Close to the border between the concelhos of Góis and Lousã, on the hillside between Sacões and Lomba, above the Barroca do Vale do Pereiro, is the village of Formiga. The name Formiga means ‘ant’. The six houses of the village were owned by one family, and it is interesting that they saw fit to build the houses some distance from each other, unlike other communities! On one of the houses you can still see a rusted iron insurance plaque from the time when an insured building used to display its status.

The extensive area below the houses, that also belonged to the one family, used to be cultivated with maize, potatoes and cabbage. Once a year a man came from Monteira or Vila Nova do Ceira with his oxen to plough the soil. Everything else was done by hand, and every year the people carried baskets with soil from the bottom of their fields to the top. About eighty people used to live in Formiga, but few of them went to the school at Vila Nova do Ceira as everyone was needed to work on the land. The maize went to the mill at Vila Nova do Ceira to be ground, and the olives were pressed in the lagar of Vila Nova do Ceira.
The land around Formiga is still cultivated, and today you can find many well cared-for vines, and goats grazing on the hills. The owner of the goats makes cheese from their milk for himself and to sell. The Câmara from Góis brings a water tank so that the animals always have water to drink, as it can be very dry during hot summers, since the eucalyptus trees have depleted the area’s water supply.