News from our farmstead #1

Welcome to our finca!

Welcome to our newsletter and thank you for signing up. I imagine you more or less know what you’ve signed up to, but in case you don't, here’s a brief introduction to who we are and what we’re doing.

We’re Mauro (Argentinian) and Harriet (British) and in September 2020 we moved to Valencia, Spain. A few months later we had found, fallen in love with and purchased an abandoned 4 acre smallholding in the countryside of Castellón, about 120km away from Valencia. We’re currently balancing the commitment of 2 full-time jobs with the huge project of restoring the smallholding, and we’d love to show you what we’re up to.

La Presola de Pio… as it looked whilst we were in the middle of tearing out all the rotting old furniture and rubbish

Pres-What?

Presola is the name of the natural spring right by the edge of our property, and also the name of the stone house pictured above, which is one of the two houses on the site. Originally it was called “La Presola de Pio”, Pio being the name of the previous owner, who passed away about five years ago. This house is almost habitable, however, there’s also another stone ruin which needs a lot more TLC. The site is completely off-grid - no mains water, sewage, electricity or gas, and we intend to keep it that way.

We bought the finca in several parts, from various different owners, and we think we’ve reunited what was originally a single property, although further interrogation of locals is sure to yield more information!

In front of the smaller, habitable stone house. Everything was so overgrown!

As well as the two stone houses, we have a couple of rather ramshackle outbuildings, an outhouse, and my favourite thing - an outdoor kitchen, which we’ve been using even throughout the winter. The small house is south facing, but with its thick stone walls and protection from jasmine and other mature trees, it stays lovely and cool in the summer.

As for land, we have about 1.6 hectares (4 acres) in total, which is split over a number of terraced growing areas, which is common in a hilly area like this. We have a small stream running around the boundary of the land, which makes us feel like we’re in a little island, and on the other side of the stream we have another couple of fields in terraces.

We have the right to take water from the natural spring, and indeed there is an old irrigation system already carved out through the terraces, which we’re in the process of restoring. This is great, because we’re in a mediterranean climate which can get very dry in summer, and the type of crops you can grow here without irrigation are very limited. We have about 17 inches of rainfall per year - compared to the UK average of 33!

Mauro working on cutting back some of the waist-high grass in one of our fields… you can see the nearest town, population 900, perched on top of a hill in the distance!

The fields and terraces have been abandoned for some time - at least 5 years according to the locals we’ve spoken to. However, we have lots of mature fruit and nut trees which are still productive, although they definitely need some pruning and fertilising. The most common trees around here are almonds and olives, which happily grow in this climate. We’ve also found apple, pear, plum, walnut, quince, lemon, elderberry, pomegranate, laurel, cherry and strawberry trees (yes, apparently there’s a strawberry tree - called a madroño in Spanish). And of course, lots of grape vines! In some of the terraces, we can find rows of self-seeded onions, peppers and pumpkin coming through amongst the weeds, so we can see where the previous owners used to have their huerta (plot of land used for growing vegetables).

It’s worth mentioning the irrigation system in a little more detail because it’s amazing, and it’s where a lot of our plans are focused at the moment. From the natural spring, a whole system of canals and channels has been dug, stretching along our various terraces and allowing water to drain into big basins (aljibes) along the way, from which water can be pumped, extracted or gravity fed via rubber irrigation tubes to where it’s needed. In total we have over 60,000 litres of water storage capacity, which sounds like… a lot. I guess we’ll let you know whether it actually is a lot when we start using it!

Here you can see an old irrigation canal (acequia) running between two fields. On the right, you can see vines, which look dead but will spring back to life in Spring, a couple of months after this photo was taken!

Our Plans

We have a number of long term and short term plans for the finca, some of which are already underway. The long term (and most exciting!) plans include:

• Restoring the almost-habitable stone house so that it’s a lovely tiny home for us, somewhere suitable for living all year round

• Develop a thriving farm, based around permaculture principles

• Welcome WWOOFers and volunteers

• Restore the big old house

• Integrate chickens/quails, a couple of donkeys, and maybe some goats

• Build some accommodation for visitors (which might turn out to be the big old house, or perhaps a tipi/yurt)

• Install a solar panel system to meet all our (not extravagant) energy needs

Our shorter term plans, which we hope to achieve this year, include:

• Installing enough solar energy to be able to run a laptop & 4G router for 8 hours a day, allowing me (Harriet) to work from the finca during the week

• Get water from the spring flowing back to the terraces/house again

• Build an outdoor solar shower

• Build a proper composting loo (currently we have a bucket…)

• Plant a couple of raised beds

• Waterproof the small house

• Deep clean and spruce up the outdoor kitchen

• Get the fields under control, start mulching and fertilising, and give the fruit trees some care

It sounds like a lot, but we’ve made some progress in various areas already - we’ve been working hard to clear some of our fields, we’ve pretty much emptied the small house (which was full of rotting furniture, personal belongings and rats nests…), we’ve begun several compost piles (including one for humanure), and we’ve been clearing access to the irrigation canals, ready for restoring and laying new pipes.

Having fun with the professional strimmer - watch your toes!

There’s so much more we could say about the land, the house, our plans, the area, and life in Spain in general, but we’d better stop there and leave something for future issues. Hopefully this has given you a brief insight into what we’re doing, and feel free to get in touch with me at harriethryder@gmail.com if you have any specific questions. We’d be happy to answer them :)

Until next time,

Harriet & Mauro 🌿