Categoría: agriculture

Olive picking here in Posadas! (Cordova, Spain)

Hi folks! Hope you’re keeping fine…

Well, it’s that time of year again! And when I say ‘That time’, I mean olive picking time!

My son has been busy: firstly he and his friend picked some of the trees on the flatter ground around our house. The trees are old and beautiful, what with their greyish, twisted, gnarling trunks — each one different, individual, possessing its own character and personality.

The trees are ‘secano’ meaning dry, not irrigated and are also grown ecologically (no chemicals, pesticides etc.) The variety of olive is ‘lechin’ — this is an ovoidal and slightly asymmetric olive and the leaves are elliptical, short and of medium width. It is considered a variety of rustic olive, with cold tolerance, very good adaptation to limestone soils and very high resistance to drought.

As you can see from the photos, these were picked by hand. The branches were vigorously beaten with long, light and very strong fibreglass poles. The olives fell onto the large nets which were spread around the base of the tree and then these were gathered up and tipped straight into a trailer.

Meanwhile, I looked on eagerly…

The boys worked from 8:30 am to about 5 pm, (stopping to have a hearty lunch of green pepper, onion and nutty macaroni cheese, with homemade chips cooked Italian-style in olive oil and butter and seasoned with plenty of salt, garlic and rosemary; this was followed by a generous chunk of my homemade apple cake, the recipe of which I have included below).

Not many chips on this plate because it was for me and I’m watching my weight a bit! (Shame!) The dark ‘slop’ was actually a very delicious black bean stew.

The lunch certainly recharged their batteries, and by the time they finished work, they had picked 550 kilos!!! The following day they drove the olives to the local press in Posadas and the fruit was converted to olive oil — thick, greeny-gold and strong-smelling, still with bits of olive debris floating about which eventually settles to the bottom (i.e. unrefined, first-pressing, virginal and in all its purity — like I used to be!). The booty was equally divided between the two boys, so now we have about 10 x 5-litre bottles of gorgeous oil, which should keep us going for a while!

Last weekend there was more olive picking in my son’s finca (located on the foothills of the Sierrezuela), but this time, because the olive trees are still fairly small, being only three years old and planted as semi-intensive, the tractor was called in to pick them. This was fascinating for me because I have never seen one of these 3 &1/2 m tall giants at work. It passes over the trees and vibrates them with it ‘jaws’ while at the same time, guzzles up all the olives. No wonder these tractors are so expensive — this one’s price was 250.000 € (about £210.000!).

When the deposit is full of olives, it then spews out its contents into the hungry truck that awaits close by.

The work commenced at 8am and by 3 p.m. they finished (just as well, since the tractor charges a hefty price per hour!). Mind you, this will only be the method for the next year or two, while the olive trees can fit under the tractor. The idea is to let these grow tall and big so that they can be picked by hand when they are more mature. I think that the olives weighed in at a handsome 5000, more or less and will also be used for oil. The variety of olive is ‘arberquina’, a smaller, rounder olive that produces a sweet oil with no bitter aftertaste and gives fruity aromas, like banana and apple. It has a soft, sweet aroma.

So we had some enjoyable and profitable days! But not so fast — it’ll be my turn for action soon, once I have picked some olives that have turned from green to black. I will prepare them Greek style, that is by first preserving them under salt for about three weeks (after having previously put a cut in each one), and when they have dried and become all wrinkly, I will wash all the salt away, dry them thoroughly, then pack them into jars and perhaps top with some oil and maybe flavour with oregano. They are delicious! See this link for photos of the process.

Anyway, I think I’ve gone on for long enough for now!

Thank you for visiting! Your comments and/or questions are always welcome…

Until next time — take care! xxx

Watermelons, sheep and cows, here in Posadas (province of Cordova)

Hi folks! I hope that this finds you well despite the difficult times we are all experiencing, one way or another…

I just wanted to share a couple of photos with you (well, three actually!) which prove that it’s not just us here in Posadas who keep cool and hydrated with WATERMELONS…

…but the sheep and cows too!

So if you don’t believe me, below is the proof!

The above farm is situated on the footslopes of the Sierrezuela Park which forms part of the large Nature Reserve of Hornachuelos, which is an ecological haven boasting a wide variety of fauna and flora. There are also great walks/hikes/running circuits/adventure park, and you can also appreciate the ancient history via its Stone Age dolmens (as well as enjoy the bar, restaurant or do-it-yourself picnic/BBQ area). To view more about this area you can visit my previous blogs, here and here.

But coming back to the watermelons… they might seem just simply watery, juicy and refreshing, but actually they’re packed full with goodness. Here are some of their plus points:

1) They keep you hydrated due to their high water content.They contain nutrients and beneficial plant compounds.

2) One cup (154 grams) of watermelon has many nutrients, including these vitamins and minerals:—

Vitamin C: 21% of the Reference Daily Intake (RDI)

Vitamin A: 18% of the RDI

Potassium: 5% of the RDI

Magnesium: 4% of the RDI

Vitamins B1, B5 and B6: 3% of
the RDI

3) Watermelons contain compounds that may help prevent cancer, such as cucurbitacin E and lycopene (though study results are mixed).

4) They may improve heart health as they contain several heart-healthy components, including lycopene, amino acid citrulline and other vitamins and minerals.

5) They can lower inflammation and oxidative stress because lycopene and vitamin C are anti-inflammatory antioxidants. Inflammation is linked to many chronic diseases.

6) They may help prevent macular degeneration also due to their lycopene content.

7) Watermelons may help relieve muscle soreness — the amino acid citrulline may be partially responsible for its effect of easing this tenderness.

8) They are good for skin and hair because they contain vitamins A and C.

9) They can improve digestion as they are fibre-rich, and last (but not least),

10) being rich in lycopene, your body’s arginine levels are increased, which helps up the body’s fat-burning potential. At the same time the juicy red fruit helps the body burn fat, it also builds lean muscle. Just 1 cup a day does the trick.

CONCLUSION: it’s no wonder they feed watermelons to the sheep and cattle!!!

But now I’d like to finish off with a photo that has absolutely nothing at all to do with watermelons… my new kitten (one of four, but fifteen cats in total!).

Here kitty kitty!!!! (Come and have some watermelon!!)

Thank you for reading! As usual, comments and questions are always welcome.

Bye for now — take care xxx     

Busy gardening and writing here in my country abode of Posadas (Cordova)

Hi folks — I hope you are all coping ok in these testing times…

I did have a whole post prepared with a lot of photos about my latest gardening pursuits and a couple of extracts from the children’s book I have written, but all this has gone to pot! I just noticed that all the photos of my last six blogs (up until the 24th of December) have now been eliminated because as I was trying to put up the ones of this blog, I was told that I didn’t have enough space, so I made a mistake of eliminating them from my ‘multimedia’, which unfortunately had the effect of deleting them from my last few posts! Very annoying, a simple mistake I made which apparently has NO undoing! So please BE WARNED! The only alternative it would appear, is to upgrade to a paid plan (4 euros / month) or delete the oldest photos from the first blogs. I shall think about this and see what I do in the future… So although I had this post prepared and full of photos, since none of them could be published because of the reason above, I am going to put my illustrated writing on hold for the present until I get this problem sorted out. In the meantime, at least this may serve as a warning to all of you…

Take care and hopefully I’ll continue soon xxx

Copper sulphate, Cicero and Aunt Marjorie in the countryside of Posadas (Cordova)

Hi folks, I hope that you are all well.

Firstly, sorry to say that the photos in this post and the last 5 posts have been eliminated due to insufficient space on the multimedia (see my later post for details…)

Yes, more days than usual have passed since my last blog, but that’s because we’ve been quite caught up with the olives — trees that is.

It’s time for a good dose of copper sulphate, and as you can see from the photos, my son adapted the trailer and 1000-litre tank with tubes and jets (where the spray comes out of and which look like megaphones) and an inline generator that starts the spraying action as he drives the old Surf along the lanes of trees.

This copper sulphate treatment has to be repeated twice a year, with the next time probably being in November depending on what the weather’s been like. (Luckily there was enough of the solution left over for me to spray my medlar, fig, almond and citrus trees, so now I’ll be busy treating those in my spare time.)

The work was supervised by others, as well as us:

It did involve a lot of walking too, so half way, I decided to survey the operation from a convenient lookout in one of the shrubbier areas:

As we all know, farmers work hard, and thanks to them we are well-supplied with food. I like Cicero’s saying about agriculture:

‘For of all gainful professions, nothing is better, nothing more pleasing, nothing more delightful, nothing better becomes a well-bred man than agriculture‘ — Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC ­— 43 BC).

Bust of Cicero in the Capitoline Museum, Rome (Wikipedia)

Cicero — ‘Roman statesman, scholar, and writer, known as the greatest Roman orator, and upholding republican principles in the final civil wars that destroyed the Roman Republic’ (Britannica).

And here is the first verse of a poem about agriculture, written by Margaret E. Sangster (Pen name, Aunt Marjorie 1838 – June 3, 1912). She was ‘an American poet, author, and editor. Her poetry was inspired by family and church themes, and included hymns and sacred texts’. (Wiki)

a "Woman of the Century"
M.E. Sangster ‘a woman of the century’ (Wiki)

The Farmer

The dawn is here! I climb the hill;
     The earth is young and strangely still;
A tender green is showing where
     But yesterday my fields were bare . . .
I climb and, as I climb, I sing;
     The dawn is here, and with it – spring!

When we did eventually get home, our old faithful was there to welcome us:

Dingo, our adopted dog that appeared sheepishly one day at our door, scared and just skin and bones. Now she’s much healthier and is another member of the family.

Thank you for reading. As usual, comments and questions are always welcome.

Take care! xxx