An introduction to our farm

Building the chicken coop with my father. Mariana on her first day picking cherries

Hello there, as this is my first post firstly let me introduce myself. I am Joseph, a 28 year old English expatriate and agriculture fanatic, I moved from Suffolk to Portugal with my parents in 2015 where we purchased a cherry farm.

Back in 2015 sitting on our sofa in the East of England we were searching the internet for properties all across Portugal, we spent a few months in total planning everything but eventually we had compiled a list of different properties, farms, villas and lakeside cottages. Once we had this list we drove to Portugal and all three of us went to each and every property that we had considered a possibility, it was amazing for us to see the different terrains that this relatively small country has to offer and decide which area was better for us.

Many of the properties had misleading photos, underlying problems or just generally did not suit us, we felt a little deflated but determined to continue looking, the next day was our final viewing and we were thinking we may need to go back to the drawing board as we had not found anything yet. We woke up that following morning and drove down the narrow mountain lane to the GPS coordinates of the property, a 100 plus year old renovated barn that had never been lived in before in the heart of Portugals famous cherry region. Down that granite walled lane we turned into the property and were met by a very kind man, the man from whom we were about to buy the farm we would call home. We walked around the land with this gentleman for a few hours, getting lost in the beauty of the olive groves, orchards and long grass, you could tell that the farm had not been worked for many years, it was a little overwhelming to think of the work that needed doing to bring the lands back round again. Who could have guessed that on the very final day of our trip we would fall in love with the property and never look back.

Now it is a couple of years on and we have made quite a lot of progress on the ideas for what we wanted to do on the farm, such as building a poultry concern and bringing round an old dying cherry orchard, which of course I will go more in depth into in other dedicated posts. It was always a big thing for us to raise livestock on the farm, I am an animal lover and despise factory farming, so of course I have always wanted to raise healthy, happy livestock and produce as much of the dairy and meat products that I can for our family.

We still have a long way to go yet and I wanted to share that journey with you, so thank you for reading and I hope you will stick around to read some of my next posts where I will discuss our livestock, fruit, veg and the farm life in general.

Joseph.