A Lesson In Olive Tree Pruning, Planting Summer Veg, Swiss Chard And Pep’s Vegan Broad Bean Stew

A good friend of ours has recently taken an interest in agriculture, mainly olive trees. When he first told us, we thought he was pulling our leg. Not too long ago he couldn’t care less about anything related to the land, let alone looking after fields of olive trees (“olivos”).

Where this change of heart came from we’ll never know. Could be age I suppose (I know he’s going to read this 😁). Or maybe the idea came when he subscribed to this blog a while back (I’m flattering myself here but he’ll laugh). Whatever the case, we’re immensely pleased (and shocked) that he wants to produce his own ecological olive oil.

He’s been reviving an abandoned field full of olive trees for the last few months. Along with his wife and two kiddies, they’ve spent weekend after weekend cleaning the land of 6 foot weeds, as well as trying to bring life back to the neglected trees. All of this with very limited tools.

Pep had offered to visit the land and give any advice he could. So last Friday we tootled along to our friend’s field. We haven’t seen him for a while due to the Covid situation so it was great to catch up and also have a nose at the olive trees.

Armed with a chainsaw and a pair of long handled pruning shears, Pep gave his mate a bit of advice on looking after these trees whilst granting one of them a much needed haircut. Because the trees had been neglected for so long, they were far too tall. The top ends of the branches were healthier, whilst the lower parts were mostly dead.

Although he needed to cut back quite a lot, his advice was to avoid drastic pruning, it would cause too much stress to the trees, resulting in a longer recovery period. He explained which branches were the best to remove so the tree would hopefully start to produce newer shoots lower down, whilst allowing some light into the centre of the tree.

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Pep has always said that out of all the different varieties of trees he owns, the olive tree is the most complicated to prune. I must admit, on hearing all the info it did sound pretty daunting. Extremely interesting though and our friend seemed happy to listen and take it all in. Hopefully, in a couple of years time, these trees will be thriving, producing loads of the wonderful, oily fruit.

The following day Pep and I spent a couple of hours in our “huerta”. He’d recently brought 100 “capazos” of goat’s manure to our land (how lovely😊). It was time to get the land ready for planting a lot of our summer produce. A couple of weeks ago we sowed 2 or 3 varieties of tomato plants as well as courgettes.

An old post of mine explaining the ins and outs of growing courgettes can be found here. Another post here on how we collect the seeds from the courgettes to be sowed the following year.

He’d already formed rows with the manure, planning what would be planted where. Out came the tractor (it still hasn’t gone up to Pinos) and he rotavated the manure into the land. My job was to follow behind, placing canes along the rows so he knows exactly where the manure is. It all looks pretty tidy now it’s done. Roll on summer!!

One of the vegetables we have most year round is Swiss chard (“acelgas”). In my opinion it’s one of the easiest veggies to produce. You don’t really need to do anything. We just let it go to seed and eventually it gets rotavated into the land. A spot of rain and it’s shooting up again. It’s only during the summer that it dies back but we’re sick of it by then 😁. You see it growing wild all over the place too.

The chickens adore it. Most days I take them a load of leaves to munch on. It’s extremely healthy, full of iron, magnesium, potassium and fibre, along with vitamins a, c and k. One word of warning though. It might be best to skip it if you’re prone to kidney stones as it’s full of oxalates. The same goes for spinach, rhubarb and a few other food items.

I use it in all sorts of recipes. A few leaves wilted in a risotto or a “paella” style rice dish is wonderful. They make “empanadillas” (small pasties) here full of the cooked vegetable. I like to sauté it with some onion and garlic and use it as a topping for a vegan, yeast free spelt pizza/”coca” thingy. Here’s what I do.

Sauté some onion in olive oil and a couple of pinches of salt for a few minutes. Add a few chopped cloves of garlic and continue to sauté for a few minutes more. Chop the Swiss chard roughly and add it to the pan. It’s volume reduces immensely so what looks like a lot isn’t really that much. Cook until wilted down, adding more salt if necessary and some freshly ground black pepper.

The base is quite similar to the yeast free spelt and rye bread that I make in this post here. In fact it was Pep who asked if I could use the bread dough to make pizza as he likes it so much. This dough is much firmer but the taste and texture are quite close to those of the bread.

I use one cup each of spelt and rye flour (around 250 grams of the combined flours I think). To this I add one and a half teaspoons of baking powder, a handful of seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, etc) and about a teaspoon of salt. Stir to combine then add 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Mix this in then gradually add around 120ml of water. The dough has to hold together but you don’t want it to be too sticky. Give it a bit of a knead for about 1 minute.

You can then roll it out into your preferred shape but I just press it out on my baking sheet till it’s as thin as I can get it. Place in a preheated oven, 200ºC, for around 10 to 12 minutes. Remove and add the cooked Swiss chard, along with anything else you fancy. I used a few chickpeas this time but an egg is nice, or some cheese. Whatever you want. Return to the oven and cook for another 10-15 minutes or so. My oven is quite temperamental so I don’t like to be exact with the times. Just keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn’t burn.

I would say it serves about 3-4 people, depending how hungry they are and if you accompany it with anything else (quite obvious really). A simple, fresh salad goes down a treat.

Now we’re on the subject of recipes it’s time I told you all about Pep’s signature dish, his vegan broad bean stew. He’s perfected his technique over the years and I must say, he has done his mum proud 😁. It really is scrumptious. Sunday was a bit of a miserable day, perfect for a warming plate of this delicious concoction. The fact that we still have 2 or 3 bagfuls of broad beans from last year’s harvest in the freezer is also a good reason to use a few up. Come May we’ll be harvesting a load more.

I’ve convinced him to let me show you how he makes it. Here are a few pictures of the different stages of this tasty stew. He doesn’t measure anything, everything is thrown in “a ojo” (literal translation is by eye. It basically means guess work!). Occasionally he may add different veggies (artichokes, carrots) but these are the ones that normally end up in the pan.

Since Pep was happy in the kitchen, I decided to pamper myself with a facial sauna which I’ve recently acquired with my Travel Club points (just in case you’re interested😁).

At the beginning of February my mum-in-law treated me to a facial at the salon owned by my sister-in-law Anna (Facebook page here), who I spoke about in my Benissa post here. My face felt completely renewed so I thought I’d best keep up the good work and look after it. I’d never had a professional facial and boy, what a difference it has made to my skin.

Her salon is quite amazing, with an assortment of futuristic, advanced cosmetic equipment. I find it all very intriguing. There are treatments for cellulite, reduction of localised fat, hair regeneration, wrinkle and fine line reduction, etc, etc. If you don’t get the results you want from these incredible pieces of hi-tech machinery and state of the art potions and lotions, you’ll probably have to resort to cosmetic surgery.

A few days ago she invited me to try out another of her extraordinary apparatuses. This one looks like some sort of space suit and it made me chuckle thinking what I’d look like once inside it. Excess fluid and toxin elimination, improvement of the circulatory system and lymphatic drainage are just a few of the benefits this suit can provide. I accepted her offer and went to try it out.

Hardly being a connoisseur on this topic I didn’t know what to expect. I loved it! It’s extremely relaxing, basically it gives you a massage from your feet up to your mid torso, interchanging the pressure around these areas. When it came to an end I couldn’t believe the 30 minutes were up, wanting to stay in it all day. She was very nice and allowed me to stay in it for 10 more minutes on the relaxing setting. So nice to have her as a sister-in-law 😊😊.

Quickly getting back to last Sunday, the broad bean stew day. Although it was pretty murky outside we went for a lovely long walk between Benissa and Teulada. Part of our walk involved a marked trail which we’ll be doing soon no doubt. Here’s a few pics of the grey day.

Right, best be off. One more thing though 😁. The 22nd of February marked my 35th year in Spain. To celebrate this anniversary (any excuse) I made some pumpkin spelt waffles for breakfast. The original recipe (page here) called for sweet potato but our pumpkins have a similar texture to sweet potato and we have quite a few so there’s no point in buying stuff we don’t need.

I also changed the oat flour for spelt flour and the butter for olive oil and it worked out fine. A tablespoon of molasses was added to the mix to add a bit of sweetness too. Delicious with some hazelnut butter, fig jam and banana on top.

I’ll always remember a quote in Police Academy 2 (I loved this film when I was a kid) when one of the larger policemen, who was having a rather big bowl of Rice Krispies that his cat was using as litter, said “You know, next to lunch and dinner breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”

And on that daft note I’ll say cheerio for now. I’ll be back on Valley FM this Saturday. If you’d like to listen to last week’s spot you can do so here.

Thanks for reading. Any questions or suggestions please get in touch. You can do so on the comment section below, in the contact us link at the top and bottom of this page or on our Facebook page here. We’d love to hear from you. Take care all of you. See you soon. Lots of love, Georgie and Pep xxx