Having left Africa at the end of February, the In Between this time has seen us in Spain helping some friends on their permaculture land in the Alpujarras – a remote area of rolling olive and almond groves and small Moorish style villages in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
It started as a vague murmuring months ago when we were interested in doing some hands on ‘green building’. Our timing however, could not have been less ideal for such things. In the past 3 months, the region had received 7 years of rain, in a area of clay soil on bedrock. The clay has become totally saturated and the aquifers are more than full, resulting in a morass of landslides and rivers appearing where one would never normally expect them.
Our friends Andy and Chiara, and their neighbours, have lived in a small hamlet for some years now, and each in their own way have been practising permaculture, creating systems that eventually support each other to make use of the land sustainably. Chiara is also a wizardess in her wonderful kitchen, producing preserves and chutneys and all manner of delicious goods to sell at the local market, and feed her family (and grateful wwoofers)!
This strange recent weather has been a particular shock, as they must suddenly acknowledge that the climate type for which they have been working the land may shift. While we were there, a spring appeared inside the green house and despite the excess of rain, the piped water supply to the house and land ceased on several occasions as the earth around it fell away.
These are strange times for everyone and stories abound from across the globe of people having to suddenly adapt to massive changes. But that is the beauty of being human: the capacity to adapt, the nurturing of which I think should be a major part of our personal agendas. We gain knowledge from a full experience – some of which is to be found in unexpected places.
And so we were a much needed extra pairs of hands and set to work on all sorts of tasks: some urgent fixings of water supply pipes that had been severed by a landsliding oak tree, as well as some burnings of brambles (I never thought you could make a bonfire in a swamp, but you can!) and fixings of vegetable patch fences against wild boar invasions, and gatherings of cana (similar to bamboo) for use in roof maintenance for our host Mattias.
Mattias is a neighbour of Andy and Chiara, who lives in an old farmhouse on an orchard which has the ruins of an ancient Moorish aqueduct coarsing through the garden. I was fascinated that he bought the ‘farm’ from an old Spanish couple exactly as it was when they lived in it, with farm tools and household ornaments, kitchen utensils and Catholic ephemera included. Apparently this is quite common in Spain, and it instills a continuation of the the lives and work of the inhabitants into the fabric of the place. A sort of museum, that has never stopped breathing and is continually changing.
Mattias has rigged up a solar system and wind turbine which keeps him lit, laptopped and provided with music. It was encouraging to see how simply and cheaply one could live up there, and what one can do when rich in time and imagination. Mattias took us to a place where he had been a Wwoofer (Willing Worker on organic farms) some years ago – El Valle de Sensaciones – which had some rather intriguing low impact solutions to modern day comforts, such as solar heated cycle powered washing machines. This one below is a work in progress: the mirror dish focuses the sun’s rays onto the black drums, which are turned when pedalled. Below the below is a completed one…with reclining seat and antelope sculptural framework into the bargain!
My friend Aitan the goat farmer from America also joined us in Spain. He was on his own mission to meet some shepherds and ask them how they went about rearing and milking, as he had just established his own small dairy in his community in Connecticut. Andy and Chiara knew a shepherd who occasionally passed through the area but it was a matter of chance whether we would see him.
One day we heard the hypnotic cacophony of a hundred bells and knew the flock was nearby. And so Aitan and Chiara ran to find Gerardo and his shepherdess Aisa and their pack of dogs and ask lots of questions. Meanwhile I continued obsessively photographing the riot of almond blossoms and was intrigued to observe that goats and dogs love almonds!
Part of Aitan’s mission was also to visit some queserias (cheese making places), so one unusually warm day we set off on an adventure to find the local one, which was a good few hours amble through the mountains. We were very close when the road ‘disappeared’: a landslide had caused the track to crack and drop away completely and we all decided our dedication did not stretch that far! A lovely walk it was though, under dramatic skies, through clustered whitewashed villages and highly decorated cemeteries, ending in a blustery and invigorating trek along a mountain ridge at nightfall to avoid the landslides we had encountered on our outward leg.
Having escaped this chapter unscathed (though more than a little muddy!) Orri has just returned to Iceland where he has been welcomed home by a volcanic eruption, and I am to join him there in a few days….Never a dull moment!
Journeys In Between 