan to function as a retreat centre once we are open for hosting. Fingers crossed that they’ll be as excited with our ideas for Cara Creek Eco Lodge as the cork manufacturer we’ve been in touch with.
We met with a couple of representatives at Secil — Portugal’s leading Cork manufacturer — to discuss our project and plans to build with 100% natural building materials. They loved Rory’s vision and ideas for building Cara Creek Eco Lodge, and showed us some samples of cork and lime materials which can be used for insulation, walls, and more. Rory’s going to spend the next couple of weeks experimenting with some of the options. It was also really interesting to hear about the 0 waste that goes into producing the materials at Secil’s factory. We’re excited to use some of the materials produced there in the upcoming year of building. 

2018 is looking like it’s going to be a busy one here at Cara Creek Eco Lodge. Thanks for reading, and for more frequent updates follow our progress on Facebook and Instagram.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

November 2017 — Adjusting to Rustic Living and A Special New Addition to the Cara Creek Family

Thankfully things have settled back to normal since the fires. Although the blackened hills and valleys can be a stark reminder, the green grass popping up through the black soil is a symbol of the hope in moving forward. Thank you again to all of our friends and family who contributed to the Go Fund Me page. We’ve divided up the funds to support some of the victims who could use the financial support to help get them back on their feet after the devastation of the fires. As a thank you to each of you we'd like to offer a free and all inclusive stay at Cara Creek Eco Lodge once we're up and running!
As of November 1st, Rory and I moved out of our adorable cabin in Fiais, down to the site that will be known as Cara Creek Eco Lodge. We’re so grateful to have had a cozy and quaint little cabin to live in for the last several months while we settled into the area, but it was time to fully move our lives down to the site as progress picks up speed. 
Meanwhile in New York, Conor and Ariane welcomed the newest member of the Cara Creek Family into the world. Luca Bell made his debut on the 1st of November weighing in at a whole 8 pounds 14 ounces! To no surprise he’s a strong little guy like his mom and dad!! They’ve settled into a routine at home and are enjoying life with Luca. We can’t wait to meet him!
Living rustic has been great so far, despite the fact that it rained the first couple of days we were settled down there. We are currently sleeping in the tent pictured under lots and lots of layers of blankets. The warm sunny days make for clear and gorgeous starry nights; however, the clear sky also makes for crisper, colder air. 
We’re working on the upgrade and have nearly finished clearing an area to build a deck, which will have our large canvas tent with a wood burner inside of it. The deck will also have a covered in porch overlooking the river, a private eco toilet and a solid fuel water heated shower. We’ll test it out, but are thinking that it may be a great “glamping” accommodation, in which case we’ll build a few more “glamping" decks along the river. They'll have some pretty beautiful views!!

Sample of the view from the "glamping" deck

Before cleaning 

After cleaning
A thriving Oak now that Mimosa trees aren't shading it out :)
With the autumn days becoming ever so short we’ve really synced with nature — going to bed very early since the sun sets at about 5:30pm, and waking up with the sun at about 6am. It’s a schedule that’s conducive to getting lots of clearing and building work done, especially since it’s too cold in the mornings to do much else besides to get moving! 

The renovation of one of two of the ruins on site has begun and the stone masons worked so quickly that it’s walls are just about complete already after only 4 days of them being on site. 





Over the last couple of weeks we also said farewell to our red hot suzuki samurai, and traded it in for a much healthier pick up truck that will hopefully spend much less time at the mechanic! 

We have some more work exchange volunteers coming to stay and help out at Cara Creek next week. Meanwhile Gary is still staying with us and continues to be a major help! We were having some solar power issues this week and he cleared all the trees that could be obstructing. 
Like us on facebook and follow us on Instagram for more frequent updates. 
As always thanks for reading and following along with us on this adventure! :)

Saturday, October 28, 2017

October 2017 — Phoenix From the Flames

Two weeks ago we were headed down to Lisbon as ready as we were ever going to be to run the Rock n’ Roll Meia Maratona. We were extra pumped up for it because my mom, Mike and aunt Dee were there to welcome us in Lisbon when we arrived. Dee, Rory and I picked up our numbers for the race and fueled up for it by all going to our favorite fish place in Lisbon — Ramiro Cervejaria. 

On Sunday morning Rory, Dee and I successfully finished the race. My mom and Mike cheered us on at about mile 11. That afternoon we celebrated not only completing the race but also reuniting with family and some friends who visiting Portugal and made the trip up to Lisbon to see us. 

 


We had no idea at that point that a few hours later our home, friends, and community would be threatened by horrendous wild fires that swept through most of Central Portugal Sunday evening. Portugal has had the driest year in as long as people can remember. The river that runs along one of Cara Creek’s borders has been dried up since July. Thankfully we have the Mondego nearby that although it was low, it still had some water in it. Unfortunately before the fires, we had had a very dry winter and no rain at all since Spring time.

Dried up Rio Seia at Cara Creek Eco Lodge
Fueled by the winds from Hurricane Ophelia, fires raged and took out many peoples homes, livestock, and livelihood. Factories that employ hundreds burned down, leaving many without a job. Some people literally had to run for their lives from fire, and a few were unfortunately burned and are still hospitalized. 


When we got the terrifying phone call that evening that fires were in every direction and spreading quickly, we spent the rest of the night calling the “Bombeiros” — fire fighters — begging them to go get our Workaway volunteer Gary who was dog sitting on site, and praying that all in our community would stay safe. They were of course totally overwhelmed and stretched way too thin, and never made it down to Gary, but thankfully Gary stayed safe next to the Mondego River, ready to get in if flames got any closer. The part of our land that burned was the far side from the river and we’re so grateful that he and the dogs stayed safe from flames and smoke until Monday morning when a neighbor drove them all to the nearby town until roads opened so we could drive home. 


Gary and our community lived a real life nightmare Sunday evening. We have started a GoFundMe page to raise money and be able to give back to a community who has welcomed us with open arms since we arrived in March. The link is here if you can spare a few Euros to contribute to it. A huge thanks to the many friends and family who have already supported. We plan to help families of burn victims, and those who lost their homes.The community support post fires has been incredible, and we continue to be so happy to be part of such a beautiful community. People are healing and coming together to help one another to do so. Rather than dwelling on what was lost in the flames, people are seeing it as an opportunity to have new beginnings.

It rained a couple of days last week thank goodness. It was enough to get the Seia River at the bottom of our land flowing again, but we are hoping for more rain to come soon! 

We’ve been so lucky to have help from both Gary and our friend Mary who volunteered in June and came back again for a few days last week. We’ve cleaned up most of what burned at Cara Creek Eco Lodge, and are moving forward and continuing building our dream here in Portugal. 
Water in the Seia again😍