Preparations for the galician winter – Preparaciones para el invierno gallego

Winter preparations started in earnest with having a new roof on our alpendre.
A lot of materials arrived, amongst them huge beams as the roof was to be extended to give us more space to hoard things. Isn’t it amazing that whatever space you have you run out..

Next, sturdy foundations are set and than its all hands to the pump (or beam).

It looks easy, but neighbourly help was required, as it took six of us to heave this in.

How Hill & Steve, Hill is a very good all round builder, managed to square this off, I will never fully understand. The alpendre has no exact right angle and the back is slightly smaller than the front, but he did.

Rural galicia had some other ideas and threw some serious rain storms into the equasion. So much so that Hill turned up one night at 3am to check on the emergency plastic cover in driving rain.

The roof you see behind will eventually have the same tiling, but at present we wait for three days without rain. The present sun / rain mix is not great to expose a roof with living quarters underneath.

Whilst this was going on, we put up the new poly tunnels / green houses. Yes, stubborn me, picked the best day to do this. Rain and wind, so we had to call for help as the plastic was clearly intend on sailing away with Barbara attached to it. Was fun though as she could suddenly jump two meters in the air.

We prevailed, just.

The last flowers, but what a display.

Look closely and you may see it.

Impressive praying mantis (Mantis)
hunting for the last bugs.

It also the time of harvesting the pumpkins, walnuts and so on.

But the best thing is to have agreat halloween party, burn the witch and drink the cemada to be cleansed for the winter and next year.

Halloween 2010 or the inauguration of the re roofed alpendre.

Suitably fortified its to the field to partake in cemada and than burn the witch.

Which is halloween Galician style

Have a great winter.

Expat