Herdade do Laranjo e S Pedro
After having for some time now published photos from our trip to Northern Norway, we are turning to Portugal, which Jennifer and I visited in beginning April. We were there two weeks, the first mainly visiting our friends Siegfried Einhellig & Katharina Kiss at their two estates in Portugal and the second travelling around with our children, Mikee and Eric.
The theme for our visit was mountain villages, mainly in the borderland between Portugal and Spain. But we started our explorations far from any mountainous areas. We visited Siggi’s and Katharina’s olive and almond orchard on the plains of Alentejo. An estate of around 600 hectars or around 1,500 acres of olive plantations intermixed with almond bushes. And for good measure also more than 100 beef cows thrown in.
Alentejo is the region south and east of Lisbon but north of Algarve. It means literally the other side of river Tejo, or river Tagus in English. River Tagus is the river that enters the sea where Lisbon is located. And the other side is of course the other side as seen from Lisbon, which is north of Tagus. Alentejo is mainly flat with rolling hills, but towards the Spanish side it becomes quite hilly and mountainous, which, of course, is the reason a border was established there in the first place.
Alentejo is the breadbasket of Portugal, but the availability of water is key to any successful farming and we were very impressed by the irrigation systems that Siggi and Katharina had installed on their farm. It is one thing to water a garden at Knightstone, but the project of irrigating a land area of 600 ha is of another scale! And it means that the olive trees can be planted so much closer to each other than what you normally find in this region.
But the pictures describe better than any words the landscape of this part of Alentejo. My next story will be about two chapels in the area and then we move towards the border of Spain and more mountainous regions.
