In November, the nights start to get somewhat colder. Thanks to the wood burning central heating - an open fire that heats the radiators as well - the cottages will be warm as toast in a trice. The open fire has a thermal capacity of 4,000 kilojoules and the cottages only need 1,200. But then, you do need wood, of course.

On the 35 hectares Monte do Casarão spans there are dead holms (azinheiros) and cork oaks (sobreiros) a-plenty. We need a licence to chop them down. After all, they are protected. We even need a licence to prune them and clear the dead branches. That may seem over the top, but there is a case for caution. Azinheiros and sobreiros are landmarks in the Alentejan countryside. Local experts will have it that some of our dead trees are over 250 years old! One does not trifle with trees that ancient!

To obtain a felling licence, we need to mark all the trees we want to fell with a white band - quite a job. In our case, we had to mark 39 sobreiros and 17 azinheiros. Then you need to mark the positions on a map. The Ministry of Agriculture grants the felling licence. A representative from the Ministry may stop by to check if the marked trees are really dead (didn’t happen to us). The felling licence was granted and the work may commence.

They say that an open fire warms you three times. That is most certainly true: first you chop down the tree, then you chop it to pieces; after that you gather and split. Only then can you actually use the wood.

The job has been done. There is plenty of wood to make it comfortably through the winter. The guests have been known to use it al lot. After all, a crackling wood fire has a fascination and magic all its own.