Winter Hot Pepper Harvest

Our wonderful summer weather has ended, but all the awesome solar power is now being harvested.



Konswan has been roasting spicy peppers from around the globe over our wood burning stove, creating wonderful sauces that warm the body from the inside out in these cold months.



Not only do they taste fantastic, they are excellent for the health and entertaining also.

Wall Building to Retain New Road

First we begin by excavating the job site to hold the new retaining walls above our house.



Unloading cement blocks is much easier this year, since the blocks can be delivered to the loading zone on our land directly using the new road.

Unfortunately, the road to our house is only accessible with 4 wheel drive, so we have to bring the blocks from our loading zone higher up on our property to the actual building site using our little jeep.



Once all the materials are on site, we will begin to build massive retaining walls!

Road Building

The CAT machine must first place a six meter long tube into the creek before constructing the road over and across the small body of water. The tube is about 70 centimeters diameter. It requires two men on the ground to guide the tube into the correct position, while the machine does the actual lifting and placement.

After crossing the creek and clearing-cutting trees ahead of the CAT, we begin carving out the mountainside, layering stones, clay, and gravel that comes out of the land. We were fortunate that we did not have to purchase any materials, other than the tube.

We cut the remaining eucalyptus trees, all but one, with the help of the CAT. It sounds simpler than it is. First we must get cable lines high up in the tree in order to get the best leverage while using the CAT to guide/pull the trees in the direction we want to trees to fall. Sometimes it means someone has to go up in the tree to make sure the cables are not twisted.

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With six eucalyptus now cut, there remains two, "Grand-Daddy" and "the leaner". Grand-daddy is 140 cm wide in diameter, that is a little less than Konswan is tall. It's branches sweep over the roof, allowing dead branches to fall and, at times, break tiles. Just a week ago, we had to replace two tiles. Magnus stretches out his arms to show the tree's girth.

Below he trims off the rest of Grand-daddy's stump after felling it. Magnus uses a 75 cm blade, but has to move around the trunk to do the required cutting. We do not have a blade long enough to span the 140 cm.

This is the house and surrounds after 7 eucalypti are cut. One remains, the leaner, above and to the left of the house. You can see that we have tied it off, in case of a hard blowing wind. The workers are now on their vacations and we will not see them for another 30 days. So in the meanwhile, we will de-limb the trees, pile up the "carcasses", and pray that we do not not get hurricane force winds.

The land has been remodeled on such a huge scale now, as you can see looking at the before picture featured below. If prayers can move mountains, they have done so in the form of a CAT machine helping us to have a safer surrounds to our little home. Now we can sleep better at night, unburdened by the worry of tree limbs landing on our roof.

For those interested in more detailed photos of the process, go to our detailed photo page.

Early Autumn Garden

Our hot pepper garden is thriving under plastic. We have Serrano, Thai, Jalapeno, Habanero, and Hungarian Wax, all turning red now and ready to eat.


Black Beauty Aubergines are getting huge this time of year. One is enough to feed the both of us for dinner.


The Sweet Basil is still producing more than we can eat, and some is going to flower already. We have found the flower heads are fantastic in soups.

Autumn Equinox Harvest

These sweet and succulent melons were a surprise. We planted nine vines and did not see anything until one day a fruit rolled off the vine, ready to eat! It was our first year growing Cantaloupe and we were pleasantly pleased with the ease with which they grow.


Below is an assortment of Japanese Aubergines, Pickling Cucumbers, Chayotes, and Brandy Wine Tomatoes.

September Fruit Harvest

These are heirloom tomatoes from Germany, this is our first year to grow them. They are are earliest producers, giving us pounds of flesh. We are saving seeds from these tomatoes for next year.


Below is a Purple Bush Hybrid Aubergine. An early producer. Low and bushy, they are perfect for our windy island conditions.


An array of typical garden produce, picked every three days during July, August and September.

Visitors from Virginia

We were blessed with a brief visit from our family in the USA.

Magnus' Aunt Nancy joined us for a week in paradise, along with his parents.

Below we are sampling some of Magnus' Amazing Strawberry Guava Wine. This bottle had been aging since last October and the flavor developed in fantastic and unexpected ways.



Taking off our shoes in order to cross the river into another realm, the family took a trip to visit our Jungle House.

Storing the Sun for the Coming Winter

Sauerkraut is great with local sausage.



Tomato sauce with herbs.



Fermented Green Cherry Tomatoes.

More Organic Fruits and Veggies

The weather this summer has been perfect.

Our existing gardens are producing twice as much as last year. Our newly built gardens are in full swing as well.

It is a year of abundance!



Passion Fruit, Melon Pear, Long Beans, Lemongrass, and Basil.



Assortment of Heirloom tomatoes and some experimental hybrids of our own.



Green ones for pickling.



The hot peppers our now coming daily, along with all these lovely tomatoes and cucumbers.

Summer Harvest Season

Finally all the hours of preparation are paying off.

Our garden space has doubled since our first year here and now we are supporting our food needs entirely from our garden!

Long Beans


"Susan's Seeds" Tomato


"Golden Hubbard" Squash, encased in plastic to keep the young bunnies at bay.


Thai Hot Peppers

Friends and Family Wash Ashore from the High Seas

Magnus' delinquent father arrived this summer with five close friends.

Caesar, Xoë, Nick, Roxanne and Jill have heard many a tale about the legendary island of Flores and its seductive charms.



The two sailing vessels have spent the last year together cruising the Carribean islands, Bermuda and now the Azores.



The island of Corvo is seen in the background, while the two yachts anchor off the coast of Santa Cruz.

Summer Wine

Our neighbors allowed us to glean their orchard this year, giving us more plums than we could eat or store, so we brewed them!



This brew has been bubbling non-stop since last October!



First we brewed Strawberry Guava wine and then we drank about 15 litres from the batch, managing to bottle 2 litres for a special occasion.

The end of the brew coincided with Citrus season this spring, so we decided to add 15 litres of Tangerine and Sweet Orange to the existing 5 litres of brew.

Once again we drank about 15 litres of this odd mix and bottled one litre.

Now, we have added 15 litres of plum juice and it is fermenting away.



Our first summer wine is amazing and going entirely too quickly during the festive atmosphere of summer on the island of Flowers.