The rinse, in Fundão, came in a new life for over 20 years, when he began to convert Mato into cherry orchards. With the passage of fire, the dozens of hectares of burning burning make the future harder.
In Encabarda, a village with close to 200 people in Serra da Gardunha, the stories repeated among producers, who exchanged 20 or 25 years other jobs for agriculture projects, more specifically the cherry, transforming hills where he predominated in full-produced orchards.
With the passage of the fire that began in Arganil and that came down there in the space of hours the lavacolhas and surrounded the village, the stories of losses are repeated and the hectares of Cerejal burned.
In coffee, either you talk about fire or if you are silent, it tells the agency Lusa Sara Martins, 42, who has orchards of 2013, following the footsteps of her mother who exchanged the manufacturing employment for the cherry, fruit that is also a mark of an entire region.
At so many, Sara admits that she doesn’t even know if she prefers silence if she repeats her stories and outbursts about fire.
Between Sarah, Mother Maria José, her husband and father, are about 50 hectares of orchards scattered through the slopes near the rinse. They will have burned between seven and eight hectares, but another eight are only two years old and still do not produce: “the younger children,” he says.
After “two punches” this year and in 2024 with hail and frost that affected a considerable part of the campaign, the fire forces producers to think “twice about the investments that are made,” he tells Sara Martins.
The farmer graduated in Agronomy conducts a jeep through a dirt road where he sees Pinhal and Mato burned, among also burned orchards. Others, green, tell stories of resistance without a drop of water that was placed there when the flames passed.
Looking at the way the fire has walked through that saw and the resistance that several orchards guaranteed, Sara regrets the lack of planning and organization, considering that the trace machines should not only walk only on the “nerve hours” of the fire, but months before making strangers and sings with time and plans ”.
“These are cherry trees,” says Sara, pointing to luscious trees, being soon corrected by her mother, who tries to contain the tears: “they were.”
After studying at the Algarve and was six to seven years ago out of the rinse, Sara returned to her land and had orchards since 2013, having started the cherry spoon for “half a dozen years.”
In addition to the burnt trees, he says, it is necessary to look at cherry trees who, even having not burned, will not be able to fruit next year.
Maria José Martins shows the Lusa dried flowers: “This was the cherry of next year. They are all burned.”
In addition to the dry floral buds, the ‘stress’ and heat can lead to “very approached in fruit” for the year.
The increase in pests and the loss of pollinators are other risks to take into account, note Sara Martins, fearing a next campaign, with which it did not burn, weaker.
After the fire surrounded the village and spent on August 19, Sara soon climbed the mountain at dawn the next day to see what had been saved. With tractors and sprayers, they were still fighting flames and rekindies.
For Sarah, that day after the flames pass, just wanted to realize if what she had escaped to continue there.
“On the first night, I thought I couldn’t continue. But you can continue,” Vinca Sara.
Patrique Martins, 46, has not even managed to take the paperwork he has already received to survey the losses: “I am unwilling to do it.”
It has been betting on the cherry for 20 years, and when the fire arrived, it focused on saving the warehouse into a “fast” fire that turned the afternoon in the evening.
Nevertheless, he says he is the “most fortunate.” Lost three in 40 hectares of orchard.
Gabriel Martins, 58, lost 40% of his blueberries and four to five hectares of orchard out of a total of 15 hectares of cherry, who were also weed before changing their lives and exchanging electrician work for agriculture.
“I look at the future with a great apprehension,” says the producer, in doubt about what to do with trees that may not recover.
“It’s going to be six difficult years” until the new trees bear fruit, noticed, noticing that it is “unarmed”, that even the pine forest (which served to compensate worse campaigns) was lost all with the fire.
José Pereira, 57, admits that he will have no desire to start over after losing more than half of the orchards.
“I have a 15 -year -old son and an 18 daughter who entered university. I don’t know how it will be, but I will have to do something,” he says.
Luís Ribeiro, who has been dedicated to the cherry 15 years ago, says it was the cherry “that gave the soul to the rinse.”
“Until about 20 years ago there was not so much culture. Before, people here or lived on small agriculture or emigrated,” he said, believing that the rinse now needed “a push” in the face of the clash it led.
“We need to let the gray download and do math if it is worth or not to recover and work from this gray,” says Sara Martins.
The mother is still trying to assimilate everything she has lost, after “a lot of work, a lot of time”, turning kills into Cerejal.
In the following days, like her daughter, Maria José has been trying to combat all the flame and reaction she saw. “It went to defend the heart,” he said.
João Gaspar (Text) and Paulo Novais (Photos), from Lusa Agency
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