Coming from a centralised, market saturated and heavily commercialised southern England I take very much pleasure in the community set up in the Alentejo; with its small local shops, locally grown produce and limited choice of brands, shopping for ones food and wares is by modern standards extraordinarily straightforward. Even their supermarkets, sparsely spread and sparsely occupied, are minute by comparison to the UK. One needn’t go searching nutritional values for E-numbers and weird unnatural additives of every damn packet, bountiful is the region, unstressed by over-numbers is the demand, minimal is the transport of goods. Village shops are organised, well-stocked and in most cases very happy to serve.
Large Inter-regional markets are locatable a few times in a month, local markets most week days. One needn’t leave their house for days until supplies run low, in which case a pop to the nearest village or hardware shop at Reliquias or Colos or Luzianes will suffice. Even most building supplies for the cabin – such as timber, screws, steel, plastic, glue etc. – could be found a ten minute drive away. I came into a hardware shop in Colos for just such a trip, and left with a most curious and pleasing array of goods: 5 litre box of local wine, a bag of walnuts and figs, 30m sq of black plastic, a tin of tuna and a pot of wood preserver, and a few onions and carrots. Tucked under both arms i left with a genuine feeling of success; the burden of mindless over-choice had been completely side-stepped.
Engaging in whatever local community one finds them self in is a well known route to homely feelings and solidarity with the outside world. Be that engagement a weekly grocery shop or hiring local hands and machinery for the digging of a well or the pruning of olive trees before spring – too many foreigners do themselves foul by making meagre effort at integration by some odd notion that doing things just as they are done back home is not only sufficient but acceptable. For this project WE hope to engage as many locals as are needed and willing, for it is their validation and support that will truly enable a home to be created from home.
