Welcome to Sugar Valley and Happy New Year to you! We're delighted to share our journey with you and hope that you will enjoy it as much as us. It's been an exciting experience so far with many aspects needing to come together to get to where we are today! Quinta Vale de Canas was a working 45,000 square metre farm producing a variety of different fruits and herbs. It was sadly abandoned for a number of years but is now coming to life once more! We received the deeds to the land in December 2021 and work has begun on clearing the ground to make way for building and planting.
Image: The digger hard at work
The trees have been pruned, as you can see from the photos, but don't worry - this quite brutal looking method will ensure that they grow back with healthy new branches and give them a good foundation for their overall long-term health.
Image: The orange trees now they have been pruned
Image: An orange tree in very poor condition
Many of the orange trees on the land became very wild and overgrown and were stripped of leaves on the lower areas by local roaming goats and sheep, this caused them to bear fruit higher up and the combination of this and a lack of water has led to very poor condition and any fruit that actually grows is bitter to taste. Cutting the trees right back will ensure that they grow into a new shape that is more beneficial for the uptake of water and nutrients from the soil. They will grow back to be robust little trees over the next couple of years and will produce juicy sweet fruit.
Video: Pruning the orange trees
(View on YouTube to watch in full HD quality)
Image: The team sealing the tree stumps
All of the peach trees on the land were dead so we are in the process of removing them, roots will need to be dug out so that they can be replaced.
Image: Rows of dead peach trees
Video: The peach and orange trees