We have a pond now... sort of

In Portugal, autumn months are usually wet and rainy, and we could see it last year as well. But it hadn’t been like this before. Climate change negatively contributed to severe droughts in the area for several years and nobody had known how to come in terms with this phenomenon. I suppose that all farmers had been praying for rain and they got an excess of it in the past months.

Despite the fact that we lived in a tent during this time of heavy rain (which fell down like a house of cards one day), as well as despair that we felt when we couldn’t work at all for several days (weeks even), both of us knew that it was necessary.

''Hopefully there will be lots of rain in spring,’’ we keep saying. But as we can’t be sure about that, a new solution for dry summers had to come to mind. Not only to mind, but also into practice.

That’s why we decided to dig a huge pond, this time we asked for help and the pond was dug by a tractor. It hasn’t been finished yet, we need to put plastic there in order to retain water, but it’s a great move forward. The ducks will definitely enjoy this new invention on the land.

Taking into consideration that about a hundred trees have been planted already by our hard-working hands, it is crucial to have enough water when the temperatures hit the red spectrum of the scale.

I have only seen videos so far and can’t wait to come back to the land. It’s been a quite calm holiday, except for the presidential elections. Although Czech people did expect that the main two candidates would win in the first round, I know that one half of Czechs would prefer not to believe that our former minister of finances, as well as prime minister, Andrej Babiš, has an opportunity to fight in the second round. It won’t be a nice fight, because he doesn’t play fair!

Let’s hope that we will gather enough votes for his opponent, Petr Pavel. I’m gonna vote for him in Lisbon! Every vote counts!