The End Of An Era On Our Portugal Farm

We're the newbies, a family who left the UK to rebuild an abandoned farm in northern Portugal.

Welcome to our home in Portugal.

Everything changed when we found this forgotten piece of land and decided to take a chance on it.Why is it there?And since then, there have been setbacks, huge wins, and more hard work than we ever imagined.But Portugal is just the start of our story.As we build our dream stone house here, we're also starting a new chapter in Southern Africa.creating a life for our boys beyond the ordinary.

We would love to have you with us because this adventure is only just beginning.Excitement is high on our farm in northern Portugal today.

For my boys, today is like Christmas Day.So are the emotions.

The other part of me feels like I'm losing a friend.

And that makes me feel sad.

We are saying goodbye to an old friend today, one that has been at the heart of our farm since the day we arrived four years ago.And as sad as we are, it's all part of the journey of this beautiful house that we're building.There's a big day ahead of us.This task is certainly not something to be sneezed at.So, we've brought in the big guns to help us with the heavy lifting.

He might be making some serious progress.

That looks very cool.Wow!Isn't that extraordinary?Honestly, I'm not really sure I know how to steer today.So down on the next level is probably my least favorite bit of the property so far, and that is that garage.It's such a weird one.

I was so, so excited at the idea that we would have to get rid of the not garage because it was a space of so much rubbish.And we just, it's almost a space that was too big.So we just were able to let it get completely out of control over and over again.And it was damp and moldy and just, a really not very nice space and sometimes when you're overwhelmed by a space or a situation you think the best thing to do is just to get rid of it and when we had to sign over the agreement that that is what we would do in order to have our house I was like totally okay with that I'm fully on board but today as I stand here with the knot garage behind me and I think back on the four years that we've had in Portugal with this building being such a huge part of our story here you know even just the fact that we called it a not garage it's on the our adega no on our adega oh i just stick to the not garage it's like it's been a part of our family so today we say goodbye to the not garage so that we can move forward and i'm really torn Part of me is really excited to see what this space looks and feels like without it, but the other part of me feels like I'm losing a friend and like things here won't ever be the same again once it's gone.And I said to John last night, I know it's just a building, but it felt weird going to bed last night with the Not Garage sat outside having its last night.Do I sound completely bonkers?

You know, I said to John, it doesn't know it's its last night.It doesn't know that it's its last day.Obviously it's a building.But I don't know, I think there's been so many...family that's gone into and around and come from the Not Garage.Anyway, Mario should be here in about an hour.

Gerald should be here in about 15 minutes.We've got to get the whole place completely emptied.And then it will indeed be time to say goodbye.

Good morning, everybody.What can I say?For my boys, today is like Christmas Day.They've woken up super early.I mean, they've been busying themselves and jumping up and down, a little bit of fighting, a little bit of screaming, a little bit of getting too excited, a little bit of like kid stuff, you know?And why is that?

Well, that's because Mario, our local digger driver, is about to come down the hill in a digger.And that basically is like Christmas for my boys.They love it.Mario lets them jump in the truck and well it's going to be a thrilling and exciting day for the boys like it always is when Mario comes down the hill.For me it's going to be a different kind of day.Today we are Finally, some might say, sadly, others might say, knocking down the Not Garage, that ugly old building right behind us.

As some of you have pointed out, it is a eyesore, a scar on this land that needs to just go.Our building regulations, our permits, tell us that we need to knock that down.It's taking up too much impermeable land space.So in order to build a slightly bigger house than the buildings, the two buildings that we had on this footprint previously, we needed to make a compromise.And that compromise was the impermeable space that this building here takes up.So in order to do that,

last couple of episodes we've been emptying it, we've been fixing stuff, we've been moving stuff around and today we're going to knock it down.

For sure the weather this morning is without question matching the mood.On the other side of it is going to be beauty and space and views and vistas and opportunity.So let's say goodbye with gratitude for what that funny old block of concrete has given us and get excited for everything that's to come once it's gone.

I've said it before and I'll say it one more time.It's making me feel pretty sad.That building has been a big part of my life here in Portugal.More, I would say, than Tara and João, who've spent more time cleaning it out than me.More than the boys, who've spent more time searching for curios and pieces of metal from within it that they could go and build camps out of.That building has really meant a great deal to me.

It's been a place where I've mused.It's been a place where I've sat quietly, escaped from my children sometimes.It's been a place that I've used as a man cave or a shed.And we all know that men live longer, this is a fact, when they have a shed to go and sit in.So my lifeline, the Not Garage, today is going to disappear.

and that makes me feel sad.

The good news is that the moral support of my good friend João, Quinta da Madrina, if anybody's interested in watching another YouTube channel except for ours, has just arrived and is about to get out of his car and come and help me lift the last few bits from within the garage so that Mario can knock it down and recycle everything that the Not Garage now becomes.Hey João!A brief hush has come over the demolition sites.There is something about knocking down the Not Garage that feels extremely final, but I tell you what isn't final, great companies that give you a 30 -day money -back guarantee.Amazing!Like our rockstar friends at Surfshark.

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You're all very welcome.Right, shall we knock down a garage?

Okay, let's get the last bits out of here.

Ready for Mario.

Mario's coming today.

Yeah, he's coming in about one hour.This pipe is from the well.

Cut it here, right?

Okay, no water in that at all.That's great.A very nice tap there though.We'll save that.Okay, I'm just going to cut the electric cable as well.Who's keeping an eye on whether Mario's coming down the hill yet?

You are, hey?Okay, we've got those old doors as well as well.We should take those out.I don't want to lose them.

green window.Yeah, you remember.

We put that there to close the knock garage because we were leaving for the first ever time.Pretty much the first time I have ever seen the knock garage.It's one of the last times I'll ever say that.Empty.There you go boys, that's it, save your places in our garage.

For years, this little building has been so much more than just the Not Garage.Long before we ever called this place home, it was a traditional Portuguese adega, a room where wine was made by hand, where harvests were celebrated, where stories were probably shared late into the night.And somehow, over time, it became a part of our story too.It held tools, memories, forgotten projects, half -finished dreams, and honestly, a lot of junk.But it also held pieces of our life here.This was the room we always came back to.

The room that quietly stood through every season of building this farm into a home.And now standing here with it completely empty, it feels so strange.Like the walls are carrying echoes of all the years we spent inside them.There's something emotional about saying goodbye to a place that served you so well, even when it's old, even when it's falling apart, even when you know it's time.Because before the next chapter can begin, this one has to end.So this is our goodbye to the Not Garage.

Thank you for holding a little piece of our story.

Sawyer, you sure it's Mario?Stay on long.Here we go, boys.Here we go.Come on.Quick, quick, quick, quick, quick.

He's got two.Got a track digger.Your frog's gone, has he?Okay.What's the gig?Are you getting in, Crusoe?

What about you?

The sheer rumble of engines.Oh gosh.We're doing it.Doing it.Right to the not garage.

Yeah, take the ladder.I think we're going to have to lift up that gate post.I'm just going to get Marcus to come and help out with that.Hola.Marcus.Obrigado.

Is it going to be okay?

Buen dia.

Buen dia, Marcus.

So guys, you might see some familiar faces.

Mario's back so this is really important that this goes well not just because it's nice to start a day off well and I'm feeling a little bit emotional at the moment I don't think I can deal with any tragedy Yeah, we want to reuse these gate posts at the top of the hill, where we're going to put a new gate.That's not nice.

It's not nice.This looks so sad.It's like, what did I do wrong?Feeling's well?Yeah.Are you sad about the not garage?

Yeah, not happy.We know what things need to go.It's part of life.

Oh that stone is deep in there.It's all very close to our car.

Is it going to go past?

Gosh is it going to fit?This is the last time.Heavy machinery.Look how close that is.Like an inch to spare there.Okay, I think we're through.

Everybody, we got it through.

I think we're going to lose some of that tree today.

Yeah, just some branches.

Just the branches, the lower branches, I think.It's bigger.It won't fit through.Mario's won't fit through.So we want to have a look.He's gone.

He's gone.I've put shoes on that boy twice today, everybody, twice.

And he's in his third pair of trousers and it's only half past seven.Yeah.All right, folks, we're going to take down a couple of branches just to give everybody a bit more space from this beautiful tree, which actually was planted by Mario's wife's brother.And there's Senor Mario, everybody.Everybody's been excited to have Mario back.

Wow.

Looks like some sort of super hero.I love it.

This is the wall that we're going to want to continue straight up to the house here.So that's the idea for this wall anyway.And then it will branch off from here.We'll have a...I'm just watching Mario cut that tree.

I know, I've come away to stop watching.I'm becoming the housewife in the corner that's like, not that branch!

They know what they're doing.We're going to put a large doorway here.and then the rest of this will be wall.Just trying to protect the water pipe, the electric pipe right there, because there's water and electric going to the stone house and the tiny house through this channel.We don't want to break that.Oh, I don't want the knock garage to go.

We're about to start knocking down the knock garage.Why am I crying?

OK.OK.

Oh, love.

Don't.

to the knock garage.Boys, come careful here.You're going to collapse the roof of the knock garage.And I am going to pull myself towards myself.Changing is.Right, folks, here we go.

Right, the first one.Are we ready?Everybody ready?

Stand back a bit, boys, please.Come on.

Tom's trying not to cry.Eh?I said you're trying not to cry.Oh, I'm all right.I'm sad.I am sad.

Here he comes.We lift it up now.

It's the wisteria.

Yeah, good.Wisteria is good.So everybody, this is the wisteria that we moved from the, um, from the derelict house that we knocked down first of all.For the most part, it's doing very, very well.front wall guys really is goodbye final garage gotta do it gotta do it i'm very very happy at the moment that um it's been quite rainy the last few days week or so um it's basically rained every day and a lot um which has meant that this process right now is considerably less dusty just talking to mario about the best way to get this off of the property it's a heck of a lot of and basically the idea is going to be to put it a little bit from here up to the top of the hill where we can get a big big truck to the as close as possible because we don't want to be going to the we don't really want toto be going to the recycling center in a small truck over and over and over again so yeah the idea is to take a big truck to bring it as close as possible to the house and then move it bit by bit by bit to the truck rather than taking rather than taking it in a little truck one at a time at a time we're gonna i'm not explaining that very well My head is all over the place.

Sorry, love, you've also got me in the background making facial expressions.

Yeah, waiting on behind you.

Right, folks, are we ready?I think this is the final goodbye.

Okay, just leaving the chaos behind me for two minutes to go and see what Mario's doing at the top here.We've got another piece of land, well, same piece of land, it just extends a bit further out this way.We'll do something with it one day, I'm sure of it, but the main reason why we boarded off of our neighbor, Francisco, was it's a great site perhaps one day to put a whole bunch of solar panels instead of putting them on the roof of the house.It's also in front of our property and basically protects the entire view down the valley now that we've got it.So Mario's basically just been clearing the land right here at the top of the hill so that we can now dump the knot garage up here scoop by scoop by scoop.so that it's easier for Mario to get a big truck down here and we can then load the big truck up.

So it's a bit of a process, that's for sure, but we need to do it.A lot easier, I think, than driving a tiny truck down here, down to the house.and then going many, many times to the recycling center.

Guys, that's mad.That's taken less than, I would say, 40 minutes for that entire building to just collapse.There it is, just a pile of rubble, gone.I mean, I'm lost for words.Right, I want to see what it looks like around here.Incredible, you guys.

I hope that the camera is at least giving you a sense of how that feels.

Let's see, let's get John to come and have a look.

Hello, and have a look.

That looks very cool.

Wow.Isn't that extraordinary?I've gone from feeling really sad to actually just giddy with excitement.

People have been saying, why don't you keep the lower part of this and build a swimming pool here?You're right.It would be a great place location -wise for a swimming pool, except replacing the Nott garage with a swimming pool is exactly the same thing.It's impermeable space, it has a concrete base, and it means that we wouldn't be anyway allowed to do it.Perhaps in the future, two three years down the line we can think about doing something like that if we get a bit more land around here or the permits are a bit more flexible or you know things just change who knows.We're just working out a few logistics okay we've got the roof and the walls down pretty much but we've still got the floor which is concrete so that's also got to come up.

Our digger driver is asking how we get down onhere.He wants to build a ramp with the stuff that's come down, with the blocks that have come down, and take up some of these plants.I'm totally cool with taking up those plants.I think we need to do it, but I've just asked whether we can take them up by the roots so I can replant them in places around the farm.But we need to get in here so we can use that chisel, that digger driver, beating machine, whatever it's called.

Thanks, Alan, you know.And just smash up the floor so we can lift that up and take it away at the same time as we take everything else away.Let's go and have a look at these plants.One, two.OK, you carry these ones.What is it?

Tape measure.Yeah.Brilliant.

Love it.You've been looking for that for about five and a half years.

Yeah.

This little one has been told he'll earn pocket money if he helps today.

Okay.

He really wants to buy himself some new construction vehicle toys.So he is hard at work.Top of the hill.So we'll head up there with the boys and go and see how he's doing.And hopefully they can have a ride in this vehicle because they've been very patient.Oh.

Right.I hope so.I mean, I hope not.I was a mistake.I mean, I hope not.Huh.

Boys, I think Mario's gone to go and get his big truck, his tipple truck, because Mario's house is just over there.Right.We have a friend of ours, Liz, who's coming over a few mornings a week to help us out with the boys and just make sure that they are entertained, getting a little bit of kind of tutoring, sort of, you know, letter land and numbers and all that kind of stuff.So she's just arrived, which is great.It means the boys are out of the way.They're safe.

There's someone looking after them and John and I can focus on what we need to do today.um which is film obviously and organize this not garage destruction but we really are very much in real time you guys are watching this on sunday today is wednesday um and i have still got to edit tonight's video which is the one you watched last time if you didn't watch it i'll link it up here at least you can go back and catch up we've had a bit of a slow few weeks on the build which is why we also took the weekend to head off to turkey this was amazing we had five days in istanbul and the first episode from that trip went live on friday over on our travel channel the newbies explore so again if you missed that i will link it up here for you so one of the things that i've always talked about on this channel has been the long view throughs the the big long views the things that you can see in the distance and the things you can see in the middle and the things you can see up close.

It's kind of like when you take a photograph, you always want something in the front, something in the middle, and then something in the back, you know, into thirds.So what we've got here is exactly what I'd hoped.We've got a big, long view through to the bio pool from this window.

That's pretty magic, love, isn't it?

Brilliant.Really, really cool.

It is amazing, love.There is so much space.I don't think I've properly appreciated just how much of an eyesore that actually was.Don't look at it anymore.

And whilst the chaos on the outside continues, Marcus continues just pushing on with pointing all the stone.It's just saying, make a video.Something going on up the hill.Tractors arrived.So I think the idea is to bring the tractor down the hill, dump the stuff on the back of the tractor, bring it up, dump the stuff up there, and then take it away in the big truck.Gosh, there's a lot going on, isn't there?

And with each piece of equipment, with each tractor, with each digger, with each person turning up on site, the costs go up.

Blah, blah, blah.

Do some work for us.That is basically the first piece of land turned space return.Let's go up, cut some branches.

So the ambition here is to cut some branches down so that we can open up this view a little bit.Nothing major, just like this one that's hanging low, because I've been in the office editing.Here comes a tractor again.But that's amazing, like the floor's coming up and everything.It's almost likeI mean, like, love, that's really to put a lawn down.

It's almost like they're, like, peeling the not -garage away, you know?

Yeah, that's it, sweeping it back.They've really thought it through, haven't they?Very well.

I'm so pleased.Ah, this feels good, you guys.This feels really, really good.

Here we go, folks.More permeable land.Oh, my head is so busy at the moment with each scoop going away.each part of the knot garden is disappearing.I'm starting to wonder a little bit about the space that we're left with.What will it become?

I think the idea of having a knot garden there would be quite fitting, calling it the knot garden, but then we've got to decide what kind of a garden or what kind of a space it can be.Remember, in deciding what that space can be, we must not put concrete down on this space.It has to be permeable to rainwater.I'm worried a little bit currently about the tree and the roots that are being exposed.The question really now is how do we protect those tree roots from what is coming, which is like 40 degree August heat and sunshine.That'll dry that soil out.

I don't want to kill the tree, basically.So we're going to have to do something with a small amount of urgency.So let's get thinking, folks.If you've got any ideas, leave them in the comments below.If you fancy doing a sketch and emailing it across, please do that.Info at thenewbies .

co .uk.We'd love to see any sketches or any ideas that you've got.Whatever happens, we've got to protect that tree.Almost all of it now totally gone.The Nott garage is no more.

The last of it.of rubble are being taken up to the top of the top of the farm.Just tidied up and tightened off the spring water and the pipe there from the well as well.So we'll have some water there if we need it in the future and this electrical cable here that runs all the way up to the knot tank the shed at the top of the garden that we put solar panels on the top of so one day if we want to we can also connect the electrical cable from here to the house and then we've got electrics at the other end from the main supply.It's Mario just going down with his big truck take the first load away There it is, there's the Not Garage.I'd imagine that's two, maybe three lorries, maybe even more to get rid of it.

So, well, we'll see.It was really, truly, 100 % goodbye to the Not Garage, isn't it?It's on its last journey, or maybe not even on its last journey.I truly believe that Mario is taking this off to another build site, as good as hardcore, as so that they can start concrete on top of it, building another structure.Anyway, that's it pretty much.Goodbye till the next time.

That's it, folks.It's nearly gone.I think we're pretty much done, buddy.What do you think?The Not Garage is gone.All right.

That's it.Done.The Not Garage has disappeared.Yeah, it's gone.Just like a magic trick.I think that's the digger leaving.

Up he goes.

Done.Could be.Lovely.The boys have been waiting pretty much all day for this.

That is absolute madness.The Not Garage is gone, and I think the guys are just calling it a day.Wowee.That has been such a different day to what I thought it was gonna be.I thought we were gonna be, well, I just thought it was gonna be so messy, so miserable, so difficult, and actually, it's just been like a non -event almost.They've like collapsed it in on itself, peeled it back, put it in the truck, and away we go.

And that's it, Not Garage is gone.It looks like it was never there.That's what I think I'm finding so remarkable, is it literally looks as though it was never there in the first place.

Well, it's taken pretty much all day.day for the boys to get into Mario's digger.There's been so much going on and so much breaking and destruction, but here we are.What a great way to end the day.Two boys, my two boys, in the cab with Mario, just like always, finishing up the job.I love it.

Well done, fellas.

Thank you very much.That's it, they're done.They came and they left.With our Not Garage.

We miss the Not Garage a lot, yeah.We've just got to get used to it.

Not Garage.Not a garage.Not Garage.not garage gone as you can tell i'm feeling very eloquent wow we still have a fair bit of tidying up to do and i think most importantly we have to figure out what we're going to do with that bank give that tree and his roots a little bit more support we also need to figure out what to do with all of this stuff Joao's taking the water tanks and the insulation, so he should hopefully be coming to get those in the next day or so.And we have to decide what we're going to do with this beautiful new space that we've got.Guys, I think we're going to need a bit of time to process this before we can talk about it properly.

So we'll see you guys all next time.Thank you so much for spending your time with us, for being with us from the early days of Discovery in the Not Garage right until the day that we say goodbye.Just so happy it's done.and so delighted with how the space looks feels and what the future looks like for this property don't forget to subscribe so that you see what we get up to here and thank you again you guys you're the best we'll see you soon ciao for now