“…reading and interpreting vernacular architecture is reading and interpreting the territory and the community. To understand these purposes is to understand their spontaneous and indigenous character, primitive, anonymous and rural, devoid of theoretical pretensions. In short, this architecture symbolizes a trilogical relationship at a conceptual level, composed of three poles of reference, Man, Site and Materials…
Diogo, Manuel: “Popular architecture, value and tradition”, in a communication presented at the International Congress of Popular Architecture. Porto: Universidade Lusíada, 1998, p.18
I was used to crossing the Serra do Caldeirão since an early age – having a family in the schist massif, already in the municipality of Almodôvar – and, at present, having a house in the parish of Cachopo, I was not surprised to cross it through twice more so that I could photograph the restoration of the conical roof of a haystack with a circular plan in Corte de Ouro, parish of Ameixial, municipality of Loulé.
In the time that permeates family displacements – me, as a son – until today – me, as a father – a few decades have passed, which naturally brought changes, sometimes very marked, both in the landscape and in the sparse population agglomerates that sprinkle the Serra, or in the social fabric that comprise them.
In five decades, although the route of the N2 road has not changed, it is now much easier to get around. It was in 2003 that the section between Almodôvar and São Brás de Alportel was renovated and classified as Heritage Road, having triggered works and care that have been developed towards a better pavement, better signage and greater safety.
In 2016, it became part of the Association of Municipalities of the National Road Route 2, whose objective is to boost tourism along the route. Crossing the Serra do Caldeirão in the longitudinal direction, today it plays a role of capital importance in the sense of service to the population and communities:
– Facilitating the transport of people (many of them elderly) to hospitals on the coast, since, in the interior, many health posts have closed and/or have lost their services.
– Facilitating the transport of children and young people to schools on the coast, since, in the interior, many schools were closed in a mercantile logic of education.
– Facilitating the transport of daily tons of garbage produced on the coast to the Sotavento Sanitary Landfill, where it is far from the eyes of the common citizen of the coast, but remaining in Coração da Serra and its inhabitants.
The circular haystacks, completely unknown in Barlavento, were a useful presence in the mountainous area of the municipalities of Loulé, São Brás de Alportel, Tavira, Castro Marim and Alcoutim.
Built for the need to store hay, they owed their existence to agriculture and livestock breeding practiced by the vast majority of the region's inhabitants, built with the material available in the area, namely with shale, rye straw placed on wooden rafters and cistus poles without center column bracing.
The mountainous territory, always used to seeing their children leave, also saw them return after a work campaign in the plains of the Alentejo or in the fertile lower Algarve. From the 50s of the last century, the outings took on a perennial character, their children settling mainly on the fringe of the Algarve and in post-war countries such as France and Germany.
Villages, farms and hills were bled from human life, on whose work the maintenance of the haystacks also depended, which, because they have an organic cover, need careful renovation. Due to the length of the stalks of rye straw, which is desired to be long, it must necessarily be mowed by hand, as this is the only way to keep the longest length, with the machine being separate in order to easily obtain the cereal.
The haystack with a circular plant is, therefore, a resilient testimony of another time, of an ancient Algarve linked to the cycles of life/cultivation/harvest, enclosing within itself a language of a time with other meanings, experiences and knowledge.
Having in the present lost its function – because the world of which they are a reflection has disappeared – there are few who resist in one piece and this copy by Manuel Luísa and Otília Pereira only still resists due to the effort of the QRER – Cooperative for the Development of Lowland Territories Density, transmuting it into an object capable of tourist consumption, as an access portal, not only for knowledge, but for living and experiencing the tangibility of the Old, of the Vernacular, of Identity.
Thus, for the recovery of this haystack, efforts were made by the Parish Council of Ameixial, Loulé City Council, Algarve Tourism Region, within the scope of the Algarve Walking Season, which supported the action of the QRER.
The cover having been recovered for the first time, by the efforts of the aforementioned entities about three years ago, now the straw had to come from the North, namely from Covelas, in the district of Porto, a fact that clearly demonstrates the difficulty and disappearance of elements that are interconnected. The disappearance of one or the disappearance of another or replacement by another, exogenous.
I refer to the past example that occurred in Mealha, a village located in the parish of Cachopo, which is the place where the most circular haystacks exist in the Algarve, with around ten having been the target of restoration interventions at the turn of the millennium, in a joint and coordinated effort of various entities – where the utility is also transmuted into decorative – and today none of the haystacks remains covered.
Today, most have exposed conical pylons, some of which were utilitarianly recovered with asphalt mesh. In this village, only one, by individual effort, without the help of any entity, only moved by the taste/passion and the power to do it, did it.
That's how, twice, I went to the Golden Court to be able to photograph in as much detail as possible the placement of a new cover in the haystack. Because this implies an empirical language of immemorial knowledge that is at risk of disappearing and with it the reduction of the variety of solutions to Life, reducing it to materials, materials and forms whose existence is the same in Serra do Caldeirão or in Cochinchina.
Because of the notion of losing every year that passes knowledge that confers identity and individuality, for having in photography the ability to register and make visible the hidden and the unmentioned, for finding the Algarve region still so rich in the solutions found in living and feeling the landscape, but at risk, I photograph and think about why I do it and its validation before me.
Next time, the camera – and the attention it requires – will be relegated to the background and I'll put my hands in the straw.
Author of text and photos (All rights reserved): Filipe da Palma, photographer
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