finca life

a new year ... a new walk

Wed, 5 Jan 2011 17:18:45 +0000

Where did the holidays go? Duncan and Ella flew off to England on the 29th December and Ursi and John arrived by train. After a whole lot of traffic and missing a turning we dropped one lot of visitors at the airport and picked the next lot up in Madrid. Somewhere in all the excitement I lost my phone so DON’T use the number. I’m getting a new phone from the co-operativa on Friday, going on to Movistar and will be able to call all my fellow co-op amigos free. Seems good to me.

After several days of non-stop rain and wondering if we would be able to get down the lane on Sunday to get the 05.08 train from Cáceres or not (‘not’ seemed like a good option at 4 o’clock that morning) we DID make the train. Ursi and John got their connection to Cartagena and I visited the Thyssen for the ‘Impressionist Gardens’ exhibition. Wow! What a fantastic show. It was just as well that I had booked my ticket on-line as the entire world was in Madrid that day and I never made the Prado at all. There was a two hour wait just to get into the place!

Of course, the weather has been fantastic since Sunday and we have gathered in nearly all the olives. There are a few trees left and we are at 850 kgs but we might not equal last year’s bumper harvest. Strangely, the normally productive trees had fewer olives - yet they were bigger. The trees on Lavender Hill have given olives this year for the very first time. All that cutting and sapling removal has started to pay dividends. However, at 34 centimos per kilo we will not be getting rich. However, I’m off to get the subsidy organized in February armed with the appropriate paperwork - at last.

Durning Ursi and John’s visit, Ursi and I went to the local Garden Centre and I have 12 m. of black membrane to lay under the gravel in the rose and cacti garden to stop the weeds coming through. It’s a bit of a back-to-front effort on my part. The weeds were sparse during the summer - but they are rampant now that we have both rain and sun. The roses, however, are still blooming and so the garden is worth the effort of scraping aside the stones, weeding, laying the membrane and re-laying the stones. I’m also going to lay a winding stone path all around the house ...

Roger discovered a new walk while out with Jack one day. It goes up over the hill to the south of us and loops around by the long ford. It’s a bit overgrown but very pretty. The photo at the top is the unusual view of our house from the hill. We look quite settled and cosy ....

This will be my last blog. We have so much we still want to do and progress continues both inside and outside the house. The house is fantastic and living here can only get better once the Ayuntamiento ‘do’ the lane. Spanish classes start up again on Monday and I’ve been asked to do a one hour English conversation class at the Casa de Cultura each Wednesday evening. For pay! Wow! I shall be an employee again! Apart from that I also have a few students I help simply as a way of repaying the enormous support and friendship given to us by everyone in the village.

The biggest change this coming year has got to be that Roger and I find more time to do less. We both love visitors and always have a great time with them. Yet in the 1350 days we have been here (in the village) we have had visitors for 514 of those days. We still want people to come and visit but we also want time to do other things. I want to find time to start painting again. I’m not Mary Cassatt or Berthe Morisot and my talent is meager but I like to paint. I’m off to Italy, for the first time ever, in May and Roger would like time to go and watch Duncan play cricket in the Spring. It should be a great year ...

Thanks so much for all your kind words about the blog. I may start another one next year. If you get desperate log on to http://www.walkingextremadura.com but for now ... un abrazo fuerte y un beso ...

... P.S. I did start a new blog on 31st January and here’s the link

the day after the one before

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 09:55:07 +0000

Yesterday was a really nice day. Christmas Lunch started at 2.30 pm and finished six hours later with most of us too full to move. Thanks to Gerry for letting us use the kitchen in c/Zubs while he was having his last family Christmas in England. Next year ... we’re all at Gerry and Jackie’s!

Today is VERY frosty. We are tidying up, walking, picking olives and doing ... not a lot!

Photos from top, left to right:
Willem and Duncan; the Chef and Aouatef; Roger, Stefan, Tilly and Ella; Aouatef and Karin. The frosty finca.

‘twas the night before Christmas ...

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 13:52:27 +0000

Duncan has arrived to spend Christmas here despite the snow in England. We can only offer rain. The last few days have been wet enough to flood the lane in places. We have resorted to taking to Jumpy into the village and leaving it there and walking the lane. There are, however, strong rumours that the Ayuntamiento is planning on providing materials to ‘prepare’ the lane. This means that we, ourselves and all other lane users, will do the physical work of spreading out the hardcore into the potholes, before the cement lorry comes. It would make life here, during the winter, so much easier if we could simply drive up and down with shopping and Ella on her daily school run. School starts at 8.00 am here and it’s still very dark so walking is not impossible - just a bit of a palaver with books, brollies, torch, dog, etc. BUT Roger copes well ...

In the meantime, “Happy Christmas” to everyone who has been following the blog. It’s been a great year ... and it’s not over yet ... The sun is shinning like crazy today and the olive harvesters are out in force. I’ve been preparing a Christmas Feast for nine of us tomorrow while Roger has taken Duncan and Ella to Mérida. I’m now going to ice the cake!

Enjoy yourselves tomorrow ...

woodentops

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 12:11:50 +0000

It’s that time of year again and the wood men delivered 5910 kgs of dry oak for next winter. We are nothing if not organized on the ‘keeping warm in the winter’ front. If only keeping cool in the summer was this easy. However, along with our summer house plans we may get a small pool ...

... Roger is busy with the olive harvest and has already clocked up over 300 kgs in two days. I must admit that my input has been poor this year but what with walking the dog, preparing for visitors, blogging, doing English classes for the world and his wife not to mention lots of Spanish homework, doing the gardening and more mundane household chores, I don’t seem to get much time. My correspondence, both e-mail and snail mail is bordering on epic. I won’t be cutting back on that but I may have to run another blog next year otherwise my co-respondents will need even more response! Especially as I refuse to do Face Twitting or Tuenti or any of that stuff.

Starting in January I have been asked by the Ayuntamiento to do a one hour a week English conversation and pronunciation class in the Casa de Cultura. That’s great. It means all the ‘ad hoc’ classes can be consolidated so that I get more ‘free time’. My New Year Resolution is also going to help me use my time better. My Resolution is ... ‘No!’

progress photos

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 07:30:26 +0000

The only thing left for this phase of the kitchen is to make some curtains to hang in front of the cupboards. It’s certainly nice to have some work surfaces on either side of the cooker!

The fence at the top of the finca looks pretty neat. We should not get any stray dogs, sheep or cows coming on to the finca and casual asparagus collectors should also be deterred. The porch gate only needs painting. Bit by bit things are coming together to the stage where, next year, Roger and I want to do ‘other’ things like ... build a summer house on Lavender Hill. In the meanwhile, it’s Christmas soon AND today is the day we start the olive harvest ...

progress

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 11:56:01 +0000

The kitchen, phase two, is complete. The fence is along the top wall of the finca. The porch gate is in place*. In fact, we are feeling rather pleased with ourselves and our trusty band of crafts-people who have, of course, done the actual work. The decks are clear for the immanent olive harvest but I must find time to do my Spanish homework for tonight AND make the marzipan to whack on the Christmas cake so that it dries out in time for the icing coating. I did, however, get some encina branches and have trimmed them and planted them and started to cover them in fake snow to decorate them. I shall have one on the porch and two in the house. I’m not putting the Christmas tree up this year. Jack will be constantly tempted to demolish it and I can’t be doing with all that. Next year ...

* Photos of everything tomorrow ... but the top seasonal photo is actually asparagus, as was the top photo in the last post. Isn’t it pretty?

up the pole

Thu, 9 Dec 2010 11:18:28 +0000

In spite of the rain today, Juan Antonio turned up to help cement the poles into the top wall. They will need to ‘set’ for a day or two and then the fencing will be erected. The tightening up of the fence will happen after about a week. All this just to keep Jack from escaping!

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Juanma has been busy building the brick walls for the cupboards on either side of the cooker. What with Jack going demented trying to ‘help’ everyone, plus the rain, the place looks like a ‘cowshed’ according to Roger. Never mind, Roger, it’s just ‘finca life’!

Gerry came to pass an hour as it’s pointless for him to get soaked on his finca just to prepare his trees for the harvest. He’s done his Christmas Cards as well so now he’s off shopping ...

We are all wondering just what to do on a wet day like today ...

constitution day

Mon, 6 Dec 2010 15:34:36 +0000

Today is a National Holiday in Spain and many people will take tomorrow off as a ‘puente’ that bridges over to the next National Holiday, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, on Wednesday. In true Bank Holiday style the weather is wet. On Friday we had a sprinkling of snow on the Sierra de Montánchez and it was freezing cold. The wind was in the East. We ventured as far as the village in the evening to see an Irish folk-rock band. They were quite good. The leading member of the band, Emma, is English, from Brighton, but has lived in Extremadura for the past five years. I especially liked her song inspired by what happened when her dog killed a neighbour’s sheep. I hope the Spanish audience got a glimmer of understanding that perhaps I was not so strange in my dealings with my own dog after all.

On Saturday morning Ella and I went up to Cáceres. As we drove past the sign for Valdefuentes we saw the Gredos Mountains in the distance absolutely covered in snow. We had the walking group annual dinner in the evening over in Montánchez and it was perishing. Most people dressed for warmth but the food was good and the company, as always, very nice indeed.

All this rain has meant that we have water starting to flow in the Hornillo at the bottom of the finca. Jack has discovered a way down and loves to splash about - even though it’s cold! Thankfully, the lane is, so far, not bad and we can still go up and down easily. That doesn’t mean there have been no Jumpy moments. I hit a stationery car in the Plaza a few weeks ago and on Friday Roger reversed the Jumpy into one of the olive trees on our finca. The branch broke one of the rear door’s window. Ho! Hum!

family life

Thu, 2 Dec 2010 10:41:34 +0000

We’ve not only settled into finca life but family life as well. Ella is settling down well and seems to be picking up Spanish a lot faster than Roger does or I ever did. Jack, while still having his excitable moments, is very much part of our family now. He’s getting bigger still and his size does alarm people but if ever there was a Gentle Giant, Jack is him.

We are having a flurry of activity as the year draws to a close. Yesterday Pedro and Juanma came and measured up for a new round of building my kitchen cupboards out of brick and granite. This time the wall along the cooker will be built out so that we have a work surface on either side of the cooker. The pots, pans, plates and dishes will be stored here making room on the other side of the kitchen for food. I must walk miles in every day just getting things to and from the cooker.

We are also having a gate put on the front porch. It makes perfect sense to have a metal gate to keep Jack in, while we are out and to keep him out while we are in; eating or relaxing with friends who, strangely enough, do not want dog slobber all over them. While the gate is open it will be pegged back to form a barrier at the side of the ramp. There’s always the worry that small children and tipsy adults might fall off the edge ...

Roger is continuing to fence in the finca and has everything prepared to start work on the wall along the lane. Not before time as Jack continues to find ways to jump the wall and escape.

prickly subject

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:04:56 +0000

Although the weather has been wet at times there have been enough dry and sunny days to get on with outside jobs. During the course of the long dry summer the front lawns suffered greatly. We were left with a dry and ‘dead’ area. Or rather, as Roger has just said, looking over my shoulder, “Suffered greatly? You mean ‘disappeared completely!” The only bit that seemed to survive, and give colour and flowers was the cacti garden. The trouble was I didn’t really like the cacti garden as it always looked like an after thought, tacked on the edge of the ‘lawn’ with a straight line of rocks. It also sloped. As the ground had softened up with the recent rain, and the days were cooler, I decided to tackle the prickly subject.

I bought two yucca plants to give the new garden height and structure and I bought a ‘money’ plant. I dug up the japonica bush, which suffered during the summer in its exposed area, and replanted it under some shade near the kitchen porch. I scrapped back the small stones covering the earth and I took away the straight line of rocks. I must have been nuts to do that in the first place as Nature has no straight lines and, although the bit around the house is the ‘garden’, it is supposed to blend in with the rest of the finca! I transported rocks from where Roger had been putting up the new fence on the hill by using the wheelbarrow. I ‘drew’ a new line that is curved, put my rocks down, dug the earth, weeded it and leveled it.

This left me with the still sloping bottom bit. I created a tiny new level and edged that with rocks. I took out the small rocks from the bottom edge of the sloping part and put in big rocks. I got new earth from a fallow area in Roger’s vegetable garden and built up the level. I transplanted some of the cacti that had multiplied over the year and planted the new plants. I used a combination of new earthenware pots and interesting granite rocks to give the garden more structure and ... I think it’s much better. So much so that I am going to turn the front ‘lawn’ into an area with rock-edged planted sections and a winding path through them leading to the front of the porch and eventually the rose garden.

Left: as the cacti garden was. Right: as it is now (in progress).