It´s Ours

We closed, paid the Notary, paid the transaction tax and the paperwork is now with the Register.

We spoke with Jose the construction guy, who is going to give us an estimate for a team to clear out rubble and cut back the overgrown weeds. Then we´ll be looking for an architect to develop a work plan.

This is going to be a long process - so any help regarding websites to consult, personal renovation stories and advice, products we may not be aware of, etc. are all extremely welcome.

We´re also trying to think of names. Suggestions welcome!

So more pics:

There was some additional damage since we were there in August. But it´s an absolutely beautiful corner of the world. I´m thrilled.



Of the mysteries: 1) is a crumbling stone oven which we´ve managed to hack away some of the vegetation from. 2) There was a second floor we didn´t recognize, which collapsed along with the roof. Turns out there were cuadras (stalls) below and the openings are feeding mangers. 3) still no well

Tulip bulbs were planted just south of the barn, in a hopefully out of the way spot which is filled with stinging nettle.

Looking south between the barn and the wall to the east that borders the property.



West to the woods. There´s some kind of whitish fungus growing on the trees - any guesses?:


The forest walk:

Our Ruin

We have a closing date, currently set for next week. So barring some really strange circumstance, it looks like the ruin is ours.

It´s a house outside Melide, La Coruña. It has 2100 m2 of land attached, as well as a 100 m2 barn. It´s walled on the east, hedged along the south and bordered along the west by a seasonal creek.



According to the documents, it was built in 1930. A second ¨house¨ was added sometime after the original structure by adding on a half-second story and a few rooms to the east side separated by a hall.



There is electrical pole and supposedly a well that we haven´t found.

We´re buying it from people who intended to turn it into a rural hotel. After purchasing it from the heirs in 2007, circumstances prevented them from following that plan and as far as we can figure, they never actually got around to doing anything. Two years ago half the roof fell in, and it´s been on the market for almost all that time. A large section of the northern wall has caved in, and some of the beams took out parts of the interior walls when they came down.



The house (or houses) is approximately 10 m x 12 m. We´ll be ripping off what´s left of the roof and the second floor addition and making it all one level. We´d like 2 bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and 2 baths. We´ll need to install a septic tank and leech field. I have my eye on the barn as a future studio meanwhile, it will probably be the garage and tool storage.



The attached land is overgrown pasture, though there are apple and walnut trees, as well as elderberry, I think. And grape vines. And lots and lots of bramble and nettle. Some growing from one side of the house, over the top and in. I´ve attached a photo from the listing so you can see the before and current state.

before


August 2010


So the first order of business is to chop away some of the excess vegetation to get a good look at what´s connected to what. Three mysteries must be resolved. The first is to find the well - it could be lurking under various weedy mounds. The second is related to the interior of the house. On the other side of the passage, the middle of the house, there are a series of openings low on the wall. Windows from the original house?



The third involves the creek. V played intrepid explorer and discovered that our side of the creek is walled.

The creek disappears into the undergrowth at the right. (Also, this tree worries me)





But curiously, there´s a part of the wall that has a pronounced curve and roof tiles. We´re baffled. A pigeon house? The missing well? A very tiny oven?

Wish us luck!

Adventures in Spanish Banking

Our closing is scheduled for next week. We, according to the lawyer in Galicia, have to be present to pay the sellers, and pay the notary fees. There will be subsequent taxes but those will be calculated sometime after sale.

We´ve been told the notary fees will be a few hundred euros, so we´ll pay those in cash. But the sales price involves a few more zeros. Our plan was to move some money around from various accounts we have and then get a bank check to take to the closing, which seemed to make more practical sense than arriving with a briefcase full of euros.

This involved an interbank transfer from an account of mine (4 business days to process but no fee). A transfer from a joint account (via internet and within Caja Madrid so practically instantaneous). And then a visit to the local CM office for the check.

In Spain, you are ¨registered¨ to your local office. This means ¨our¨ office is the one closes to V´s parent´s flat, which is where we were when we opened the account. Therefore, transactions such as this have to be done through them, even though they´re across town and the same Bank. After several phone calls V determined that a ¨Cheque Conformado¨ was just the ticket. That would be a check, signed and sealed by the CM Bank Director and made out to the two sellers, whom we know have a common account where we transferred the deposit. V negotiated a commission which was 30% of the initial amount proposed for allowing us to use our own money.

Off I went to the local branch. Turns out we can´t have a cheque conformado because we don´t have a checkbook and it requires the use of one of our personal checks with a bunch of signatures and official stamps. She said a cheque bancario or cashier´s check would do just fine, not to worry, it was the same thing. But the Director wasn´t in. So the lovely Raquel took a photocopy of our bank book, the names of the two sellers and the amount required and said she´d take care of it, get it signed by the Director when he returned, and call me around 1:00 PM.

At 1:45, after no phone call and knowing the branch would close at 2:00, I went over. Raquel asked me if I was sure the cheque bancario was what I wanted. Thinking to myself ¨you yourself told me earlier it was¨ I said yes. After consulting the computer, the commission required by the other branch turned out to be the original non-negotiated amount. Phone calls ensued. Turns out the ¨negotiated¨ commission has an expiration date and would have to be re-applied for. Come back tomorrow and all will be well. V calls ¨our¨ branch and is assured that the commission will be the agreed upon amount and has been arranged again.

I arrive back today, and the lovely Raquel is nowhere to be seen. After waiting half an hour for the other ¨Personal Banker¨ to finish with a customer, he looks grim and says he was about to leave as I approach his desk. As I hover ever more resultely between him and the door and he casts an eye around at the considerable and lengthening lines of impatient Spanish, he thinks better of it and invites me to sit. Commission is correct. He then informs me that cheques bancarios can absolutely, positively only be made out to ONE recipient or entity and not two. News to me. We decide to name the seller we´ve actually met on the check and hope they´ll work out how they´re going to divide the money. What we´ll do if that´s not acceptable, I don´t know.

I think we should all go back to the traditional business transaction and exchange sacks of cash. If it was good enough for Mario Conde, it´s good enough for me.

I miss banking I think understand.

Médicos sin Fronteras

MSF (Doctors without Borders) is sponsoring a fund raiser called ¨Pastillas contral el dolor Ajeno¨ or Pills for Another´s Pain. If you buy a box of mint ¨pills¨ at participating pharmacies for 1€, the money will go to support medical treatment in disadvantaged communities.

Medecins sans Frontieres International site, for other information/donations.

Milhulloa

I found a women´s cooperative who are already doing the medicinal/aromatic herbs thing. Less legwork! They were awarded the Premio de Excelencia a la Innovación para Mujeres Rurales for 2010.

Milhulloa is a company that is dedicated to ecological farming and the transformation and commercialization of medicinal plants and vegetables. It is located in Palas de Rei in the province of Lugo near the French Way as it passes through the Ulloa region.

By using ecological farming techniques, Milhulloa obtains higher quality consumer products all while contributing to environmental conservation. The most important selection criteria when it comes to which species to cultivate are whether the plants are native to the La Ulloa region and their commercial value.

And,

Milhulloa are dedicated to organic farming, processing and marketing of medicinal plants and crops. This cooperative has been able to create a higher return on land in Palas de Rei Lugo, with the dual aim of seeking self-employment and to conserve biodiversity. It is the only company n Galicia dedicated to the production of medicinal herbs and teas, as well as dehydrated vegetables, oleates and spices. They are in charge of the entire process. . .

And I found out that ¨Miel en Rama¨ is Spanish for yarrow (achillea millefolium L.).

In Spanish - this must be some kind of entrepreneurial TV show.

http://www.rtve.es/mediateca/videos/20090107/invierte-milhulloa/378365.shtml

Carlos Nuñez and the Chieftains

I managed to catch most of Michael Moore´s ¨Capitalism - a love story¨ yesterday, and it made me so angry I needed a pick-me-up today.



Carlos Nuñez is probably the most famous Spanish celtic musician. He´s had a long and illustrious career and recorded a lot. This year in honor of the Jacobeo, he helped organize a free concert in the Plaza do Obradoiro in Santiago de Compostela with the Chieftains and the Galician Symphonic Orchestra. Apparently it was an unforgettable performance. He also seems like a genuinely nice guy and has such a good time playing that it´s infectious.

Nuñez collaborates often with other musicians. This is an earlier performance with the Chieftains. The first tune is Alborada de Veiga and the second is the Muiñeira Chantada (which is almost certain to be played at any festive gathering in Galicia were there are gaitas or pipes).

V and I did get to see the Chieftains in concert on St. Patrick´s Day in Chicago (The Irish are very big in Chicago) one year. They were great!

Here´s some more:



Happy Friday!

More Medieval

While I was searching for more DVDs like the Victorian Garden series, I ran across ¨Christina - a Medieval Life¨. And since I have a weakness for all things Medieval, I tuned in and thought it was fascinating. It is an hour long, but I recommend it if you´re a history geek. From Mayavision:

The 14th century is the most conflicted in British history, shot through with famine plague and war. It’s a time of climate change, with floods and rains and failed harvests, of virulent cattle pests like BSE, and above all the Black Death -during which more than half the population of Britain may have died.

Yet hard as life was for the ordinary people, this is also the time when our modern mentalities were shaped- and not by the rulers, but by the common people: with the beginning of the end of serfdom, the growth of individual freedom and the start of a capitalist market economy.

Michael Wood is as enthusiastic and sincere as always. Substitute ¨Banks and mortgages¨ for ¨Lords and tenancies¨, and it´s quite revealing where we´ve ended up.



And, I´ve run across a blog by the Cloisters Museum and Gardens, part of the Metropolitan Museum of NYC. The Curator´s focus is on the gardens, and the representations of plants in the objects they have housed in the museum. I went straight back to the beginning entries and am just about caught up now.

The Cloisters, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the twelfth through the fifteenth century. The building and its cloistered gardens—located in Fort Tryon Park in Northern Manhattan—are treasures in themselves, effectively part of the collection housed there. The Cloisters collection comprises approximately three thousand works of art from medieval Europe, dating from about the ninth to the sixteenth century.

Some of the Al Pacino film ¨Looking for Richard¨, which focuses on Shakespeare´s Richard III and is something of a cult hit, was filmed at and around the Cloisters. I saw it when it was released and it looked like it was a fascinating project to film.



I´ve visited a couple of times, but that´s years ago now. They do have the some of the famous unicorn tapestries in their collection. Worth a visit!

More Soap

After receiving an order of good smelling bottles from the lovely Helen at fresholi.com, I set about making some more soap. My first attempt was OK, several people have told me they like it, but being unscented wasn´t much fun. And the ¨brik¨ milk boxes I used were an odd size.

So I made 2 new batches - one with castor oil and scented with lemongrass and lavendar essential oils(the ovals), one with sweet almond oil and scented with West Indian sandalwood and cinnamon (the brown.) I used plastic oval milk bottles for the castor oil batch and smaller liter milk cartons for the cinnamon. I discovered that I had to cut the ¨mold¨ completely apart, and I´m concerned that with some of the new ¨soap¨ stuck to the plastic, it won´t recycle very well. Then I rebatched (remilled) the remaining ugly bars of the original by grating it with a cheese grater and heating with a little water over a double boiler at a low simmer, adding eucalyptus EO, and pouring into molds. I´d found some soap molds and stamps at a craft store in California (boy do I miss gigantic craft stores) and bought a couple to play with. The new ones, except for the rebatched pretty ones, have to age until before Christmas.

I´d like to come up with a shaving soap and a good, heavy duty, cleansing hand soap with some kind of mild abrasive - coffee? Sand? Pumice?

In other news - we´re moving funds around to take with us for the closing. I´ll try to do a more detailed post on real estate transactions, because frankly half the time I´m baffled.

And we´re now quivering with excitement at the prospect of brush clearing. So any recommendations regarding work boots, gloves, etc., and especially good quality hand tools - what to look for and where to purchase them would be appreciated.