News from our farmstead #15

Making it through the hottest days

A little family portrait in front of the grapes

Hello again and welcome to our newsletter! It’s now the end of August… we’ve passed the height of summer, more or less, although I expect there are still quite a few more scorching weeks in store for us. We’ve survived a forest fire which came uncomfortably close to our land and burned about 3,000 hectares of countryside around our village. We’ve harvested most of the summer squash, the tomatoes are finished, the freezer is full and the pantry is filling, the grapes and almonds are ready for harvest, the carob is falling from the trees, the kittens have grown up and gone to their new home, and we’ve just had the first intense rainstorm which signifies the approach of the rainy period known as the “Gota Fria”. All in all, we’ve just about made it through the height of summer.

With the change in season in mind, we’ve been working through a checklist of things we wanted to fix or improve ready for this winter. It feels a bit crazy to be doing this now, when it’s still 30+ degrees, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last 18 months its that everything takes ten times longer than you expected. In fact, we probably should have started most of these jobs a long time ago, especially fixing some leaks in the roof, which ideally should have been done BEFORE summer when all the wasps which live under the tiles were still inactive. Oh well, there’s always next year…

Spot the out-of-place tile

I took a trip back to the UK at the start of the month, for the first time since I moved to Spain. It was a lovely trip and it definitely gave me the breather that I didn’t know I needed, not just thanks to the slightly (only slightly!) cooler temperatures. Of the two years I’ve lived in this country, the first 3 months were spent thinking about buying land, the next 3 months were spent in legal limbo whilst we actually bought it, and the remaining 18 months were spent living, sleeping and breathing this project. Which isn’t a bad thing - it’s our life, after all - but sometimes it’s a good idea to get a bit of perspective and venture outside the confines of your own four walls… or four acres, as the case may be.

I came back not only with lots of books and some contraband seeds (after Brexit, I believe you’re supposed to produce some kind of seed passport to take seeds to the EU?) but also lots of energy and ideas which I’m excited to start working towards. I have some big, exciting projects in the pipeline, which I’ve been thinking about for a long time - like the kitchen and how to try (again) at flood irrigation in our big field. I’m not gonna be really looking at any more big projects until next year, whilst we finish off our “planned projects” for 2022, but having ideas simmering away on the back burner is great because you keep mulling them over and coming up with more thoughts the longer they sit there.

Apart from the trip and the fire (which I won’t talk about here as it’s well documented by Mauro on YouTube), August has been pretty much as you would expect, as I alluded to earlier. Hot, heavy on the harvesting and preserving, but with the refreshing promise of autumn just around the corner to take the edge off the scorching days. It’s almost a full year since I moved to be out here full-time, so we’ve seen the full set of seasons here now, and it’s exciting to come back round through them again but this time, knowing more or less what to expect. I’ve also been reflecting a lot on the overall changes we’ve achieved during the year, and collected a few photos to compare the difference. For example:

Standing in the same place in the garden - 2021 vs 2022

In our next newsletter, I’ll tell you about everything we did to prepare for the winter, or maybe I’ll upload a video about it first. Anyway, see you soon, wherever I see you!

Harriet, Mauro, Tofu and Oona 🐾