A Busy Sunday In Our “Huerta”.
You’ll have to excuse the delay between posts, life has been rather hectic this past week. I’ve had two short breaks in Oropesa, one with Pep as you know, the other with Mum, due to the fact that someone was interested in my apartment. It all happened rather suddenly and the deal was done after 10 days of the estate agent ringing to inform me someone was interested. I still can’t quite believe it.
A complete mixture of emotions has been whirling around inside of me. After 17 years there are obviously many memories of happy times and signing the “escritura” (deed) at the Notary office this Friday was indeed bitter sweet. I shall miss it but it’s not too far a drive away (a couple of hours now the motorway is free, HOORAY!!), there are always hotels and apartments to rent and in words of Mr Schwarzenegger “I’ll be back”. Thankfully I love where I live and the people with whom I share my life, it’s a wonderful feeling knowing that’s what you are returning to.
Another thing that will take my mind off selling my beloved apartment is the tremendous amount of work in our allotment this time of year. Today has been one of those days where you don’t know where to start (that could just be me though, when there’s a long to do list I can get a bit befuddled, especially after two short holidays!). But Pep tries to sort me out and point me in the right direction, sometimes quietly muttering things under his breath when I accidentally tread on the pumpkin plant or trip over the irrigation system hoses (it’s been one of those days!). Thank goodness he’s the most patient person I’ve ever known.
The first thing on the agenda was to pick the green beans (judías verdes) that were ready for harvesting. Thankfully this year there are only six plants. The first year we grew them there were fourteen, we had no idea how productive they were going to be. Many an hour was spent picking them, freezing them and eating them but we’ve since decided that this amount of plants is slightly too much for two people. Six is a much more reasonable figure. Once they’re picked we store half a carrier bag full in the fridge for use in the next few days, the rest get washed, dried and chopped up and stored in bags in the freezer for use during the year. I have to admit, picking green beans is one of the jobs I like the least. I have no idea why. It could be down to the fact that you can’t see them very well on the plant and just when you think you’ve picked them all you see a load more. A bit like peas but funnily enough I don’t find that task as tedious.
Three “capazos” of garlic and one of onions 
Pep rotavating the land where the garlic and onions were planted
Also, the garlic and onions are now ready and in need of being dug up. I leave this to Pep, especially on days like today when I’d probably make a complete cock-up of it. It’s not been a great year for the garlic, they haven’t grown as big, some things just don’t like all this rain we’ve had lately. As the saying goes, “nunca llueve a gusto de todos”, which means it doesn’t rain to everyone’s tastes, similar to the saying “you can’t please everyone”. Once all the garlic bulbs and onions are out of the ground they need to be “trimmed” and placed in the sun for a few days to dry out. This year a lot of the garlic bulbs have been slightly damaged by insects, this is also due to them getting too wet. We put the damaged ones aside and will use these first, removing the bad bit of course. Pep then cultivates the land where the garlic and onions were to get rid of any weeds that were growing in between the veggies.
We then had to bite the bullet and cultivate the pumpkin plant plot (the PPP!). With all the rain we had not long ago it would have been almost impossible to get away with not having to do it again. In one week the field has gone from having hardly any weeds at all to virtually not being able to see the earth, if only everything grew that quickly. Before we started though I had to pick the “chatas”. “Chatas” are a sort of flat peach, they’re often referred to as “paraguayos” in the supermarkets. They are absolutely delicious, one of my favourite summer fruits and this is the first year our tree has produced some. Actually, that’s a lie. It had one on last year but we forgot about it and it ended up in a mouldy, maggoty mess on the ground. This year we’ve picked them very slightly unripe, just to make sure that the bugs don’t get to them before we do.
On to the PPP. As usual, I get the task of holding up (and tripping over) the irrigation hoses while Pep passes underneath with the dinky rotavator. The pumpkin plants are so big now (and some of the pumpkins too) that parts of the plot will have to go “unrotavated”. It would be silly to lift them and rotavate underneath their long stems, they would no doubt get damaged. While we were in the PPP I noticed how tall the corn plants are. We have sweetcorn (maíz dulce) in this plot and corn for popping (maíz para palomitas) in the bottom plot. They shouldn’t be planted near each other as you would risk cross pollination, the sweetcorn could become quite starchy, definitely not what you want. This is the first year we’ve planted sweetcorn and I’m so looking forward to the cobs (mazorcas) being ready. Hopefully not too long now before they’ll be sizzling away on the bbq.
A bit too weedy 
Tall sweetcorn plants on the right 
Cobs growing very well indeed 
A slightly tidier PPP 
One thing I must mention before I say cheerio, (I can’t sit here all afternoon, Pep’s outside now picking tomatoes and courgettes and de-leafing the melon plants) while I was away Pep picked one of the courgettes we’d left growing on the plant for seed. It’s humongous!! Every year I forget how big they grow. It’s like some sort of alien has popped up in the middle of the allotment. He will leave it to dry for a few days before opening it up and retrieving all the seeds, then leaving them to dry and storing them in a dark glass jar, ready for planting next year.
Right, I’m off for now. I’ll be back soon with more tales to tell. We have a pretty eventful week ahead and no doubt I’ll soon be sharing all the details with you. Thanks for reading. As always, any suggestions, questions or whatever you fancy, don’t hesitate to get in touch. Take care, love Georgie and Pep xxx
8 Comments
Eileen Whittington
I made another Santiago cake yesterday, or Tarta De Santiago, it was very tasty an improvement on my first one, I used flaked almonds, still from Spain bought in our local farm shop, whereas first time I used whole Spanish almonds which I followed your instructions and soaked, then peeled off skin and then put in my food processor to make them fine enough to use in the recipe. I used a different sugar also, the cake was just as tasty but a better texture in my opinion. Havn’t got round to trying anymore recipes as I am limited to what I can buy, as we are in isolation through C/Virus, our son is having chemo treatment so we have to be very careful and stay home or away from people. I certainly recommend making the Tarta De Santiago, it has become a favourite in our home.
Georgie
Hi Eileen. So pleased you like the cake and thanks for letting me know the alterations you’ve made. I hope things improve over there and that Harvey is soon better.xx
ANNIE
Your peaches look lovely. How do you store them (or do you just eat them all quickly!?)
Georgie
Hi there. At the moment they’re ripening up on the kitchen counter, but as soon as they’re ripe, what we don’t eat straight away will go in the fridge and we’ll eat them as quickly as we can. They are really lovely, so sweet. This year, because the tree is only 2 years old, we’ll manage to get through them all I should think, but when the tree is bigger and producing more fruit I’ll probably make a sorbet and use them in baking recipes as you would peaches. And maybe even jam.xx
Jane
All that rotavating! What a lot of work you have. I know it’s the Spanish way but have you thought about no dig gardening.? It takes a bit of getting your head around but it works, I do it here in Spain.
Georgie
Pep has often talked about it but I suppose it’s what he’s used to. I just go along with what he does. I know he’d like to give it a go because he’s heard that it’s more beneficial for the land and everything that lives in it. I’ll mention it to him and see if we can give it a go in the future, it certainly would save us a lot of time. Do you have any suggestions or advice? Thanks x
Jane
I’m no expert, but I would say to start slowly. Designate a small area and go from there. I have been doing lasagna style beds rather than rows but I’m planning on switching to rows this autumn as rows work better for Spain (water channels). There are some good YouTube vids out there. My channel is Jane Fincaarte on YouTube, but you have to adapt all advice to your situation. And you have to be prepared for an untidy look. That was a hard one for my hubby. He likes straight edges and neatness 🤣. There will always be weeds since mother nature likes to be covered. So I put straw down as a mulch, sometimes olive leaves. Whatever I have.. Sometimes that’s nothing. I also plant densely and thin out later. Its never perfect but I am not fit for too much hard labour these days so I compromise. But we’ve rotavated maybe 4 times in 7 years. 😊
Georgie
Thank you. We googled it last night to see more or less what it entailed. As you say, I think it’s best to start small as we have rather a lot of land and it would be too costly to do the lot. We’ll check out your youtube channel as all we saw last night was people using this method in the UK. Thanks again for the advice 🙂