"it never rains here"

...that's what i heard from my hosts when arrived. and they were right, for the first few weeks. now it's tuesday afternoon and it hasn't stop raining/storming since friday. okay, it hasn't been going non-stop, but everyday it's been on-again/off-again from the time we wake up to the time we go to bed. the worst of it all came friday night. i woke up around 2:30am and thought the roof was going to blow off our little casita. ...and 2 hours later i was still awake and it was still doing the same thing; pouring rain, high winds, thunder, and lightening. i looked out the window at one point and thought, "this must be what a hurricane is like." i've never seen anything like it. noela (new wwoofer) and i managed to keep dry. a lot of my clothes that were below a leaky window didn't. luckily the gardens and citrus trees held up fairly well. some unripened fruit was scattered on the ground and a row of tomatoes took a pretty hard hit, but we didn't lose anything in it's entirety. well, except for the new raised-beds that were last week's project. after planting beans and peas on thursday, they are now flattened and look like a river ran right through them. so all the planting will have to be done again, and the beds reworked, but that all can be done again.

other farms and houses we're quite as lucky. entire fields were flooded and crops lost. cement walls surrounding people's houses (as is done in spain) were completed knocked down by the rivers of water that flowed across the roads. the streets in the city were flooded and the sections of beach showed noticeable signs of erosion. someone told me it was the worst storm, destruction-wise, in 20 years. i'm sure clean-up will continue for weeks and maybe months.

what does this mean for working in the garden? it means our work has been extremely limited. when it rains as much as it has it's better for the plants and soil to dry a bit before working in them. we've been able to get in a hour or so of garden work each day, but then it's odd jobs inside the house that take up the rest of our time. and do go with the lack of work outside that we can do, the hosts are gone for the week, and almost all of the work on the to-do list is outside. ...and we're almost done with everything on it and it's only tuesday (they return saturday). so it's kind of weird week around here. there isn't a ton of work that needs to be done this week, but the work that does need to get done can't because of the weather.


the rasied-beds:

before

after (pic quality is lacking)

sunday is my last full day here and then monday i fly to bucharest to meet up with levi noodles kropf.

day in conil

it's almost been two weeks since i arrived at casa luz in conil. and after that amount of time i feel like i've got a pretty good handle on the schedule. let's see...

7:42 am
my alarm sounds, which means it's time to throw on a hat, some warms clothes, and the feeding of the cats and dogs begins. that's right, we (the wwoofers) wake up before our hosts to feed the 7 cats and the 2 dogs, and then take the dogs on a short walk.

8:05 am
we're back from the walk with the dogs and it's time for coffee. so we sit around with jackie (host #1) for about a half hour talking about who-knows-what, drinking coffee or tea, watch the BBC morning show, and jackie goes through the work for the day.

8:45-ish am
coffee/tea might run over a 15 minutes, and it might just make it to 9 until everything is said and done. so then i head to the garage to put on my work clothes, complete with knee-high rubber boots. by 9 at the earlies i'm working. work could be anything from: weeding (surprising) around the lemon/orange trees, stacking wood, cleaning the title floor in the host's bathroom, planting califlower, picking veggies for their CSA-type thing, spraying various plants, weeding the yard, shoveling manure, getting beds ready for planting, digging holes, and lots of little random home maintenence type work that hasn't nothing to do with organic farming/gardening.

10 am
breakfast. i can only speak for my breakfast, but this is what is looks like. a cup of coffee, orange juice, cereal with yogurt on top, toast (with olive oil, tomatoes, cheese on it), fruit, and then maybe another piece of toast arranged the same way. some days will have eggs to go on the toast and maybe something i don't even know about.

10:45 am
work, as described above. and something that i think is a bit odd is that neither jackie or richard work/help with their organic "farm." richard works overseas 6 months a year, so when he comes back (from the looks of it) he does yard and house work that has been neglected while he was gone. jackie: i did see in the garden one time -- for about 25 minutes as she told us how to plant seeds from a packet, after reading the instructions off the back... the work enviornment is more of a "we need to plant onions today." ...and then we do it.

2 pm
lunch. jackie is a great cook, and i mean great. she and rich have lived and traveled all over the world so we all (those eating) benefit from her "worldly" cuisine. oh yeah, i forgot to mention something very important. whenever it's time to eat jackie steps outside and rings this handbell as a signal that we can all stop working and come and eat. i've been close enough to catch site of it a few times; it's halarious!

3-ish pm
the kitchen has been cleaned and everyone is about to hit the hay for an afternoon siesta -- the rest of the day is free. this could mean any of a number of things: riding bikes to the beach, going for a run, sitting by the pool, going for a swim, walking around conil, surfing, etc.

8:30 pm
supper.

10:30 - 11 pm
bed.

breakfast

garden #1

weekly veggie boxes

the afternoon

was that wwoofing, or is this?

hmmmm. well, i'm sure there isn't a right or wrong when it comes to one wwoof farm over another, but there sure are differences between the two that i've seen. let's say this "farm" doesn't exactly have the same feel as the one is aranjuez. it is similar in the fact that all veggies/fruit are grown organically, both require weeding, both have a separate house for wwoofers, and both have several cats and dogs. and i think the similarities stop right about there. for starters, we have a pool. not a natural pool that blends in with the surroundings, but the kind of pool you'd see at a resort. the "farm" as we'll call it is more like 3 extra lots that surround the house which holds the two veggie gardens and maybe 30 or so citrus trees (lemons, limes, oranges) -- and the whole places is cement-walled in; it's an estate. the work is a bit different as well; waking up early to feed the 2 dogs and 7 cats, trimming the bushes around the driveway, or sweeping flower petal up from around their pool don't seem to me like organic farming, but then again i'm just the volunteer and they're the farmers. the owners of this place are super nice people, and jackie is a great cook. they're originally from southern england and moved to conil about 5 years ago. they've been a part of wwoof for the last 3 years and have managed to make being here as a wwoofer quite luxurious. apparently their farm manager (yeah, farm manager) was in portugal last week and will be back to his 2-day a week work schedule starting on monday. i hear that is when the organic learning begins. i also hear surfing lessons start next week.

new casita

the "farm" house

conil with jackie & rich (and their dogs)

wait for the "day in conil" coming next week. the 6 hour a day work schedule is a bit different as well.

aranjuez to conil

that´s right, i´m leaving aranjuez on wednesday and heading south to conil. the original plan was to stay in aranjuez until the end of the month, but after receiving an email from the hosts in conil wanting me to come a week early, i decided to go with it.

as my day was described last week, this past week was about the same. ...like i mentioned it was "i" after wednesday when i was the sole wwoofer. and then last night two women from canada showed up. ...i didn´t realize how nice it was having the whole house to myself until i didn´t have it anymore. but anyway, they´re cool people and i only have another day or work before i take off.

but the real story of the week comes from an unexpected tuesday. i had been told that ana´s mom and aunt were going to make paella, but i had no idea it was going to be an all day event of extended family, friends, and whatnot. i was expecting us to eat somewhere around 8:30-9pm, in spanish fashion, and then ana´s mom and aunt showed up around 11am to get things rolling. i´m not even going to try and list everything that was peeled, cut, and added to the bubbling pot of goodness over the fire (go to wikipedia for a complete description), but after several hours (we ate around 3pm) of cooking we sat down to a table of about 20 and ate to our heart´s content. it was a beautiful thing. and then an extended siesta on the grass wherever there was shade happened next. but no that didn´t wrap things up. after we had all recovered from an afternoon nap, there were leftovers to be had. so we ate again, almost all 20 of us. and that pretty much ended us all.

ana´s aunt

paella

the meal

the aftermath

tip of the week: don´t fix your itchy contact with hands that have just finished cutting a chili pepper.

a day in the life

we all wake up around 7:30am to eat breakfast and do whatever before we start working at 8. breakfast usually consists of a grainy/fruity cold cereal, a glass of oj, and a cup of coffee. around 8 we head out to the garden and start weeding in an area that ana or juampa likely told us about the evening before. actually, i´m starting with picking the seeds off asparagus tomorrow. anyway, weeding could be for the entire day, but usually there are different odds and ends jobs that involve juampa or ana. it sounds like a like a lot of grunt work, which i suppose it is, but before/white/before we do whatever we´re set out to do during the day, juampa or ana will tell us more about whatever we´re doing it for, how it effects the plants, and that sort of thing. so it´s much more than "those onions need weeding. get to it." so then at 2pm we stop and figure out what we´re going to eat for lunch. most of the days, maybe all, we heat bread and cheese, with some sort of raw or cooked vegetable mixture. sidenote: the mornings are cool enough to definitely have a pair of pants with the possibly 2 layers of long sleeve shirts. afternoons usually hit 85-90 degrees, and then we´re back to long sleeves and pants in the evenings. and the sun has been out every day since arriving. aaaaanyway, after lunch, showers happen, and then the afternoon of whatever.

there aren´t a whole lot of options, really. and greg (brother), before you say, "rough life, dude." ...i know, okay. i´ve spent a lot of time in the hammock reading, taking afternoon siestas, and just hanging out/chatting with the other wwoofers. and then maybe we´ll wonder around the 2 pieces of land, checking out the animals or see what juampa and ana are up to. i´ve ventured into aranjuez (pronounced arran-queth) 3 times to just walk around and check out the scene, and/or get online. it´s only about 5km, so it´s an easy bike ride.

then it´s the evening and we figure out who is going to cook what for supper. we´ve (the wwoofers) eaten with juampa and ana once, but normally it´s just us wwoofers cooking for ourselves. supper can go on for quite a while, so depending on what time it is we either got to bed or read/talk/whatever.

and then we repeat. although now, the number of wwoofers has gone from a forcing-me-into-a-tent-for-a-few-days 5 to only one other and myself. wednesday will bring the number from 2 to just me. so then i suppose you can substitute "we" with "i" if you want to know what i´ll be doing later in the week. i hear more wwoofers are on the way...

the garden

i´d say the garden is about 6 acres total. outside of the garden is another 8-ish acres of farm land that surrounds juampa and ana´s place. our piece of land is includes the garden, wwoofer accommodations, and hangout area/whatever. and then the other 8 acres has alfalfa, feed corn, green house, pastures for the animals, and a composting area. between the 2 houses there are also 4 kittens and 2 dogs. so most of the work so far has been in and around the garden; weeding, spraying the veggies with bio-dymanic mixture, checking and picking off insects and such from plant leaves, loading and unloading the weeded weeds into a trailer, and then maybe some odds in ends jobs that ana or juampa need help with.

the veggies in the garden are: tomatoes, chili peppers, green peppers, zucchini, pumpkin-squash, egg plants, sweet corn, basil, strawberries, cauliflower, cucumbers, and asparagus. then surrounding the garden are a few pear, apple, plum trees, and then white grapes sort of hug our house and terrace type area. everything in the garden is fair game for wwoofer consumption.

chili peppers & green peppers

alon & amy weeding the sweet corn

the hours we work on a daily basis are flexible, as long as week reach the 6 hours a day, 6 days a week quota. since i´ve been here, we have all worked 8am to 2pm, which allows for a nice long afternoon to do whatever.

the scene

i made it. after a day of rest at the current homestead, my first day of work has been completed. a little wedding never hurt anyone, right. well that´s what i did under the hot spainish sun. so anyway, i´m 1 of 5 wwoofers at the farm: a woman from england, a young guy from israel, a 20 yr old from AUS, and a 30something year old woman from japan. the common language is english.

the place i´m living in is basically a room that has a kitchen in it. we all sleep on this wood bed type thing with our sleeping pads and sleeping bags. like i said, bed type thing, not cushion or mattress. our bathroom is isn´t attached to the main house, but quite lovely. the hosts, whom are maybe 30, have another separate house that they live in about a 1 minute walk from our digs. both houses, and water pumps, etc., operate completely on solar power. we have 1 installation at our place and the other house has 2.


the weather, food, company of the other wwoofer, and the whole "scene" has been great so far and i don´t see why it would change. here are a few pics...

our house

the lounge/solar installation/grape growing area

a piece of the massive garden

until next time...