The start of Autum

It seems as though the weather can understand the calendar,we had a light shower of rain overnight on the last day of August which freshened things up well and reduced the temperatures to more workable levels. Today we awoke to the first of the Autumn mists, a lot of Galicia seem to have these mists all year round, ours are few and far between but they do help with the watering of the garden.

The young rabbits are now weaned and were removed from Mum yesterday, much to her relief.They love their new home, and are hopping around like, well, young rabbits!

The past week we don't seem to have got a lot of work done, besides having damaged my back we have been trying to get together the materials for the sun room. This has involved visits to two wood yards. Of course, being Spain, one of the orders is not ready so we have to go back later, a visit to the builders yard for the blocks, and a trip to Lugo to a window manufacturor who we learned sells second hand windows. It's quite unusual to be able to get second hand anything in Spain, but we got exactly what we wanted very cheaply.

The main reason for the sun room is for a permanent home for the lemon tree and overwintering tender plants such as our geraniums and the oleander.

Although the sun room had been planned for some time in the future, after all we have plenty of work to be getting on with in the main house, we know that winter will soon be upon us and for just a weeks work we should be able to give a comfortable home for our precious plants.

Costing the Earth.

Although it's not why I set this blog up I'm going to have a go about the crisis in Kenya, we are downloading a program called The Future Of Food, Kenya produces a high percentage of food for EU super markets, french beans for instance, which can easily be produced in Europe these are grow in Kenya, flown over to UK super markets and sold for 1 pound for 350 grams, in plastic of course, these damn supermarkets will not accept anything except the perfect bean, IE it must be straight and heaven forbid that it should have any sign of soil on it, anything which is not perfect is destroyed whilst the people of Kenya starve, it's not just the supplying half way across the world, these crops need water to grow, so deeper wells have to be bored which means that the indigenous people no longer have access to water either to grow their own crops or to drink. It's time that subsidies for exporting food were stopped, the money doesn't go to the growers, it goes to the governments and makes their balance of payments look good and enables them to repay their loans to the world bank.
Also we dont need food out of season although the supermarkets have convinces everyone that they do. People complain that food doesn't taste the same as it used to, of course not,
A it's been flown halfway across the world and
B it's picked unripe, so has no chance to acquire the flavour from the sun,
and C it's kept in cold storage, often gassified to keep it fresh!
I think that all young people should unite and set up communes to grow their own food, ten families buy 100 acres of land, each works ten acres, rotating their crops, and hey presto, you have no food bills, people can still work at their jobs but have a good lifestyle to come home to [ the houses would be self build of course from local materials] beside knowing where your food has come from, you have exercise as well, so are far healthier. That is my Utopia and that of the late John Seymour, however people nowadays want it all and want it now, they dont care where it's come from, or that it's costing the Earth! They seem to forget that we are tenants of this planet, we don't own it, and it's the only one we have.

Lessons of growing older

When we are young we think we can do everything, but have no need to do so, when we get older we still think we can do everything, and have the need to do so and then find we cant!
The weather has got a little cooler this week making it bearable to work outside, so I thought I could get on with repairing a wall and pointing the same , the first day things went quite well, I was only pointing, just a little back ache, day two was replacing stones in the wall, to be more accurate rebuilding it in places, I now cant move my back and walking is pure hell! I have managed to trap the sciatic nerve, I know from past experience that the only treatment is rest, not something that I'm too good at, but as Simon is away to the UK in ten days time and I have a farm to run on my own whilst he's away it's what I have to do, so the wall will have to wait, it wont fall down and it's been like it for a couple on century's, the veg will have to compete with the weeds, but the veg are well established, and things will just have to wait, including myself.

Meanwhile the strawberries and raspberries keep on producing, plus all the veg.

Re-assuring [ Car insurance] and the Fat Cats.

When we first moved to Spain we came with our original vehicle, our insurance from Ireland covered us for six months, we had intended to keep this Nissan Urvan , but as it was a commercial vehicle ,re- registering it would have been a long and expensive procedure, so we decided it would be best to buy a Spanish registered car, we asked around to find a garage who had a good reputation, found the car that we needed and the garage arranged the transfer of ownership and the insurance, which although was higher than we were used to didn't seem too bad, the following year we found that the premiums had increased considerably so went to our local 'gestoria' he was an agent for several companies and got us a good deal.
Then we moved to Galicia and although we had informed the 'gestoria' of this fact several times we have never received updated insurance details showing our new address, although we had contacted the company directly, we were told we had to go through the 'gestoria', so it was the never ending circle.
Now the insurance is due for renewal the beginning of Sept and our bank had informed us that they were now doing car insurance, so we asked then to give us a quote, this took a week to arrive and when we had stopped laughing, we thanked them and said NO THANKS! It was 120% higher than we had been paying. So we did what sensible people do and asked the other Brits in the area, we were given the name of three company's, one of which we tried to get a quote on line, after half an hour of filling forms the reply came up that we would have to phone them, so we did and were told that they would phone us back with an English speaker, well ,we are still waiting, however, as we always go into Lugo on a Friday we popped into one of the other recommended agencies, although she spoke no English and our Spanish is not good, within five minutes she had the quote, it has better coverage than we had before and was forty euros cheaper! We left with a smile on our faces, and celebrated with a cup of coffee. We are now pondering as to why the bank quote should have been 150% more, or is this going towards the Fat Cats bonuses ?
The one thing we have learnt living in Spain is always to asked around, normally within the Brit community after all, we all face the same problems and someone will have the answers.

Friends and Foes.

Being 'Organic' brings many beneficial animals and insects, however it also brings unwanted guests, our latest friend is Mrs tiggywinkle, a hedgehog who moved into our big barn, to give birth we think, the unwelcome visitor was a Stoat! Now, as anyone who keep poultry will tell you, as pretty as they might be, you dont want them, fortunately one of the cats had killed this young one that we found, but there must be others around, last year we had a problem with Pine Martens, and we lost three broods of chicks. Our rabbits should be safe enough as they are housed where the dogs sleep, but the hens are very vulnerable, especially the chicks, we now have four more chicks from the incubator, two black and two blond, we are hoping that there is a colour link to the sex and the the black ones are female, we shall have to wait and see.

We have now set the first batch of quails eggs in the incubator, although we had to go back twice to the agricultural suppliers to get the females that we required, the man had a very strange way of sexing them, he looked into their eyes! in the end I had to show him the males foam ball, I do suspect he had a surplus of males and thought he could palm them off to the stupid Brits.

Colorado beetles will always be a problem, as will mice, who nibble the potatoes, as do mole crickets, they also eat any roots of young plants, moles are a menace as well. We have found that the second lot of potatoes planted didn't get either the beetle or blight, we experimented with just using stinging nettle juice and using cut nettles to earth up, we shall rerun this experiment next year to see if it was just a fluke.

Latest catch of veg

Growing vegetables here is too easy, we seem to have a constant glut of most things, our tomatoes were self seeded and are producing well, the physalis are the plants from last year which I had cut down and left just the stubs in, when I went to pull them up in March I found that they had new shoots so I just let them get on with it, the cucumbers are also self sown, I just transplanted them to another spot, we had grown salsify last year, that also has self seeded, and in fact looks though it might take over the vegetable garden, this of course appeared after we had planted scorzonera! We have for the first time got some pears, the trees had been neglected for years, so last year we attacked them and they have rewarded us with fruit, I must look up the correct way to care for them.

Our last helpers left last Friday, they were a great couple from Texas, they did a vast amount of weeding, chainsawing wood and lifted all our potatoes, so many thank guys.

Yesterday was the day of the Samos artisan fair, a month earlier than last year and with half the amount of crafts on show, as far as we could tell there was also no traditional dancing, we are guessing that this is probably due to the recession, although there was the local honey on sale there was no organic honey included this year, we are suspicious that this may be due to GMO contamination as there are many hectares of GM maize planted, if this is the case it will put many Organic farmers livelihoods at risk. Unfortunately we do not have a good enough command of the Spanish language to ask the question. It was however a nice afternoon out and gave us all a time to relax, and for our helpers to see a little more of Galicia and the surrounding country side.

The courgettes have now won, and taken over, you can only eat so many of them before you get sick of the sight of them especial as now the runner beans and calabrese are ready two weeks earlier than last year.

Today one of our neighbours has turned up to cut our field for the winter hay, so the goats and ever increasing family of rabbits should be well fed. The litter that was born last week appears to have eleven kittens, but we may have miscounted, it might be twelve!

We have a great selection of amphibians that have moved onto our land, frogs, toads, lizards and newts, and we are very grateful for the help they give us with the slugs