We often wonder why we engaged on this renovation project, after all, we had a lovely house in Catalonia which we had lovingly built ourselves, some good friends, great views and places of interest to visit, BUT the summer temperatures never dropped below 32c we had to import our water, and because of bad farming practices, no soil to talk of so it was impossible to grow our own veg.

So here we are, two and a half years later still trying to get the house finished, however, we have masses of veg and fruit, a larder full of preserves, we have had our first rabbit harvest, and have now bought Quail for breeding and are now awaiting delivery of an incubator. In three months time we should have our first Quail for the table. These are birds which we have farmed before, many years ago, and unless our memories are failing we had found them easy to raise.

We wish we could say the same about potatoes, although we think we have a good crop, one potato weighed 857 grams, once again we find ourselves battling we the dreaded Colorado beetle, we have tried various solutions with the little blighters and what seems to be helping is a spray of strong fermented nettle juice, Simon has found a couple of dead beetles, and the grubs seem to be unable to feed, the odd one manages to find some foliage that got missed, but the rest of them hatch dont feed then get squashed by Simon. Next year we will try spaying every ten days.

The next harvest will be the plums which will all have to be bottled, it looks as though it's a bumper crop, and then the peaches. We also had our first harvest of blackcurrants this year which I mainly made jam from, plus ten bottles of Ribena, the cherries also did very well, maybe the very hard winter helps with the fruit trees.

Work on the house is progressing slowly, Simon is now building steps along side the rear of the house, partly because the land is quite steep but also as an underpinning, these very old houses were built without foundations. I am continuing with the pointing, although I wish our wonderful helper Lauren was here, she did a fantastic job.

I'm sure that somewhere there must be the perfect climate that remains consistent, however, until we find this Utopia, Galicia seems a fair compromise. In the past three weeks we have had temperatures of 18c up to 30c, heavy rain for six days, a few overcast days and the rest very hot. Some of our seeds have failed to germinate at all, and the ones that have, including weeds have gone mad.

Our last good helper Joe, will be please to hear that the potatoes he so lovingly planted are doing well, and we have far less Colorado beetle this year although we have to check them on a daily basis.

The maize is doing well and all the root crops. Things like the spinach and onions are not faring so well with such a variation in temperatures, but hey, you cant have everything.

Although the overcast days are best for working there is always something that can be done,whatever the weather, helpers please note!

Our next litter of rabbits are due today, and as Lucy, the doe saw fit to upturn her feed bowl as soon as I fed her this morning I suspect she might be telling me something, although I have yet to learn rabbit speak.

We are somewhat mystified as to why a Church should have a carving of a cannibal on the arch of the doorway!

The patio, created by one of our helpers last year is now looking lovely.

A lovely cove and wild flowers.

At last we have moved into the new sitting room, we had to get a move on as we had a friend arriving, nothing like having visitors to focus the mind, we have had some lovely days out. and at last have made it to the coast which is quite dramatic and has wonderful flora.

Things have been a little slow for the last few weeks, although we have had some good weather, by and large it has been colder and wetter than usual, so planting has either been delayed or what has been planted is very slow. Although the potatoes are looking good, and we have been picking strawberries for the last couple of weeks we have also made a start on planting the maize.