Hello 2022

We now enter the third month of 2022 and this is my first blog this year.

What does that mean? Am I too lazy or tired or simply too busy?

All of the above, in fact.

If I don’t do my writing in the morning I am either too tired at night or the laptop is used for watching sports on TV, or indeed I watch my favourite soaps, Heartbeat, Doc Martin and Vera, all English. This happens only in the winter and if we have no guests.

And we do indeed have a lot of guests, so much so, that I have to block days just to keep up with the washing.

Only last week we had continuously guests from Thursday to Monday, which included breakfasts and dinners and the usual housekeeping and corresponding before with the arrivals. And sometimes Nigel even takes the guitar out and sings a few old Irish ditties.

Last night then, the gate was locked and we were looking forward to a quiet night, as my mobile rang and two French motor bikers informed me they just booked and were in front of the gate.

My biggest challenge this year was the group of five Belgians, all bird watchers and nature lovers, who stayed with us for four nights. Daily breakfast at 7.00 am, packed lunch and dinner was provided with the additional requirement of one vegetarian and one Keto-diet, i.e. No-Carb-diet. So I devised meals to please them all, which is what I like doing, creating a meal to suit my clients palate and dietary preferences.

We received another well deserved Booking.com award, which is nice to know our efforts to give people a warm welcome are recognised.

In between keeping guests happy we try to find new places to go, several of which are nearby and important to know as local information for guests.

La Rocina y El Acebrón is one such board walk and just after crossing the bridge at El Rocio on the A-483.

It’s a really lovely walk through umbrella pine woods, leafy forest, dotted with observation hides and gives you lovely views across the lagoon and river La Rocina with its many birds like the Purple Gallinule, herons, ducks, Spoonbills, rails and flamingos. The landscape changes into dry scrubland with herbs like rosemary, thyme, lavender and cistus shrubs. And this time of year the dreaded Pine Processionary Caterpillar (Thaumetopoea Pityocampa) are hatching and climbing down the trunks to pupate. The hairs and bristles are poisonous and can lead to allergic reactions like a rash on the skin, dogs and cats may even die after contact.

We did not follow the 7 kms road towards El Palacio del Acebrón this time.

Much nearer to us are pine woods where we can take a ramble in the shade or follow the path along the Eucalyptus plantation and heath.

Cycling Loop

My last foray on the bicycle lasted ca. 3 hours and had 33.5 kms. The first part runs along the back road through pine forests, which is tarmac but a bit rough, towards Hinojos, passing by the Camping Doñarrayan Park. From there a nice concrete cycling path winds its way towards Hinijos/A-474. Unfortunately, the way back is along the A-474 towards Almonte with all the traffic whizzing past. And then it’s 3 kms on our dusty camino.

Olive Harvest 2021 – How much did we make?

This was our 4^th season at Finca Casa Halcón and sadly it was not the best. This was due to the bad weather and the wind beating the blossoms off the trees in April and the whole harvest of the Verdial olives was condemned as a new type of fly got into them, so they went as oil olives, which is a very small payment of €40 cents per kilo as opposed to €85 cent/kilo, which we should have had.

This year, as last year, we brought in Moroccan workers to help with the harvest, as it needs to happen quickly to prevent the olives from turning black.

We received two top-ups after the main payment, as our agents sell the produce and then hand on the increase in price, when the market price is good. We are happy about this system. All in all, our olives received a premium for being clean (no leaves), disease-free (due to the spraying against the olive fruit fly and the olive leaf spot disease which is caused by fungus Spilocea oleaginea) and size. Because we have a relatively small amount of fruit on the trees our fruit tends to be bigger, even without watering. We were paid 85 cents per kilo for the Manzanillas and €1.10 euro for the Gordal and 40 cents/kg for the molinos, the black olives.

Looking at our figures, it means we made no profit last year if we take the cost of spraying and labour off, in fact we lost money.

Our overall yield increases slightly each year, due to the constant pruning and cutting back and it will be another few years to really be optimal, as we had to cut a lot of diseased wood out and therefore our trees are carrying less leaf mass.

Olive Yields:

2017 – 2188 kgs, 2018 – 4611 kgs, 2019 – 2270 kgs, 2020 – 8761 kgs, 2021 – 4046 kgs.

Our first year, 2017, we just arrived on this unkempt, overgrown finca and proceeded to take the olives down without having a clue. The amount was not so bad, as no pruning had taken place and it was a good year. In 2018 we started pruning, but we harvested ourselves and took forever to take all olives down, three months in fact, and they turned black, so we didn’t get paid a lot.

In 2019 the guy with the sprayer let us down and the trees got diseased. It was absolutely horrendous to see the leaves dropping off and the fruit turn into squelchy brown blobs. Now, that did teach us that our location is a rather humid place with a lot of morning dew, that can bring on the fungal disease, if not preventative treated with a copper fungicide. The spraying with a copper sulphate or copper hydroxide is even allowed under organic standards and needs to be carried out here at least four times a year. Fortunately, the application of the insecticide against the fruit fly only happens once in the year. Although, now that a new variety of fruit fly later in the season has attacked the Verdial, there might be another treatment due.

So although the olive is a rather easy crop, as it does not carry thorns, does not need irrigation (although some farmers do), regrowth is vigorous, is self-pollinating and native to here, it has its problems and like all agricultural crops, the money is not hectic. The yield changes from year to year and there is a lot of annual manual pruning required.

Best of all then, because the black olives only get a payment of 30-40 cents a kilo, as opposed to 80-100 cents a kilo for the green olives, Nigel now uses some of the black olives to make olive oil, which attracts a premium price of €30 a liter!

He does this what I call the stone-age way. In a 25-liter tub he simply stamps on the olives and let the mash sit until the oil comes to the top and drains it off. Then the oil is let to settle and he drains it off several times to get rid off the organic bits that collect in the bottom of the bottle. The simplest method instead of filtration. No machines involved, just honest-to-goodness manual, or in this case, pedipus work.

Well, at least that was what he has been offered by an ex- Almonteña, who now is a chef in a restaurant in France. He now sells the liter of home-made olive oil for €20.There is only 8 liters of the stuff, so it’s a rarity.

And of course we have the lovely olive wood keeping us warm in the winter and a delightful fire on in the chimney at night in the winter months.

Second Hand Furniture – Restore – Reuse

Our local scrap merchant, MetAlmonte is a treasure trove for used anything and everything, big or small, from forks, plates, garden gates, cement mixers, wash machines, mattresses, bicycles, garden ornaments, tables, chairs, chains, curbstones, you name it , he has it at some point.

This is our first port of call, and if he does not have it, well, then there are other alternatives or buy it new.

When we moved in, we had an assembly of old tables, but not a single chair, so we sat on the stairs or an upturned bucket while we were working to rejuvenate the olive trees, setting up the gardens or renovating the house. Then we were given used garden plastic chairs, which I painted in primary colours and we still have them.

We bought a lot of our (new) furniture locally in Almonte, helping the economy and transport is easy. Some electrical items are cheaper in Carrefour, but their customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

For our outside terraces we by second hand sturdy stuff, as I ordered once a seating arrangement online and it turned out to be a disaster, disintegrating after only 6 months!

Madrid – Toledo

In February we got away for two nights to research the possibility of buying either a caravan or a camper to drive to Ireland and other places in another few years. The internet told me there were major businesses around Madrid, Malaga and Barcelona. So we went north to explore.

What we learned was that due to the Corona restrictions imposed during the last two years, people preferred to travel independent of hotels and airports and also to keep their distance to other travellers and so the market for campers and caravans of all sizes is booming.

So much so, that the Germans come to Spain to buy a camper and manufacturers can’t keep up with the production. To order a bespoke camper you need to wait at least two years and any second hand caravans or campers are immediately snapped up.

With the price of new and even second hand campers we were quoted, that idea is a non-runner.

But at least we got to see beautiful Toledo.

Trials & Tribulations

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Scams – the Second

In my previous bog (Summer – Verano 2021) I wrote about the German couple that scammed me out of €300. Of course it is my fault for being so trusting, helpful and not listening to my gut feeling.

This scam involves a sob story of how all your valuables including passport, mobile phone, credit cards etc. were stolen, preferably on the train.

Now in August we came across this for a third time. At 22.30 in the evening I got a phone call, one person asking for a room for the night. I do make exceptions sometimes; this was one of the times as she said she was in El Rocio and would come immediately.

A car arrived with a guy and the girl. He paid cash for the room and when I asked her for ID, she showed me the ‘denuncia’, a report form from the police, which they fill out in case of a lost passport etc. I waved this away as it would be useless for the data I need to fill in the online police register. So the Romanian guy gave me his passport instead, fair enough. She had nothing much, only a plastic bag with a bottle of Coca-Cola and some bits of food and sweets. Nigel asked when she would be collected the next day and she said 12.00, which is our check-out time. All ok so far.

The next morning she comes down for a smoke and says she likes it here so much she wants to stay another night and I would get paid at 15.00. I started to talk a bit with her and she told me she is half Italian, half Romanian but over thirty years in Spain and her stuff was stolen on the train. She has a job lined up in Matalascanas in a few days. She has a house on Tenerife. I looked at her skeptically and she assured me she wasn’t really a waitress but an administrator at the justice system, but since a year and a half laid off due to the Corona virus crisis.

Now who would believe such a cobbled together story? We were highly suspicious, added to which she apparently had smoked in the room and was stoned for much of the time, so she had enough money for hash and tobacco.

We had to meet our new solicitor in Almonte but didn’t trust her, so she had to stay outside as we locked the house and the gate, effectively holding her captive.

When we returned Nigel spotted the tracks of a car that turned at our gate, maybe imagination? She went back upstairs, to curl up in bed. Naturally at 15.00 nobody came, not at 17.00 as she had changed her story (how would she know, without a mobile phone?). She had asked for my mobile to contact the guy, without success. He himself called finally at 19.30 and appeared shortly after 20.00, without the money. She asked if we had a credit card machine.

By then I had enough of her. I had given her toast and salami to eat, she never tidied up her things outside and now she was starting to argue. So I threw her out.

We believe that this guy was also taken in by her and didn’t even know he had to shell out another €30 for another night here. But we would not have slept a minute.

I researched scams in Spain and the first was the ‘poor me, all was stolen’ story. Sure, you dump your belongings with a friend, then go to the police and they write down what you tell them. Could be fake names, address, anything at all. They are not obliged to check it out, the embassy or authorities responsible for issuing a new passport have to do that.

And then you try to find a gullible person which will pay for you. In the course of that you can maybe find a nice place with things you can steal or just give information about it to your mates-in-crime.

Another lesson learned. In future I will not take persons without proper ID, sad as it is.

This time we got away, but others have not been so lucky and I have already lost €300 to learn that we cannot always trust people.

What she had in common with the others is the incessant talk, stories to convince us and to tell us how nice we are, how lovely the place is. A bit plump really, but people can get really good at it, as this Manfred Kwiaton was with his made up place of work on his Facebook profile. Part of his story was reflected there, but the other part was obviously concocted.

Photos below: it’s not all work, we get away sometimes to enjoy places nearby:

Matalasacanas, Cuesta Maneli, El Rocio, and Restaurente El Pocito in Almonte.

Ley Lines in our Garden

We have a problem growing anything in the front of our house. There is the bit of Irish lawn alright that Nigel needs and is proud of, but behind it nothing really thrives. We twice planted orange trees there and they died. Then we planted a good sized fig tree, these grow here everywhere, but it too died. I planted some pomegranate saplings I grew from seed. And these grow like weed here. Guess what? Yes, shrivelled up and dead. It was not for the lack of water, because of course we made a point of watering the plants.

We had radically cut down three olive trees to rejuvenate them and their regrowth looks fresh and bushy. We also have wild flowers everywhere, so it is not impossible for plants to grow there.

As I mentioned before, every summer, in July or August, when the temperatures hit the low forties, lots of plants suffer and die. My kiwi and bougainvillea on the upper terrace have not really grown. Up there is an intense heat during the whole afternoon and evening and no shade.

We were just going for another attempt when a German couple stayed with us who live in Marbella and he is a landscape gardener. He asked us for two metal rods, bent them and turned them thus into divining or dowsing rods and proceeded to walk slowly around the area in front of the house.

Lo and behold, they started to cross over in front of the lawn. In other locations they drifted wide apart. The reason for this behaviour apparently is that there are ley lines or electromagnetic underground energy flows.

I have heard of them before and used or seen used divining rods for finding underground water sources. I have also read about the immense energy knots that are supposed to be running through Great Britain, especially Stonehenge, Glastonbury and even in London.

https://sacredmysticaljourneys.com/spirituality/the-magic-of-ley-lines-vortexes-and-chakras-of-the-earth/

Of course we tried it too. It works better with Nigel than me, not sure why. You are holding the rods so lose, that it is easy to unconsciously tilt them one way or another. Unfortunately, the site of our (already concreted swimming pool) would be perfect for growing an orchard.

As our bamboo started to wilt and go yellow we moved it, and the remaining struggling orange tree, just in case. Maybe we should find a new spot for the nectarine too, it’s not looking too good either.

Line where growth stops (due to ley lines?)

Gone Birdie

Our very productive hens have gone on a break, laying faithfully all year. We added four more hens to our production team and one Araucana hen was gifted to me for my birthday who I call Greta Green as her eggs have a slight green colour. She lacks tail feathers and is rather wild. Hopefully when her laying time comes, she will join the flock. Our Greta is a speckled brown hen and will only lay three eggs per week, so they will be really special when we will find them!

My three young peacocks turned out to be all females, pea hens. Naturally that means more peafowl and so I have three more young peafowl which will hopefully turn into peacocks, some day. If not, the deal it that I will get the males for free, as it is hard to tell when they are young.

That still not being enough feathered friends we also purchased three ducks from the market, which I named Daisy, Dolly and Donna. They are between 5 and 6 months old and occupy the space in front of the house, where we unsuccessfully tried to grow our citrus orchard. They have a nice run with an olive tree for shelter and a raised pool to keep the water clean.

Nigel loves duck eggs and hopefully soon he, and our guests, can indulge in daily duck eggs again.

A Challenging August

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Life as a Guesthouse owner

After three years of opening our home to complete strangers, we have many tales to tell.

What seems to be on repeat is that some guests stop in from of our neighbours gate, just after passing ours, with the name Casa Halcón written in big letter. This gateway is also as the main photo on booking.com, where the majority of our guests book. And yet, they phone me up and ask to be let in and that there are some big dogs.

It is true; our neighbours have four humoungus mastins and a sign that says ‘Finca La Tremosilla’.

I can only guess that just because they do not see a house through our gate, they keep going to the next one with a house.

We also have the occasional worker staying here in the single beds room for a single-person rate. The last one also called for help, and then at 22.00 he asked for food. So I made him two toasted sandwiches and a salad.

I was up the next morning shortly after six to prepare breakfast for our guests that booked a tour through the Doñana National Park. These buses leave at 8.00, so breakfast needs to be ready at 7.00.

In between I receive bookings, make contact on Whatsapp to give directions, receive phone calls, make beds, clean rooms and go shopping, cook lunch and sometimes dinner for guests and tend to the garden.

Nigel’s part is to make the guests relaxed, make sure the lights are on outside at night, the gate is unlocked in the morning and sometimes he cooks an Irish breakfast and plays the guitar and sings. He also lovingly keeps the lawn watered and luscious green, a nod to the green fields in Ireland.

So here guests get individual attention and even entertainment. We only have the three bedrooms for rent, but six strangers coming and going every day can be quite exhausting and it is basically a 14-hour job for me and Nigel clocks in more time as the night porter, waiting up until all guests are in their beds.

More excitement is provided every year by the forest fires, this was only 800m down the road from us. Thanks to Steffi, our neighbour calling the fire brigade immediately it was brought under control quickly.

The road to Mazagon , The further you go, the farther you are away….

The kilometer signs from Almonte to Mazagon on the Camino de los Cabezudos are a bit confused. They tell you it us 32 kms to Mazagon, the next signs says 35 kms, then we are down to 28 kms only to go up to 30 kms again.

This road goes through the national park area and sports 53 speed bumps. Otherwise it would be a quick drive to Mazagon, the seaside town with a yacht harbour.

We went there on a Monday after the guests left to have some tapas and a drink in the small bar, but it was closed. So we just watched the small boats and some fishing vessels coming in and going out. It was the most relaxing time, as they glided slowly on the water, it was mesmerizing. Even the unloading of the incoming fishing boat had to happen slowly as the bins were heavy and full of fish and ice water.

Now is high season for the tourists, but there in the harbour was nobody, so I really got to chill.

Later we went for a meal and spent an hour on the beach to round off the day. From the beach in Mazagon you can see the tankers of oil waiting to come in. Every day several are lined up on the horizon to supply Spain with oil and gas.

Isla Cristina

This island is connected via bridges to the mainland, seven kilometres from the Portuguese border and has, according to Huelva turismo, eleven beaches, the marshes, marismas, protected nature reserves and salt flats, and more important one of Spain’s most important fishing harbours.

https://www.huelvainformacion.es/destino-huelva/playas-huelva/playas-Isla-Cristina-robaran-corazon_0_1583543647.html

We like the contrast to our olive groves and agricultural land uses. It is interesting to see the rather small fishing boats getting ready to go out to sea. It will take them over an hour to go along the channel to reach the Atlantic sea.

There are numerous restaurants that serve the daily landed fish; it is hard to make a choice. We selected a smaller place away from the crowds in the centre not far from the actual fish market.

Beware of the whole fish, the price is per kg and you do not know the price before the fish is on the plate! We had fried anchovies as a starter, tuna in tomato sauce, some sea food croquettes and a sole, a flat fish with a very delicate flavour, which costs itself the princely sum of €25. Altogether we spent €53, which we might do twice a year to treat ourselves.

Here is a little story in photos of fishermen boarding to go to sea. It is amazing how many people it takes to bring in the fish from the sea. At the end there were twelve men on board.

More Guesthouse Stories:

When The Sun Gets Too Much

We had just had our first serious heat wave of this year with temperatures of over 45 degrees, in the shade.

And yes, of course the Sahara is not far, about 850 kms and we are in the South of Andalucia. It just depends how you deal with those sorts of temperatures that feel as if the hot breath of a dragon breathes upon you. That is the reason why we have siesta and everything shuts down from 14.00-18.00.

Even our solar system that depends on the sunlight to generate our electricity had enough and shut down. The fault message was 2: overheating, even though it sits in a shed with door and window open. There was a slight panic as we had four guests in the house that did not wanted to leave the premises and preferred to rest. And we could provide no water as the pump (for toilets and taps) did not run, no fans worked and the fridge and freezer were also off.

In the case of bad weather, no sun or if the need for electric heaters arises we have a generator. Unfortunately this is directly connected to the solar inverter so it starts automatically when the battery bank is low on wattage.

In our case we had more than enough power generated but it was not delivering into the house or anywhere as the inverter took a well needed break. This prevents the system from overheating even further.

We tried cleaning the fan of the inverter box, switching off the whole system, fanning the control unit and praying to the Holy Virgin of El Rocio. After about four hours she heard us and all suddenly sprang to life again.

To keep me from panicking I started preparing the dinner for six. Cooking does relax me, it takes concentration and if the end result is pleasing for all concerned then this is time well spent.

And after all that we got a very glowing review in booking.com, so our efforts paid off.

What did we learn?

There is a reason why a solar powered system needs a back up, just in case. In most places it is the connection to the grid, in our case it is the generator. We will now add a direct line from the generator to the house, circumventing the solar control unit. So in future we have total control when we want the generator to take over; which is probably a smart move for when we need to carry out work on the system like replacing the batteries, the control unit or for repair.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

This August we hardly have a day without guests coming or going or staying. It is not always possible for the two of us to go away, unless the guests have a key, which we only give out to guests that stay longer than one night.

For Sunday we were invited to a ‘pool party’ at Tina’s to give a farewell to our German friend’s son and girl friend. As Nigel did not want to miss his favourite football team’s match, we decided to split our attendance. I would go earlier and then return when his game was over, so he could go, so then there would always be one of us at home.

I gave him instructions about the two couples that would arrive that afternoon and where to put them, the Italians upstairs and the Madame, Spanish, downstairs in the room with private bathroom. I went happily on my way, promptly taking the wrong exit for Tina’s house and taking another twirl down the motorway when my mobile rang. The first guests had arrived and where sitting in front of the closed gate. I instructed them to open it by hand and called Nigel, three times. Another call from the guests, they could not get in. I told them Nigel was coming to open, but I still had not reached him. More heat then was already in the car crept up my body.

Where was he? Fallen asleep in front of the TV? This would not be surprising as he puts himself on night porter duty every night, staying up until all guests have returned to lock the gate and switch off lights.

I tried again, no answer. Then I ask our guests where exactly they were? They sent a photo of the entrance on Whatsapp. It was our neighbour’s gate, again.

What is it about people? Our gate has the name ‘Casa Halcón’ in big letters on it. A photo of it is on Booking.com’s website. What else can we do?

By the time they had reversed I had finally spoken with Nigel; he had been out given water to the horses and naturally did not see a car.

Anyway, all was now sorted, or so I thought. Shortly after I arrived at Tina’s and after a cool drink of cucumber soup I checked in with Nigel to see if all went well. Yes, he showed them the room upstairs and they were happy.

And then the Italians arrived on a motorbike. Well, he is Italian, she from Paraguay. It turned out Giuseppe had lived and worked in Ireland for 20 years and he and Nigel hit it off at once.

So they took the bottom bedroom with private bathroom. Unfortunately, or rather fortunately for them, this was not what they had booked. Nigel had switched them around because he maintained the first fellow definitely looked Italian, but was Spanish.

When I came home later that night they were all happily sitting outside, chatting. Which is all very well, but when you pay twenty Euros extra to ensure you have a private bathroom and discover somebody else had been given this room, you want an explanation.

In fairness, they were very nice about it. They asked if it was a fault with booking.com. No, I replied, it’s a fault with Nigel assuming things and not asking. So I let them have drinks and breakfast gratis and in the end they left us a really good review. They even said they would return. He acts as a bodyguard to politicians and even showed us his badge and gun. He was used to bringing it around with him, a habit that he cultivated due to the ETA threats from years back.

Priests Having Lost Their Way

We have all kinds of people and couples here, in all sorts of combinations, from all sorts of countries. And then there were the two priests in the big double bed….

They could have booked the single beds, but the Spanish do seem to see all things catholic a bit different. I prefer this to the cleric putting their hands on children any day, but we should not jump to conclusions either. They were to go praying to Almonte in the evening, where the Paloma Blanca, the venerated Virgin of El Rocio still resides, according to Nigel because she has not been given the jab, the Covid vaccine.

On the way back they must have decided to take the scenic route and then relied on Google maps for a shortcut home. They must have been back at around 2.30 in the morning. Nigel met them at 8.00 on the stairs and they asked for his help to tow their car out of an olive grove, where it was safely sitting in sand. With the help of the jeep he got them out, but how and where they got into this place was a mystery as it was fully fenced and Nigel had to find a place to open the thorny wire fence.

Rio Tinto

Sometimes we get away on a Sunday or Monday evening, when no more guests are expected and explore more wonderful places around here.

The last outing was to the Rio Tinto, which is a red river that ends in Huelva port. Nigel brought me to the Embalse de Corumbel Bajo, a reservoir forty minutes from us. It is quite pretty and this is where the mountains start. From there he went off-road on a track that goes up and down and around and ends along the railway line, which transported minerals and metals from the mines to the harbour in Huelva. Part of the line is dismantled, parts have been turned into a Via Verde, a cycling path, and some parts are still intact.

It is a fascinating place with its many colours of reds, rusts, browns and yellows. Mineral deposits can be seen where the water recedes and old workings, going back to Roman times, are also still in place. There is so much more to discover along the Rio Tinto and we will have many more explorations. In fact, in the spring Nigel cycled with Robert on their mountain bikes from Bollullos up to the mountains and along the Rio Tinto over some of the old railway bridges and it was none so pleasant I am told.

And then we went for some delicious tapas in La Palma De Condado, a small bar that was a meeting place for the pensioners, but they still served us ;0). As usual we were way too early , but after an hour the place was full.

Autumn in Andalucia

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Acantilado del Asperillo

We are trying to discover all places of interest to tourists visiting the area. So one Sunday we set off to discover if there are any further points to access the beach. We stopped at a place called Acantilado del Asperillo, meaning ‘bitter cliff’. I am not sure this is the actual translation as often words and expressions here are very much local and no translation can be found in dictionaries. The area has a car park and is accessed through a gate. And then you can walk up and down on sandy paths through pines, scrubland (maquis) until you get to see the dunes and the coast. It is not an easy walk and some people come to mountain bike there as we could see by the tracks. There is no access to the beach, but a grand view over the coast when you scale the dunes.

Culinary Delights

We had a lovely young couple staying for two nights here. She was from India, he was from London but has Indian parents. He was engaged in the Brexit negotiations regarding agriculture as an assistant negotiator and she was starting a PhD in business. We had very interesting conversations at the dinner table. One evening Sughanda made us a nice authentic Indian dinner and the following night I cooked us a vegetarian three-course meal. It is nice to have strangers become friends and we learn so much about what goes on in the world without it being filtered through a news medium.

Almond-Pumpkin Cake

This is one of the loveliest cakes I have ever tasted, not because I baked it, but because I can actually enjoy it, as it is gluten free, lactose free and even fat free. Additionally it has my favourite cinnamon and spice flavour, is moist and easy to make. This is an adapted recipe, because what I found on the internet was either too complicated or had lard as an ingredient or no actual pumpkin. Ok, yes, you do have to make the pumpkin jam first. But I am working on a version where you could also use peach puree or other fruity ingredients.

Pumpkin Jam

from : https://www.bakedbyanintrovert.com/pumpkin-jam/

Prep Time 10 minutes Cook Time 10 minutes Total Time 20 minutes

Ingredients for 2 cups

15-ounce can (425 g) pumpkin puree or 3 pound pumpkin
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger or fresh root
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups (425 g) granulated sugar

(I also like to add 3 tablespoons of lemon juice.)

Instructions

Combine pumpkin puree, orange juices, spices, and sugar in a medium saucepan. Cook over high heat until the mixture begins to boil. Continue to cook while stirring constantly for 10 minutes or until thickened. Transfer to sterile glass jars, seal and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Notes

The jam will keep for up to 3 months stored in the refrigerator.

If you don’t have canned pumpkin, you’ll need to cook and puree the fresh pumpkin first. Then measure out 15-ounces to be used in the jam. A 3-pound pumpkin should yield enough puree for the recipe.

Almond Pumpkin Cake

Ingredients (for 8 portions)

150 grams brown sugar (or light brown)
5 eggs, beaten
200 grams ground almonds
1/3 cup (4 tbsp.) pumpkin jam.
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
Almond flakes to sprinkle on top.

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
Beat eggs and sugar together until frothy.
Add everything else and mix until creamy.
Transfer to cake form (I love my silicon forms as nothing ever sticks to them),

Sprinkle almond flakes on top.

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 35 minutes.

Now that all, and this time I mean all, olives are finally taken down, we have time for other things; although Nigel of course is always busy pruning the trees and cut fire wood from that. In our climate zone this is now gardening season for leafy greens and root vegetables. So I am out to tend to the now exploding encroachment of weeds, which are lovely wild flowers when they are in the right place.

I even managed to sow courgettes, of which two are producing fruit! The peppers are also still continuing and I have peas, french beans and a huge amount of rocket, from my own seed, growing. There is also lettuce, onions, garlic and beetroot, kohlrabi, sweet potato, carrots and leeks coming on.

This year my olive pickling has gone upmarket a notch with a gadget that scores the olives so that the soaking period is greatly reduced, the bitterness also and the finished result should be a lot milder than last years product.

Criminal Activity

I won’t go into the (other) C-Word, suffice to say that we are all confined to our communities, not allowed to travel without a good reason, like work or medical appointments, to other towns or provinces. We are however privileged in so far, as our community encompasses not only Almonte, but also El Rocio and Matalascañas. So we are allowed to walk the beach.

Out of reach is Lidl, which is in Bollullos, but I needed to stock up on our magnesium supplements and wanted to say goodbye to our Schwedish-German friends. Since Robert cycled over to return Nigel’s bike and I dropped him off half way I figured I might as well go the whole way and sneak into Bollullos the back way, using the agricultural caminos. All worked well, I had a coffee with Karin, his wife, and nearly got stuck in a huge puddle on the way back.

Out of reach of course is Sevilla and Huelva. Luckily I had my main clothes shopping done before the lock-down. But I had tickets purchased online way back in October for a nice intimate Candlelight concert ‘Bandas Sonoras’ at the Fundación Tres Culturas del Mediterráneo and after hearing our Italian guests and our neighbour travelling the country with no problems, no check-points, I was determined to see that concert. Yes, I am a non-believer or Querdenker, as they call people in Germany that do not believe this virus justifies such stringent restrictions of people’s life to the detriment of the economy, or more important, their livelihoods and generally being human to each other.

The other reason is that the concert operators were instructed by the government not to scrap the performance but merely change the time to afternoon rather than evening, all safety measures of course in place like mask wearing, 2 meter distance and temperature check.

Anyhow, Steffi and I set off on a Sunday and the roads were deserted. It was like after an apocalypse had taken place. The venue was at the outskirts our side, so we did not have to traverse the whole city. Opposite the lovely Arabian-style hall was a cafe, full of families enjoying a nice, sunny autumn afternoon, common sense was prevailing. As you can see from the photos it was a really nice, safe and wonderful experience, four musicians playing tunes from famous films transporting us away from the madness for a little while, soothing the soul. Condemn me if you will, but I have no regrets, (which would probably be different if we would have been stopped and fined), but I am happy to have been able to support those artists and they were delighted of the crowd of about fifty people to have turned up.

In December it is time here to pay the taxes for our vehicles and house and the land. For that we had to make an appointment in the local tax office and receive the dockets, this year to be paid in the bank. The banks seem to have a lot of extra responsibility other than taking your money, loaning you more and selling insurance. They are also involved in taking your tax payments. In our bank this is only possible up to 10.30 am. And at that time the queue is usually so long that it would take over two hours. I tried their banking machine outside, without success. While walking up to the post office I spotted another banks laser light bar code reader (ours didn’t have that) and proceeded to get the business done.

Then we heard it – English spoken, with a Northern Irish accent, here in Almonte! You never hear much English here, the place is shared between the local Spanish, Romanians, Moroccans and Germans, never English.

We hung around until the lady had finished her mobile phone call and Nigel walked up to her, saying “What a nice Irish accent you have.” “Yes, straight from Ballymena, County Antrim.” What a surprise, the same town Nigel hails from. Well, he wasn’t going to let her get away and invited her for a chat and some tapas, which we had planned on having anyway.

Nigel even got to chat to her father on the phone then, running through names of the Ballymena football teams from over forty years ago. And since Roisin herself was happy to have found someone to talk to in her language amidst the Arabic, Spanish and Romanian we brought her to our finca for a nice cup of tea I was going to say, but in fact it was a Gin & Tonic on the terrace. She was delighted to have found someone to share her story and background with, and so is Nigel as she can reconnect him to the place he has left at nineteen years of age, over forty years ago.

Our finca in all its autumn glory.

Start of Olive Harvest 2020

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We have moved up in the world of olive farming. In 2017 we started with a few donated bucket and crates, borrowed ladders and our trusty Toyota to convey our small harvest to the Co-Op in Almonte. We only managed to pick about 2-3 buckets a day, which is 40-60 kilograms, sometimes even less, because the olive trees were so bad; too high to reach, too overgrown to produce much fruit and too diseased, full of dead wood.

Three years later we have four people engaged to help picking, we have a jeep and trailer and a proper crate to transport our bounty to the agent, who collects the olives for the factory in Sevilla.

Thanks to our contractor, Antonio Sanchez, who also acts unofficially as our agricultural advisor, our olive trees look much healthier, greener and fuller. The constant pruning that Nigel does all year round is essential to achieve a good balance between too many or too few branches. We still have a long way to go when it comes to shaping and selecting the right branches to keep. And of course it takes time to let fresh regrowth mature to carry fruit.

This year we started harvesting on Wednesday, 9^th of September with 2 Spanish workers and Steffi, our all-round talented neighbour. The following Monday, 14^th of September, another Spanish worker joined us and now we are 6 persons picking olives every day.

This is necessary, as the sooner the olives are picked the more money we get. The longer they stay on the tree, the lower is their value as they will mature and turn black and our return on them sinks to 20 cent per kilo as opposed to 75 cent per kilo when they are green.

We are lucky in so far that we have bought an olive farm and not a vineyard. Because of the impact of the virus measures being taken to protect the population through restricting gatherings of people and cancellation of festivals the wine consumption is down 40%. Thus the price of grapes has nose-dived. In our region here grapes are being left on the vine, as it just does not pay to even harvest them.

Luckily, olives still seem to be a staple on every table and the price is good this year because the lack of rain, again, means less tonnage is being brought in.

On Friday, 18 September 2020 we had our first rain since the end of May with heavy downpours and stormy conditions. The day before I planted out my second batch of tomatoes this year, hoping to get some fruit, as the days are still hot well into October and November, we will see if it works. I also have four young courgette plants in the garden.

Hail the Archeress

After a hiatus of seven years I have finally dug out my flat bow and home-made arrows again. They are a sorry sight, maimed and broken most of them. But I have set up a target, a dart board, under an olive tree and surprisingly even manage to hit it, now and then. It’s a great, powerful feeling to release an arrow in absolute silence and see it fly, powered by simple force of resistance and leverage. I always have enjoyed this ancient craft of instinctive, traditional archery as it requires concentration and skill. Not for me the various implements like cords and pulleys, bow sights, cams and cables on a compound bow that measure the distance and set the exact force to hit home the arrow. In Ireland I had joined a mad-hatters club of archers in County Longford, the Warriors of Queen Maeve, which were more about the roaming of woods and cracking jokes than the seriousness of notching up points to be the best archer of them all. The attraction was the constant changing of targets, rubber animal shapes in all sizes, from a rat to a standing bear set up in various distances from the shooting positions in the wood, which resulted in contortions, kneeling, crouching, and sideways bending to get a clear view of the target through the trees and undergrowth, sometimes even climbing up on a fallen tree trunk or a platform to shoot up or down hills and valleys. To hit your target was real luck, or skill, or mostly a combination of both, just great fun to challenge yourself not to lose or break the arrow in the process, hence my only four remaining arrows.

So I will have to repair, maybe make some more arrows and practice, practice, practice until I can move up to my stronger bow and execute some serious archery.

Compost Toilet

We are advertising our finca for campers on various sites like pitch-up and areasauto-caravanas.com for people that like a quiet, rural place far from crowds and noise. Occasionally we do get somebody. Since we are not a dedicated camping site and do this only on a trial basis we do not have any services as yet.

In August a huge campervan drove up with seven people, three generations. They were the rather tiny granny and her grandchildren of 18 months and six years; also her three children, two sons and a daughter with her husband. Did you count? They all shared happily this one space, only Spanish are so family-loving. They had all they needed in this campervan and we only supplied water and two hours of generator connection. We don’t really earn anything out of it, it’s the novelty and giving people a choice, when in the high season all camping sites are stuffed full of holiday makers.

Another day one Renault arrived with four French lads and their tents. These were three brothers and a friend, they were really nice and we prepared breakfast for them. They also needed a shower and toilet, which was fine, as we had no guests in the downstairs bedroom. With the Covid-19 drama ongoing we cannot have guests, strangers, sharing a bathroom.

When we had Dodi and his tent here for a week, he definitely needed access to a bathroom, which was not possible when we had guests in the house.

Therefore I set upon Nigel with much nagging to build a compost toilet. And so he did, within four days he had constructed a solid building which will withstand any storm. Then the olive harvest started and we (or rather Nigel) have not got around to adding a roof, a proper door and a nice tiled floor, but it will happen.

I am all in favour of a dry toilet, which is by no means a new and radical thing. Compost toilets have been around for donkey’s years but nobody seems to want to invite them into their homes. I have come across them first in the 1990s in the Health Food Store in Berlin I worked. They sold upmarket types for garden sheds and holiday homes. In Ireland I used one in a converted outbuilding on a farm. Also German friends of ours that bought a finca have built a simple one and use it every time they are in the country, until they have modernised the house. A perfect solution for water preservation, no fussy plumbing required, and it provides the garden with manure. There is no smell, as liquids are soaked up by a layer of sawdust. They resulting human manure has to be composted for at least a year to be used in the garden. If you don’t believe me please read for yourself ‘The Humanure Handbook’ from Joseph Jenkins, available from Amazon or separate chapters are free to download.

The Egg Trick

Hens are clever; they hide their eggs in plain sight. We recently found a clutch of 19 eggs, right beside the door to the hen house, under the rose bush. We should have known because previously they hid the eggs around the corner in the rose bush. So without a date on the eggs, how would we know how old they were and if they were still ok to eat? It’s easy. Just put the eggs into a bowl of water and the fresh ones will stay below, see the egg marked ‘new egg’ in the photo, the old ones will float as the gases inside the shell develop. With the floating eggs I made a nice ‘dogs dinner’ scrambled egg. They were all good bar one that smelled like rotten eggs smell. The dogs anyway were delighted about their nice dinner.

The Casa Halcon Diary

Our Life on the Olive Finca

B&B

Hello 2022

Trials & Tribulations

A Challenging August

Life as a Guesthouse owner

Autumn in Andalucia

Pumpkin Jam

Ingredients for 2 cups

Instructions

Notes

Ingredients (for 8 portions)

Our finca in all its autumn glory.

Start of Olive Harvest 2020