A Change of Season

The September and early October sun continued to burn the earth, but now there has been a change in temperature and a definite feeling of shift in season. Although we have some lovely blue sky days, we are seeing a few more clouds and it has rained once or twice, so the land is breathing a sigh of relief.

Clouds patterns enhance this sunset.

One day we could see both ends of the rainbow as it arched across the valley

The rainfall resulted in some snow on the peaks of, the Sierra Nevada. It has since melted, although after today's chill I don't think it will be long until we see more.

Some of the plants and insects keep hanging onto the warmth of the day, like the beautiful swallowtail butterflies.

Here on the land, it's time for us to start pulling out the summer beds that have finished and digging and fertilising the soil ready for some winter crops.

Mark is clearing the bed and digging in some manure ready to sow habas (broad beans)

The pumpkins keep on giving and giving. I reckon there are at least 30 on the land. 

Thankfully we love pumpkin soup. Served with croutons of bread fried up in our olive oil is my favourite.

A cat-sized pumpkin (or is it a pumpkin-sized cat?!)

The 'big daddy' pumpkin and some little ornamental gourds.
Maybe we'll draw a face on him and call him Wilson.

And it felt like the right time to harvest the pomegranates and make some juice. It freezes well. This juice should tide us over until we get our first few oranges.

We left a few on the tree because they look so beautiful

A very heavy basket indeed!

It has also been the moment to harvest our manzanilla table olives and cure and bottle them for nibbling on throughout the coming year. They are picked green. Any that are tinged even slightly purple go for oil production.

After picking, the first stage of curing is to soak in water, changing the water daily for about 10 days. This gets rid of the bitterness. However, before the olives are placed in the water, the skin needs to be cut to enable them to soak more thoroughly.  A friend gave us this machine for making cuts in the fruits. The hole they are pushed through has 4 little blades poking into the hole which make the necessary cuts and at the correct depth.

You push the olive through the hole with the next olive, not your finger!

After soaking the olives, they are bottled in a brine and vinegar solution then, Bob's your Uncle, you have table olives!

Some of these jars are bigger than they look! The total volume of olives was 20 litres.

The olives continue to change flavour as they take in the brine and vinegar. We were a little impatient and dived straight into a jar within a week of bottling. They were edible and palatable enough, although the flavour is improving every day. Last year we didn't realise that manzanilla table olives are picked green and we missed the harvest and ended up bottling other olives from the land that lacked the firm texture of the manzanilla. We are learning and our produce is getting more tasty as time goes by!

Our very kind neighbour gave us a mountain of avocados. We are enjoying fresh guacamole on a regular basis. Our avocado tree has two fruits but its foliage is looking much healthier than it had been and we have high expectations for next year!

And we have 3 pistachio nuts ........

A friend of ours has an interesting evergreen plant in her garden, a Triphasia. It is a citrus related plant. The red fruits are edible although it tastes nothing like a citrus. We have taken some seed and will try and germinate it.

Talking of germinating seed, we bought a papaya at the market a couple of weeks ago. The plant had originated from the Canary Islands. We collected some seed and sowed it in pots. Lo and behold, we now have some little papaya seedlings poking through the compost. As they have germinated just as the weather is turning cold, we are putting the seed tray indoors at night then outside in the sun under the shelter of a propagator in the daytime. We have seen Papaya trees growing on the coast in Almuñécar and it will be a challenge to grow them here, if we can find a sheltered enough spot.

Mushrooms, a sure sign that it's Autumn.
An ink cap agaric.

The Autumn colour is spectacular in the High Alpujarras, as we discovered when we took a walk with our son during his recent stay here.

Bridge over Poquiera River

Fraxinus and Diospyros - now they are just showing off!!!

Beautiful sunlight shining through the Autumn leaves

As the season changes, the brightly coloured summer vegetables are making way for more subtle colours. 

The green squash at the back is an angel's hair (cabello de angel) pumpkin. It is used in cakes to add moisture and texture.

October had some sadness in store for us. Pepper, our dear little British Blue cat, passed away after a short and rapid illness. We had had a steady crew of four cats living alongside each other for the past seven years. I had always dreaded losing one of the gang of four and Pepper's illness took us by surprise as she was only 14. She was visibly poorly for just two weeks and we do hope she was not suffering too much before this. We nursed her at home with the aid of 'cat morphine' to make her comfortable for the few days before she died. Pepper was our son's (Michael's) cat. When we got her our children were quite small and she saw them all grow from children to adults. She was very much part of our family and we will never forget her little ways and mannerisms.

Rest in peace, little Pepper

At the end of September, we thought it was high time to inspect the bees. The colony we had was from a swarm we collected in March and we had been quite disappointed at how little, if any, that it had increased. This was still the case when we inspected this time. Several days after our inspection, we went to an open day in a beautiful garden in nearby Lanjaron, and an English gentleman there was giving a talk about beekeeping. We had a chat with him and said how disappointed we were with the colony so far, and he dropped a gem of wisdom that made us feel a lot better. He pointed out that in Southern Spain the bees have their toughest time during the heat of Summer, and that conditions should start to become easier for them over the next few months. Obvious, I suppose, now that we know! So, just as with the different timings for growing vegetables, we are getting our heads round things being a little topsy turvy when it comes to beekeeping.

Quite recently our neighbour came to our door to tell us there was a swarm attached to one of our almond trees. It turned out to be our colony that had decided to leave the hive - no swarm cells, just a trip out, maybe!?! The swarm was accessible and easy to hive up again. The hive was short of food stores so we have fed them - liquid feed because Spanish bees will be able to fly a fair bit throughout winter, so no diarrhoea from being stuck in the hive with a bellyful of sugar solution sloshing about. And, as the bees are likely to be quite active throughout winter, if the nectar flow doesn't improve we will have to keep on feeding. Very topsy turvy indeed! 

The bees love the squash flowers and are straight onto them at first light

On the first weekend of October, whilst it was still warm, it was the Feria de Orgiva, the local fiesta that lasts for 4 days. The town pulls out all the stops. Street lighting goes up, marquees and stages are erected. Some of the musical entertainment is from local acts and some acts are known nationally and are brought in. There is a children's and adults' fairground, a horse show and a bull-tormenting show held in a temporary 'plaza de toros' erected at the edge of town. There is even a migas competition, where teams use their own recipes to cook fried breadcrumbs, a local speciality, which are then judged by a panel. This was our third year at the feria. We recognised many local faces at the feria, a sure sign that we are settling and integrating more here. 

Feria illuminations

One of the local acts, teenagers dancing in the afternoon sun

Our son, Tom, spent the last week of October with us and, as the heat of the summer had passed, we were able to put our minds and bodies into a little sightseeing. We spent the day in Jaén, a lovely city one hour's drive north of Granada and two hours from our house. The city has a beautiful Cathedral. 

Jaén Cathedral

There is also a castle, the Castillo de Santa Catalina, which gives amazing views over the city and the thousands of hectares of olive trees that surround it.

View of Jaén Cathedral from Castillo de Santa Catalina

There is also a museum on the site of the Arab baths with a 'mirador' which offers lovely views over the rooftops of the city.

We also went with Tom to the sugar cane museum in Motril, a town near the coast only 45 minutes from our home. The sugar cane museum is situated on the site of one of the sugar cane processing plants dating back to the 1600s. Motril was once a prosperous area due to sugar cane production and processing and the port of Motril would have developed so that this commodity could be transported throughout the Mediterranean and to Northern Europe, including England. I learnt quite a few surprising facts at the museum and from reading a bit more after the visit: sugar cane originated from Papua and sugar was part of the diet of these people as early as 8000 B.C.; the crystallisation process was developed in India about 2000 years ago; sugar cane was introduced to the Caribbean by Columbus on his second voyage in the early 1500s; large areas around Motril were deforested to provide the fuel needed to process the sugar cane (and the area remains bereft of this vegetation to this day); sugar production fell in Motril due to lack of wood for burning but there was a revival in the industry during the Age of Steam. Interesting stuff, and a reminder of how the balance in nature can slide and have such a disastrous impact on our World even in those days without the aid of modern machinery.

Taken outside the sugar cane museum,
 in what was the garden of one of the wealthy sugar cane producers

Our final bit of news is that we have a new little addition to our family, a pretty little kitten who we have called Chula. On Facebook, we belong to a local group called the Orgiva Massive. A woman had posted on there that she had a kitten that needed a home. She had been hitchhiking and, when a car pulled over, she thought she was going to get a lift. But instead someone got out the car, lifted the bonnet and pulled a frightened kitten from the engine and placed it in the hands of the hitchhiker. The young hitchhiker is a cat-lover but was in no position to keep the kitten, and that is how she fell into our hands. There are always cats and dogs requiring homes where we live and we often feel like responding but obviously need to limit the number of pets we have as it takes time and money to look after an animal properly. However, this little kitten's plea came at the right time for us to say 'yes': nursing Pepper had left a big hole in our lives which we needed to fill; the kitten was a female and for that reason would be ideal to fit into the dynamics in our household; she was a single cat so we wouldn't need to split up siblings; we have never owned a tortoiseshell; tortoiseshell are reputedly very good pets; she was the right age to integrate (old enough that she had probably been nurtured by her mum and young enough to socialise with humans); she was very needy - the list could go on .......! Chula will never replace Pepper, but she is certainly chasing all the dark thoughts away.

We think she was probably about 9 weeks old when we got her - she looked younger going by her size, but developmentally she was well coordinated and could jump and run confidently. Needless to say, she was ravenous!

'Chula' in Spanish means 'cool', 'cutie', 'chic', 'elegant' and she certainly is all of those things. We did start calling her Minnie for a day as she was found in a car engine and she has large ears, but it didn't feel right and so we opted for a Spanish name. Just think, with the motor car connection, we could have called her Rover!

She is integrating well with the two older females, whether they like it or not! And the two old ladies have been very good to her, like great-aunties, showing her how adults behave. Bobby is a bit out of sorts but he is coming back into the house more and more.

So, with a good load of produce tucked under our belts to enjoy, we are momentarily sitting back and making plans for the next few months, plans that involve harvesting olives, building steps, pruning and maybe those chickens aren't too far off!!

Beautiful cosmos lingering with the last warmth of summer

Harvest Time

We have had a complete change over the past 6 or 7 weeks. So, no blogging has taken place, although there is plenty to write about.

Firstly, I returned to the UK at the very end of July for 10 nights to visit our grown up children and our friends, whilst Mark looked after our home in Spain. During this time, our daughter returned to England from her year-long stay in the USA, where she had been working and enhancing her CV for her chosen career ahead. She is now starting her 4th year at Uni. Following my return to Spain from the UK our eldest son came over to visit. It is always a pleasure to have our children to stay and we spent some time relaxing together in our home and some time out and about.  Then, on 19th August, Mark and I started our holiday together, which involved driving to the UK, as far north as The Wirral, crossing on the Ferry via Santander and returning via Bilbao. We are very thankful to the previous owners who came to stay in our home for their break whilst we were away, and for taking such good care of our cats, land and home. It is the first time Mark and I have been away together since we have lived here as it is difficult to leave our home unattended for any length of time, especially in summer when the land dries out so quickly. 

As we were driving such a long way, we needed to make the journey part of the holiday so we made sure we had some fun on the way, including staying at a Medieval-themed hotel. 




We took in some beautiful scenery the whole length of Spain.

Bound for Blighty! I wasn't smiling like this for long -
the Bay of Biscay lived up to its reputation!

During our time in the UK. we spent 5 nights amongst friends at the Towersey Festival and enjoyed some lovely, and lively, music!




When we returned to our home in Spain, our daughter came over to stay with us and we enjoyed taking her out and about and showing her some of the aspects of the life we have made for ourselves over the past year.

Near to where we live a couple open their lovely garden to the public.
They have two llamas amongst their livestock.

A trip out for churros is a must if we have guests.
Mr Sparrow is filling his boots alright!

After seeing our daughter off to the UK, we knew it was time to get back down to living the life we have been living for the past year, and we were very happy to do so, although we loved our rather long break and the physical rest of day to day working on the land. So after 6 weeks of damned good living, we are back to the graft, but physically refreshed and with a clear vision of the way forward.

Before our break started at the end of July, an important event happened here at our Cortijo. Mark made contact through some friends of ours with a gentleman at the bottom of our track that keeps horses and we picked up our first two trailer-loads of horse poo. Those of you that know me well will be aware of the sheer delight I would have got from this. Indeed, when we lived in England, on more than one occasion I sent Mark a 'passionate' text stating 'shit at Dave's', the covert meaning of this being 'we're not sitting down after tea, we are driving down to Dave's stables and taking a load of horse poo to the allotment'. It was really great to finally be adding manure to our compost heap here. We also had a very nice surprise when we collected it: it was a very hot afternoon, 35 ish centigrade, and the thought of shovelling heavy manure was not inviting. However, because it was so hot, it had dried out and flew through the air into the trailer with very little physical effort. Or maybe it was pure elation that made the fork move so swiftly!

Horse -poo Heaven. You can't get any higher than that.

When we arrived back home in Spain, there was lots to harvest. Some of our produce will be preserved and stored for future use throughout the year. We found that we had more melons than we had realised. Most of them were hiding in the shade under the leaves of other veg. 




Our big harvest at the moment is the almond harvest. This will be our 4th year of harvesting almonds and we are finding a method that works for us so that it becomes a bit easier each year. We are using more and more of the harvest ourselves in muesli, cakes, soups and stews.

Mark is shaking the almonds from the tree.

The almonds fall to the ground on nets we have laid down.

The almonds are tipped into a basket.

Once cleaned of leaves and outer husk, the almonds are left to dry for a few days until they rattle, indicating that the nut inside is drying. We take them in every night to protect them from condensation and opportunist fruit rats.

Whilst working our way along the terraces harvesting the almonds, we have also been clearing and tidying a little and starting to discuss our future plans and projects for when the weather is a little cooler.

We have a few very generous fig trees on our land. The figs are delicious fresh, but there is so much fruit on them that it would be a shame not to dry some and store for the winter months. 



We have also tried drying some apple slices to add variety to our breakfasts later in the year when they are not in season.

We have a spectacular pumpkin harvest and it is fairly effortless to grow them.

We harvested this pumpkin a little early as it had split. 

This is our biggest pumpkin. It is going to be a struggle to cut through this. 

We have made some delicious pumpkin soup and pumpkin bread (which is really a cake). The pumpkin bread was our daughter's suggestion, influenced and inspired by her stay in the USA. 

Pumpkin bread with a Philadelphia cheese-based frosting

Mark was speaking to a couple he met yesterday who informed him that pumpkin leaves are delicious. He has done a bit of reading up and I think pumpkin leaves will be on the menu tomorrow night. Maybe Mark's new signature dish!?

All this produce is largely thanks to our goteo irrigation system working so well for us and taking some of the hard work out of watering. As it is such a valuable addition, we have modified the system further today by adding taps at the ends of many of the pipes so that we can flush the sediment out of the pipes to prevent the irrigation holes from blocking (we hope!).

This year's wine has had its first fermentation and is racked off and sitting next to me as I type. Having taken specific gravity readings before and after fermentation, we reckon it is going to be 12.5% upwards!! 

We are in the process of looking at our solar power system and have upgraded one of the instruments, the charge controller. Now, amongst other things, we can see exactly how many Kilowatts we are harvesting every day. Our charge controller is connected to the wifi router via an ethernet cable so we can get a comprehensive display on our computer of what is going on. We are even going to be able to log in remotely when we are not at home to see what the solar system is doing. Freud would have had something to say about that. (Sigmund, that is!). Alongside this we are measuring our daily consumption of energy and taking the gravity of the batteries. We have a very good system which was installed by the previous owners and we want to keep on top of it so that it remains this way. The information we get from the charge controller will enable us to decide when we need to replace the batteries. Solar batteries are expensive and we don't want to replace them until we need to. Ours are top quality and we think we can get another 5 years from them. We are considering a further shorter-term upgrade : to add a further 2 or 3 solar panels to our array. We have had excellent advice and instruction from a local gentleman who owns a solar energy company.

So what are the bees doing? Flying in and out of the hive that's for sure! An inspection is long overdue and what the bees are getting up to will have to be for the next blog. We're not expecting any honey this year but who knows what surprises may await us! We do need to get our Varroa treatment in. Just as in England, the beekeepers here say 'If you don't treat for Varroa, the bees will die'. Some things do not change. I guess we are holding back because we are not entirely sure of when the honey flows are, and we don't want to taint any honey there might be with thymol. I did ask my neighbour, a very experienced beekeeper, where the bees get their nectar from at this time of year. He said they get sugar from grapes and figs. Sure enough, there are loads of bees on the fallen figs on our land. Earlier this week Mark spotted many bees taking the sap from the leaf axes of young poplar saplings. Propolis gathering, maybe, now that Autumn is coming?


Yesterday we had a lovely surprise as we found that one of our compost heaps to which we had added horse manure was rotted and ready to use: lovely, crumbly earthy-smelling stuff like you read about in text books! I added it to one of the beds and planted out some leeks and onion sets. Then I gave a bit of a top dressing to the summer veg - tomatoes, peppers and aubergines, to extend their life a bit. The things I want to do with that compost! 

We have a poorly performing strawberry patch. We used to grow strawberries effortlessly in the UK but our crown is slipping (no pun intended). I only ever purchased one lot of plants - from Woolworths in Birkenhead - 12 or so rather dried up specimens which subsequently thrived and have survived for generations. Our current strawberry bed in Spain is rather a different story. I have moved the plants once and they are slightly happier although the fruits are tiny, almost like alpine strawberries, a far cry from a Cambridge Favourite and an even further cry from the very large Spanish strawberries you see in the shops in the UK out of season. So I am hoping the newly-rotted compost will come to the rescue and today I scraped the mulch from around the strawbs, dressed the bed with compost, added some all-round organic fertiliser and then replaced the mulch. The plants have a lovely goteo watering system as well so what more can they need?!  I can see this is going to be a challenge! (I may also consider making a screen to shade the plants from the sun).

Happy to be back home after our road trip.

So, our second year out here has begun well for us with many plans in the pipeline and probably a fair few challenges in store. We hope and are optimistic that the forthcoming year will be as enjoyable and successful as the one that has just passed. Certainly, as we are becoming more accustomed to living here, we are less preoccupied with the new and unfamiliar and are finding more space for thought and a little more time for relaxation and the activities we promised ourselves we would do when we moved out here. I am currently re-reading 'As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning' by Laurie Lee, which is a real-life account of this young man's travels through Spain just before and as Civil War was breaking out in the 1930s. Last Friday afternoon, as part of our vow to relax a bit more, we went to a lovely cove on the coast for the afternoon. The cove looks across to Almunecar, which is where Laurie Lee was picked up from by a British Ship to escape the Civil War. What better way to read Laurie Lee, overlooking the land where his feet trod some 80 years ago?

A bit of cat-fancying in one of the mountain villages.
Thankfully this kitten had a loving owner, or else we may have been expanding our family (!)

Chilling