Cork

(Note: this will be our last (finally) blog from our mission. We have been slow in getting caught up on our blogs -- enjoying so much the time with our children! Thank you for being interested in our little adventures!)

We saw our first cork trees when we were riding a bus to Évora in June, 2015 (see our blog on Elizabeth and Jeremy for the whole story). My first thought when I saw them was "Why are they killing their trees by taking the bark off?  Yet, the trees looked quite healthy. It was later that I learned they were cork trees.

When we were transferred to Évora, we were planted right in the middle of the cork growing country. We lived next to a cork forest, saw cork trees as we traveled and hiked in the area, and went past multiple stores selling all kinds of cork products. Janet fell in love with cork!!!

First, some facts about cork

1. The cork tree is in the oak family. The leaves are definitely oak-type leaves.

The seed are large acorns, about an inch long.

The little holes are worm holes - I guess they like acorns for dinner!

2. Cork, itself, is the bark of the tree that can be harvested without hurting the tree. It takes about 24 years for a tree to produce enough cork to begin harvesting. Thereafter, the bark is harvested every 7 to 10 years or so and the tree can live 200 or more years! That is a lot of cork from each tree!

This is a particularly thick piece of cork, but you can see the outer bark and the textured-colored inner bark, found on another walk through the woods around our apartment. It appeared that all the bark was harvested from the tree, but then left on the ground. I wonder if it was too thick and not a good quality. Somehow that tree had been overlooked (my guess).

3. Cork has many useful properties:

• impermeable to water and gases and will not rot
• elastic and compressible (meaning after being compressed will return to its original shape. This makes it a perfect bottle stopper!)
• light weight and floats on water - perfect for fishing floats
• does not conduct heat - We have 5 cork trivets!
• is a natural fire retardant
• resistant to wear

These properties make cork perfect for bottle stoppers, flooring, insulation, and many other applications almost everywhere-- in woodwind instruments, part of heat shield for spacecraft as well as many consumer items like handbags, shoes, umbrellas, dresses, coats, hats, decorative items, trays just to name a few. Browsing a tourist cork store is a very fun and interesting experience!!

Portugal produces half of all cork produced in the world! So, it is an important industry and thus its harvest qualifies for a tile painting!! The harvest occurs in July and August to allow the tree to begin making protective bark before the cold and wet of winter. Unfortunately we arrived in Évora after the harvest was over. So, these are the only pictures we have of how they harvest the trees.

Once they have taken the bark off the tree, they paint the last digit of the year of harvest. That way they know when to return to harvest the next crop 7 to10 years later.

This tree was a newly harvested tree. We were in Évora the end of 2016 and the cork of this tree was harvested in that year's August.





The newly forming bark is a dark red. As the years go on, the red will be replaced by more normal looking bark.

This tree has been growing cork bark for 4 years (2=harvested in 2012).

For some reason, a piece of the bark was removed but you can see how much cork has been made in 4 years.









How much of the tree's bark is removed seems to depend on what the harvesters think is best.

The one on the left has just a short part of the lower truck harvested.


The one on the right has many of the large limbs higher up harvested.

Here is a pile of harvested bark.

It is quite a lengthy process to prepare the cork for commercial use.

Interestingly, most of the cork tree are south of Lisbon. But most of the processing plants are in northern Portugal.

We had heard of a processing plant south of us, but we didn't make it there.


We talk of the commercial value of the tree, but they really are very beautiful oak trees!!!

One commercial use of the cork tree is the food value of their acorns.

These are black pigs who eat the acorns. We can witness that black pork steaks are delicious and full of flavor.

Our apartment in Évora was decorated with cork! It was advertised as The Cork House. I am sure all the pieces were found on the property.

Here is an outdoor market with the vendor offering of handbags and wallets.


Dennis found a small coin purse at a very reasonable cost.

I found the purse I liked at a cork store in Évora.

I also came home with cork trivets, cork placemats, and a cork serving tray!!

We went to a nativity display in one of the large churches in Évora.


There were hundreds of nativities made of cork.

Here are some of our favorites.

And of course, I had to find my own nativity made out of cork. We first found a small ornament sized nativity.















And then I found a larger one. This picture has, as the backdrop, a piece of raw cork that we picked up in our ramblings.

I think it fitting to have a nativity in cork. Christ was the creator of the world and cork is an amazing creation!!

Marvelous Marble!

Marble!!

It is beautiful

My bathroom counters, air-jet bath surround; bathroom thresholds and decorative balls -- all made of marble.

When we moved to Évora, we found out that we were on the edge of a huge field of marble!!

We would often find marble rocks on the ground as we walked around the grounds of our apartment.

And, somewhat related, we discovered a granite quarry on the estate where our apartment was located.

Which in some ways explained the granite fence posts. At least they don't rot!


Below is a geological chart of the Anticline of Estremoz (Anticline = a ridge shaped fold of stratified rock in which the strata slope downward from the crest. There you have it!)The deposit is 30 miles long and at the widest, 5 miles. That is A LOT of marble!

Our first introduction to the marble country was when we drove down to Borba, near the further end of the field from Évora, about an hours drive away. There we saw gigantic piles of marble.

I was amazed!!

And then I learned that those piles of marble are garbage -- pieces that weren't perfect, or big enough or whatever and just heaped into a pile.

I would think you could make lots of little trophy bases with it!!


On a subsequent trip to Borba, we decided to follow the main road out of town and see if we could find a marble quarry and find out what it actually looked like. We found one, and though it was closed, the access road was accessible to pedestrians (if you crawled through the closed gate) and we stopped to see what we could see.

You can see the road on the right and the perpendicular sides of the quarry to the left. The quarry hole on the other side of the road is equally perpendicular and deep.

It is a man made land bridge where they didn't quarry the marble to allow access to the the work area.

We are now looking down into the quarry. At the bottom is a lake of water that they use in cutting out the marble.

The quarry on the other of the road was equally as deep!
















Below is a close up of the working area of the quarry

That is NOT a toy front loader. It is a full sized machine used to pick up the left-over marble that will then be carried off in dump trucks to the garbage piles!!

Here is a view of the upper part of the quarry. You can see the road that goes up the side of the marble mountain that is used by the trucks to dump the unusable marble.

Same view! Just to prove that we really were there!!

They have big cranes to move the huge blocks of marble around!

And as you travel along the road back to Évora, you go past marble yards, with stacks and stacks of the marble blocks.

Just outside of Borba, there is a relatively new Museum of Marble.


It was quite instructive about marble (this is where we got the picture above of the marble field map)

It was an open museum with the tools of the trade.

Including a roll of the diamond-studded wire that they use to cut out the blocks.

Below is a collage of pictures in the museum. the one on the top right is a block that broke. Some of the marble that is quarried is not of good quality with seams in the wrong places and other defects. This block below is destined for the marble heap!!

They also showed the various types of finishes that can be put on a marble tap -- some very smooth and shiny to a little rougher but safer when it gets wet.









Marble is used everywhere in Portugal --  of course, art work:

And Furniture!!






Below, the sculpture for the center of a traffic round-about                                           

On the left is the watch tower of the castle in Estremoz, about 7 miles from Évora.

The entire tower is made of marble.

Below the front of the palace in Vila Viçosa is faced with marble.




And in front of the palace, the courtyard and parking lot is paved in marble.

But marble isn't just for huge projects or rich royalty.




The front wall in front of this 'suburban' home is made of marble.

And our good friends and members of the church, used marble along the bottom of the walls of their home as well as paving the sidewalks.

It was the inexpensive way!!

And sometimes, just the marble itself can be very interesting!

This piece would normally been discarded as it is unusable for standard marble purposes. But as a piece of natural art, it is very fascinating.


The piece below which, again, normally would have been rejected, provides a pattern that is fun to study!

Ditto!





And isn't that like people? Sometimes we 'discard' someone because they don't quite fit the criteria we have set for proper use.

But we are all children of a loving Heavenly Father. Each of us has our flaws, but, unlike marble that has been 'set in stone', through the atonement of Jesus Christ, we can all become flawless, and perfectly fit.