Smoking and Drinking

On Friday Jun 5 we went to a demo of a biochar burning vessel, which can be used to burn agricultural waste with very little smoke.  The demo was put on by an organization we're starting to support which promotes smoke reduction in the Ponte de Lima area.  Biochar is the result of burying the charcoal, which then becomes carbon containment, soil enrichment, and remediation.

This vessel looks like a simple steel drum at first, but it's much more sophisticated than that.  The burning chamber is a simple inverted cone with no air intake.  Air is sucked into the drum at ground level, heated by the cone, and then forced through the gap around the top rim.  This produces an air blast into the rising smoke which burns the smoke cleanly.  This burner design was developed by a Stanford PhD for vineyards in Napa Valley to reduce the smoke problem they had there, and it will work for Ponte de Lima too.

The cost of the burner is only about €500 ($575), so it is affordable for individual vineyards or for sharing between a few farms.  Farmers won't have to change their habits much, they'll still burn their vine trimmings and agricultural waste but they'll use this burner instead of an open fire.  They will probably need to set their trimmings aside for a while to dry them before burning, which may be an additional step.  We're hopeful that we can help the idea catch on.

(The photos here were taken by a photographer friend of ours at the demo, since we got lost on the way and got there a little late.)

On Wednesday Jun 10 Gerrit finished the last of the three power converters and they are ready to go.  It was way too much time and effort altogether, but he supposes the pain will fade as they become useful.  The converters work just fine with a 120 volt 60 Hz load connected to them, but the fan noise when they start getting warm is a little annoying.  Too bad they didn't have videos with sound on the website where Gerrit ordered the components.

And we have both been spending way too much time and effort looking for a few items of furniture.  Pat finally found a bench and shoe rack for the bedroom which meets all our criteria.  It's surprising how hard it is to get manufacturers to admit that their products are not actual wood or wood veneer.  There is "oak effect", "engineered wood", "MDS with a smooth finish" which looks like printed wood, and various other evasive terms hidden in the fine print, but plain old solid wood or veneer is hard to come by.  Even Ikea, aka Veneer City, makes mostly the fake stuff these days.  We bought a buffet from them in "oak effect" finish a couple months ago and after a few weeks in the morning sun the plastic fake wood veneer had bleached to a bright lilac color!  Ugh.  We have found some good sources for real wood furniture though, including good old Etsy, so we have a few pieces on order and hopefully more to come soon.

On Friday Jun 12 we went to the annual Vinho Verde Festival in Ponte de Lima, like we did last year for the first time.  One vendor told us he remembered us.  We're regulars!  So we bought another bottle from our old friend.  We had a great time tasting and hanging out with English-speaking friends, both expats & vacationers.  Here's a picture of us with the original owners and builders of our house, Peter and Caroline from the UK.  They love the VV Fest and have been coming for 17 years.  We went Saturday and Sunday too, tasting and picking up some gems.  We did see a few more vendors who recognized us, too, as we did them.  Wine festivals are a great way to integrate with the local culture.  That's why we go to them, honest.

Last year we had no pears from our tree.  Zero.  The jays got them all, way underripe, and we didn't see a single one.  This year we put bird netting over the tree and we've gathered dozens of ripe pears already.  They're falling off the tree when they're ready, and many of them are landing in one pouch or another formed by the netting.  Perfect!  Birds can't get them (nowhere to light) and it's easy pickins for us.  We're having them in salads, diced on granola for breakfast, and fresh for some tasty fruit.  And we're even sharing with the birds: they get many of the ground-fallen and the few on the tree which are not covered by the net.  Which is way more than they ever did for us.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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