It's RAINING!!! after two months of virtually no rain we are celebrating, watering the veg every other day does not compensate for a good downpour. Perhaps the rain dance done by a friend has worked, not so good for her though, she's still waiting for a new roof.!

Although it means we cant work outside, I can get on with planting and weeding in the tunnels and Simon might get some logs cut.

We had experimented with growing onions in a tunnel this year, they were planted by one of our helpers in Jan, the result has been great with an average weight of 1lb 3oz or in new money 517grams, we have now harvested them and are drying them in a barn before plaiting them, so cheers Simon H.

We had made two further plantings in the garden, but they are no where near as large , but we are hopeful that we wont run out of them this year. i think we might try growing the garlic in a tunnel with the strawberries next year, as it's not done very well outside, maybe the soil was not rich enough.

There is still no sign of the incubator, and appears to be stuck in Belgium.

Living in Spain can be very frustrating, in some things they are so efficient, but with couriers they are still in the dark ages.
We ordered our incubator from the UK, two reasons really, firstly they are far better quality and with automatic turning and secondly they are cheaper, so the incubator was duly dispatched, five days later we received a phone call to say there was a parcel for us and it had been delivered to the garage in our local village, now maybe there are two villages with the same name and same post code but I dont think so. Unfortunately the person who made the call failed to say which company they were, but the very nice lady in the garage phoned round a few of the couriers, of course, without a tracking number it was rather like looking for the needle in a haystack.
So I then tried to contact the company that I had bought from, only to find it's an 08 number, so not dial-able from Spain, so I had to phone a friend in the UK to get them to phone for me, the end result? no one knows where the parcel is!
So another incubator has been dispatched, and I have been tracking it, it is in Belgium, and the further information is that that was it's final destination, so apparently, Belgium has a place called Spain in it. I doubt it!
What we cant work out is why Spanish couriers are unable to deliver a parcel to the address on the label, we only live 4k from the village, it's not as though this is outer Mongolia, and I'm sure the delivery vehicles must be fitted with GPS. Maybe the drivers are afraid they will be eaten by wolves or attacked by bears or wild boar.

We often wonder why we engaged on this renovation project, after all, we had a lovely house in Catalonia which we had lovingly built ourselves, some good friends, great views and places of interest to visit, BUT the summer temperatures never dropped below 32c we had to import our water, and because of bad farming practices, no soil to talk of so it was impossible to grow our own veg.

So here we are, two and a half years later still trying to get the house finished, however, we have masses of veg and fruit, a larder full of preserves, we have had our first rabbit harvest, and have now bought Quail for breeding and are now awaiting delivery of an incubator. In three months time we should have our first Quail for the table. These are birds which we have farmed before, many years ago, and unless our memories are failing we had found them easy to raise.

We wish we could say the same about potatoes, although we think we have a good crop, one potato weighed 857 grams, once again we find ourselves battling we the dreaded Colorado beetle, we have tried various solutions with the little blighters and what seems to be helping is a spray of strong fermented nettle juice, Simon has found a couple of dead beetles, and the grubs seem to be unable to feed, the odd one manages to find some foliage that got missed, but the rest of them hatch dont feed then get squashed by Simon. Next year we will try spaying every ten days.

The next harvest will be the plums which will all have to be bottled, it looks as though it's a bumper crop, and then the peaches. We also had our first harvest of blackcurrants this year which I mainly made jam from, plus ten bottles of Ribena, the cherries also did very well, maybe the very hard winter helps with the fruit trees.

Work on the house is progressing slowly, Simon is now building steps along side the rear of the house, partly because the land is quite steep but also as an underpinning, these very old houses were built without foundations. I am continuing with the pointing, although I wish our wonderful helper Lauren was here, she did a fantastic job.

I'm sure that somewhere there must be the perfect climate that remains consistent, however, until we find this Utopia, Galicia seems a fair compromise. In the past three weeks we have had temperatures of 18c up to 30c, heavy rain for six days, a few overcast days and the rest very hot. Some of our seeds have failed to germinate at all, and the ones that have, including weeds have gone mad.

Our last good helper Joe, will be please to hear that the potatoes he so lovingly planted are doing well, and we have far less Colorado beetle this year although we have to check them on a daily basis.

The maize is doing well and all the root crops. Things like the spinach and onions are not faring so well with such a variation in temperatures, but hey, you cant have everything.

Although the overcast days are best for working there is always something that can be done,whatever the weather, helpers please note!

Our next litter of rabbits are due today, and as Lucy, the doe saw fit to upturn her feed bowl as soon as I fed her this morning I suspect she might be telling me something, although I have yet to learn rabbit speak.

We are somewhat mystified as to why a Church should have a carving of a cannibal on the arch of the doorway!

The patio, created by one of our helpers last year is now looking lovely.

A lovely cove and wild flowers.