But straw is less than an ideal solution here. For starters, it’s an external input so it’s breaking the feedback loop we aim to establish here to ensure we can build and maintain our soil health and fertility naturally onsite. It costs money … which has increased to around €4,50 a bale this year with the drought through the winter and spring. It introduces seeds of plants which weren’t previously growing here and which we didn’t choose to plant (which can be both a plus and a minus). But perhaps most significantly for the health of the land and ourselves, I don’t know where it’s come from and hence what herbicide and pesticide residues might remain in it.

But compromise between the ideal situation and what’s practicable and realistic in the circumstances is inevitable, especially at the start of a project. Worrying about being totally purist is pointless when the environment is an open system (as many organic farmers are finding as drifts of GM pollen blow across their land …) and concern about chemical residues when I’m surrounded by folk glyphosating the hell out of their quintas might seem slightly academic.

Is that a poor excuse for watering down principles? You could read it that way if you want, I guess, but to me it’s more about pragmatic and realistic acceptance of the present environment we’re living and working within. I choose not to grow that way and do what I can to keep the stuff off the land and create a clear demonstration that it’s neither necessary nor in any way advantageous. But I also accept that some contamination is going to be unavoidable and that minimal and occasional concessions can be acceptable when the alternative is too costly; either financially, in time and effort, or in stress levels and stomach ulcers.

The straw (mostly oat) was there when required – in the depths of winter, baled and ready – to provide protection from the elements for the newly cleared and turned soil of the new raised beds and cultivation terraces. The alternative would have been to cut dead bracken for the job, but being as the areas of dead bracken are also full of gorse and brambles, it’s a major undertaking to harvest and separate if I don’t want to be continually spiking my fingers every time I work in the beds. Which I don’t. Gorse spikes are the worst.

Now we have these cultivation areas established however, there’s no need for further external input when we can grow our own.

And grow it does! The recent rains have produced an explosion of growth all over the quinta. It happens every year in Spring and still I’m amazed by the extent to which the entire quinta is transformed into a jungle over the space of a couple of weeks.

I wasn’t planning to do anything with it for a while yet as there’s little point in cutting it all until the rains have finished as we’d only have to do it all over again a couple of weeks later. Also, when it’s still green and growing it helps retain significant amounts of moisture in the soil and the longer you can hold moisture in the soil through a Portuguese summer, the better.

But I had to cut the comfrey. It has grown so enormous so quickly that things interplanted with it – peas and onions – have been completely overwhelmed and shaded out.

I put a large binful of comfrey liquid manure on to brew and still there was loads of it. So I put the rest on the beds.

After allowing the comfrey to wilt a while in the sun, I then cut a load of the surrounding vegetation (mostly grass) and laid that on top. Mega mulch! It’s now about 15cm (6″) deep. Though it will settle and lose volume as it dries, I’m expecting it will perform even better than the straw did on its own.

The trick in future will be to either time our land clearing and mulching to coincide with availability of vegetation for mulch, or to cut, dry and store mulch material when it’s available for later use. Storage depends on having storage space, so for the foreseeable future – at least until other building works are complete – it’s going to have to be the former.

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• the roof lights installed
• the two membranes laid
• flashing around 8 of the 10 light frames completed (we ran out of flashing tape and none of the local builders merchants have any more in stock right now)
• the finishing work done to close the gap at the rear gully
• the last leg to support the purlins installed
• the rear land drain laid
• the gravel infill completed

The PET bottle lights are looking and working even better than anticipated. They’ve made an enormous difference to the amount of available light under the roof, even with it being open at both ends. The loose-fitting lids containing the bottles can also be easily lifted off the box frame upstands from the inside on a hot day to increase ventilation.

I’ve spent a good while thinking about how to waterproof this roof. Although not particularly relevant in this context because the space beneath is, and mostly will be, open to the outside, I wanted to experiment with a system that would allow an enclosed space beneath a living roof to breathe while at the same time waterproofing the roof and keeping the structure impervious to plant roots, etc. The next one we do will be over a bath-house where there could be problems with condensation if we don’t think it through well enough.

I chucked ideas around a while with ‘the mens’ – a team of friends and friends of friends who have a knack of turning up to work here with just the right skills at just the right moment. We do this a lot. Practically all the time. I guess some might call it wheel reinventing, but for me, one of the greatest pleasures of pursuing this way of life is to spend time discussing ideas for homemade low tech sustainable solutions to everyday situations in the company of inventive and lively minds with all manner of appropriate experience. And the pleasure in seeing many of those ideas come to fruition in one or another of our quintas is even greater.

This stuff must be hardwired into the human race! It’s basic survival – collective initiatives in solving how to provide food and shelter in the most efficient and effective way possible within a specific context – and there’s a deep satisfaction that’s felt almost at the cellular level from working it out together. Building a home should be like this! A hands-on natural creative process that engages and involves us every step of the way, both personally and communally. Few people have all the skills necessary to do it alone, and even when they do there’s few ideas that aren’t refined and improved by bringing different perspectives to bear on them. This process doesn’t just result in effective shelters, it builds mutually-supportive community at the same time. What’s more, community where the size of your bank balance, ‘professional’ status, race, beliefs, or family background is utterly irrelevant.

But back to the roof … the upshot of this particular idea-chucking session was a roof covering comprising a breathable membrane laid over the wooden planking, followed by Fondaline – a high density polyethylene damp proof studded membrane.

Fondaline is designed for use as a DPM to protect foundation walls whilst allowing easy drainage. Though it’s on a roof here, it’s essentially performing the same function. The air gap between the studs means that any moisture passing through the breathable membrane and condensing on the underside of the Fondaline has an air gap to evaporate into again. Either that, or it runs down onto the breathable membrane, and from there to the drains at the edge of the roof, which it can do easily between the studs of the membrane.

Meanwhile the upper surface of the Fondaline holds water and soil in its pockets, retaining moisture for longer and lessening any likelihood of slippage. It also gives a larger surface area over which the roots of plants can range.

That’s the theory anyway. We’ll soon see how it performs.

The breathable membrane goes down

Cutting openings for the light box frames

Welding membrane edges with a heat gun. The solar system coped with this effortlessly thanks to it being a blazingly sunny day

Rolling out the second run of Fondaline

Cutting box frame openings

Starting to put flashing tape round the box frames

Installed light box. Just the silicone sealant to do now

Boarding complete along the eaves

Land drain laid in the gully

Shovelling gravel down from the track on a makeshift chute

Gully being filled with gravel

The last barrowloads