“I never saw anything like it in my life,” says a visibly shaken Belarmino Simões, as he stares at the annex where he lost his tractor, plow, and farm tools in the small village of Codessais, in the Lousã municipality.
On August 15th, as the fire that affected the Lousã Mountain approached the village, Belarmino managed to save his herd of 50 sheep and goats, but little else.
On the way to his house, alongside the burned annex, there are blood marks where his distressed pig tried to make its way to his home, only to be found dead, its hooves gone and entrails exposed.
“It came here to die, asking for help,” he laments.
Throughout the village, the only greenery visible is a few walnut trees with cleaned grounds.
“There isn’t even a leaf of cabbage to put in the pot. There’s nothing,” he complains, pointing to other lands full of brambles and undergrowth—”If they were mine, being poor, I would be ruined,” he criticizes.
On that day, he only thought of his herd—born among sheep and goats in Santo António da Neve, atop the Lousã Mountain.
“It’s my livelihood,” he states.
Without electricity and water, he hauled 20-liter buckets down a dusty and steep path to reach the pen where the sheep and goats were already secured, using water from a neighbor’s well.
“Going down the path, holding the bucket and my legs… oh lord, but I managed to save the herd,” he recounts.
He climbed and descended the rocky path about 300 times, part of the community’s effort. They only saw the police at 6:30 p.m. when he refused to leave the village.
The flames nearly reached the pen, but constant buckets of water held them back.
“If the fire had taken the pen and the cattle started dying, I would have died with them. A whole life in this,” emphasizes Belarmino Simões.
Since the fire, and with no pasture, he relies on donations of cabbage, bananas, and hay bales from various parts of the country.
He realizes that if not for the goat’s grazing around the village before the fire, it could have spread more violently.
“But who wants to be a shepherd today?” asks Belarmino, finding solace only when two small goats run to greet him in the pen.
His daughter jokes, “He would choose them over me despite being his daughter.”
“I begged him to leave the cattle,” she says.
As for the future, Belarmino remains uncertain, after a life shaped by minimal assistance.
Asked about the government’s promised support for farmers, Belarmino is skeptical.
“Call me in two months to see if I received any aid,” he notes.
