During the summer months we often repair the broken down walls that hold back the terraces, brought down as they are by age, weather or mans interference. To give you an idea of the walls of the work involved be it a small or large wall here are a few pics of the ones we did in 2013.
Before.
After.
We nicknamed the above wall, 'The Great Wall' and indeed all the repairs have been given names to suit their personality. Yes I know how weird that sounds, but how else can I describe which wall I am referring too, I guess I could number them, but don't you think naming them is so much better? Well I do. Hence, 'The Great Wall'.
Before.
After.
This wall is rather unimaginatively called, 'The Entrance Wall.' Sorry, but by the time we did this one all the cool names had been taken up.
Before.
After. (Supervised throughout by Russell the Terrier, lol)
This wall is named 'The Bridge Stone Wall'. Why? Well because of the bridging stone set into it. There was a root (from the tree in the picture) which extended under the wall and which had helped to bring it down because it had grown too large and pushed the stones out of place. Now the root was a major one, so we couldn't cut it out, so we built a bridge over the root so it could continue growing if it so wished but without compromising the walls integrity.
Now some people have asked if we use an earth mover to do this kind of repair, after all there is a lot of soil and stone to be moved whenever such a repair is undertaken. My answer is.... No! We do all the work manually, using traditional tools and methods such as Azada, pickaxe, rope and bucket.
Of course an earth mover would make light of the soil moving that I grant you. But here is the kicker as they say...
First, quicker does not mean better.
Second, the terrace design (bear in mind they were cut out between three and six hundred years ago does not allow for a bulky machine such as an earth mover to drive along them.
Third, I do not own an earth mover and even if I did, this work is somewhat delicate in nature so it really does not suit a machines use.
Instead we use the old fashioned method that actually built these walls in the first place and thus far it has worked very well for us.
Sometime around the end of August into September it is time for the Carobs to be collected up and taken down to the co-operative. (think Diabetic Chocolate and you are on the right track as to what they are used for). For the most part we wait till they have fallen from the trees although sometimes we do knock them down from the branches if they are being a little lazy about falling.
We collect them firstly into buckets.
Then pop them into sacks after which we take them down to the co-operative and they go on to being made into many wonderful tasting things, such as chocolate bars and chocolate flavourings for cakes etc. (You can buy Carobs and Carob flour off the internet and I am thinking of selling some of mine this way one day in the near future).
However before I can even put them into the buckets they have to pass the taste test from my dogs. Toby just loves them and tries to eat as many of them as he can before we pick them up.
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