J. Gafarot's photos with the keyword: Seixal

Os fardos de Cortiça. Packs of raw Cork.

Seixal. Where I was born . . . some* years ago. ( *understatement of the year... )

I am here.

Quercus suber, commonly called the cork oak, is a medium-sized, evergreen oak tree in the section Quercus sect. Cerris. It is the primary source of cork for wine bottle stoppers and other uses, such as cork flooring and as the cores of cricket balls. It is native to southwest Europe and northwest Africa. In the Mediterranean basin the tree is an ancient species with fossil remnants dating back to the Tertiary period. The cork planks (from the third harvesting) are cooked in clean boiling water after the period of stabilization or rest. The boiling process lasts for at least one hour. The objectives of boiling are: 1. Clean the cork; 2. Extract water-soluble substances; 3. Increase its thickness, thereby reducing density; 4. Make the cork softer and more elastic. Before boiling, the cork cells are compressed in an irregular fashion, but during this process, the gas contained in the cells expands. As a result, the structure of the cork becomes more regular and its volume increases by around 20 per cent. Image of 1955, from Mundet of Seixal, onboard “fragatas” the traditional cargo boat of the time, the packs of cork from last year and ready to be transformed, are carried to Lisbon and then shipped worldwide, from the USA to Japan.

Memories, Seixal - 1952 The prevalent mix of smells, pine wood, paint, wood parings, the cool shadow of their growing hulls, the sound of hammers and hand saws, the wood being worked everywhere with century old hand tools, in those yards, are still in my mind.

...from the school of my village ...there's something of you in the people and the plants and the soil, that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you. Cesare Pavese

Sixty years ago she was a beauty.

All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks Are life eternal: and in silence they Speak happiness beyond the reach of books; There's nothing mortal in them; their decay Is the green life of change; to pass away And come again in blooms revivified. Its birth was heaven, eternal it its stay, And with the sun and moon shall still abide Beneath their day and night and heaven wide. John Clare (1793 - 1864)

That you need a village, if only for the pleasure of leaving it. Your own village means that you're not alone, that you know there's something of you in the people and the plants and the soil, that even when you are not there it waits to welcome you. Cesare Pavese

Looking to Seixal.

Restored small sailboats that once were the workboats for all the villages around the mouth of the riverTagus.