Berlin – The Casa Halcon Diary

SUMMER – VERANO 2021

July 15, 2021angelikablume

It’s only now that I have uploaded the photos onto the PC that I realise I haven’t been writing my blog for quite some time; since April in fact.

There are a few reasons for that.

Firstly, being a teenager-in-reverse means a lot of mood swings and a grumpy author is not the best starting point. With it come lack of sleep and therefore unfocused mind and a general feeling of malaise.

But never mind that, the sun shines brightly and it is a natural condition to be dealt with as best as one can, hand over the G&T…..

Then I have taken to updating my status on Whatsapp frequently with a nice photo, as a snapshot what happens here.

Not to forget the football season, as then my laptop is used to transmit the matches and therefore out of bounds for me in the evenings.

And since May we are blessed with a rotation of guests streaming in and out.

In fact, after the quiet 2020 we had thanks to the draconian Corona-restrictions, it is difficult for me to adjust to sharing our home again with people, be they strangers, friends or neighbours. But this is how we make money and there is a great deal of excitement and satisfaction in it.

Enough of the excuses; now it’s time for another episode of ‘Life at Finca Casa Halcon’.

Manfred and Angelina – Beware of the Scammers

Most guests are nice, respectful that this is our home and easy going. And then there is the other type. And this is the other reason I kept stumm, as I had to get over the shock of being conned out of €300.

In May I got simultaneously a last-minute booking literally, as the Spanish couple arrived half an hour later, hungry and needing to be fed, and a phone call from as it turned out a young German couple needing a bed for the night. They had no car so Nigel, ever eager to please, went to collect them in Almonte. Alas, he couldn’t find them and returned a bit put out. In the meantime I had several calls from them, Manfred and Angelina, quite agitated. In the end they took a taxi.

The minute they arrived, the drama began. They had been robbed on the train from Barcelona to Almeria, passport, credit card and mobile phone. Still, they pre-paid the night and their meal in cash. We got a barrage of stories about his wanderings around the world, apparently 47 countries and how this never happened before, blablabla. He told us about his job in tourism in Germany and we connected on Facebook, where I could see all his posted photos of his journey, videos with music etc.

They wanted to stay another night, but I just could not put up with more stories and this intensiveness. They wanted to travel on to Portugal as they had rented an apartment somewhere near Faro. So I put them on the bus the next day, being proud of me enforcing my boundaries.

On Saturday while I made lunch I received a phone call, again a Spanish number, from those two begging me to help them. They had no money left, nobody was helping them, not the police, the banks, the Money Union Transfer. They suggested their family could transfer money into my account and I give them the cash. Well, what was I to do? Leave them to their mercy? At any rate I was booked out and they had to sleep in their tent. I went to collect them, gave them €50 to buy food and a phone card. In the evening I received the email with a photo of the money transfer form with all details filled in.

Then I booked them a bus ticket to Sevilla, because from there they could go either way to Malaga or Madrid, where there actually is a German embassy to sort out the lost passports, but maybe that was a lie, well spun with all the details how Manfred went to the police to file a report of the theft.

I brought them to the bus station on Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday I received a messenger sms that they are on their way to Madrid and I also saw a video footage on facebook taken on a bus, over an hour long.

Since the Monday was a Pentecostal holiday in Germany I was not too concerned about the money transfer until the Friday. I tried to contact him via facebook messenger but – but I was blocked from his facebook account.

I went into his facebook through Nigel’s and there he still was, but all the previous posts since June 2020 were taken down. How very strange and discomfiting. There was obviously something wrong going on. The following Monday I made it my business to phone up the bank in question to ask about the transfer, but got nowhere. Only on the Friday I finally made contact with a nice person, who told me not to expect any money, as the emailed filled out form was no proof. I also tried to find out about the company he claimed to work for and they did not know a person by that name.

So it all turned out to be a very well executed scam. Or maybe I am just astonishingly gullible, naive and trusting. However, I will not just let it go and filed a report with the police in Germany and also added his and her name to a German facebook site (!Vorsicht Betrueger!) for scammers, just in case they continue to finance their tour of Europe through swindling money of others.

In the meantime the idiot has been posting again on his public facebook page and below it is a long rant from a fuming Portuguese lady, who apparently put them up for four days, she being out of money and sick, and they just run away. But one day they will get their comeuppance and karma is a wonderful thing.

New and shady Car Port

Since the lemon tree had to be chopped off to make space for the concrete lorry, we now had the space to erect a car port. Temperatures can go up to 40 degrees Celsius and are over 30 degrees for at least 5 months, so having a bit of shade is essential, if you want to be able to touch the steering wheel.

Nigel constructed the frame with nine uprights and cross beams and we covered it with a mat of cañas, reeds which we purchased at the local builders yard. It works a treat and hopefully the Passionflower plant will make its way up it.

Czech Invasion

Our international guests are back in full force. We had a French lady mad into horse riding, a Belgian documentary maker, an English couple looking for a patch of Andalusian soil and five Czechs, who are also all into horse breeding and love my food.

This last week we had seven people staying, lots of breakfasts, innumerable cups of coffee and some lunches to provide. We will be happy to see them again some time.

Peafowl Chicks

I am for the birds, but that’s not really news. I am now the proud owner of four cute pea chicks, pavo reales, but I have no idea whether they are male peacocks or female peahens, only time will tell. I adore their little heads with their black beady eyes, long elegant necks and the little crown of feathers that is just forming.

As small as they are, nearly from birth they can fly, and if they get a fright they will, which is astonishing.

It will take three months before I can let them out of the hen house, so the dogs won’t take them for dinner and two years before they become adults, four years before the long vibrant tail feathers will develop, in case I have a (male) peacock.

I have learned a lot about these wild birds with their haunting cries. For example, they only lay up to 20 eggs once a year.

Peafowl are not only beautiful, they are also useful. They will control vermin like rats and mice, snakes, reptiles, insects and bugs like ants, ticks, fleas and snails, etc.

They will also function as an alarm system in addition to our dogs.

As we can already hear peacocks not far away and there is a breeder down the road, our neighbours should be fine with the noise they will make in time.

I don’t mind the strange noises they make, the screams, honks, squawk and cries. To me it’s a sound of the wild, evocative of castles and the wonderful Peacock Island, with 67 ha, in Berlin, where my mum brought me often as a child. My brother even worked for a while on this small island as a gardener. It is a most romantic place with a mock castle, statues, peacocks strutting, an old dairy, and a rose garden.

ANNUS HORRIBILIS 2020

January 3, 2021angelikablume

Good riddance to this year, which has brought many people heart-break, anxiety, a feeling of doom and insecurity, of hopelessness and loneliness.

And here is hoping the coming year will have much to be joyful, hopeful and proud about.

For us, as for most of you, it has brought both, good and bad memories.

Obviously since the implementation of measures to curb the spread of the Covid-19 virus, we have missed out on our constant stream of guests, who always brought so much diversion, life stories and of course income to us.

In June my mother died, aged 96, in Berlin. No, not of Covid, just of old age.

As sad it is to lose your mother, the person who has brought you into this world and always loves you unconditionally, it turned out to be an experience I will always be grateful for.

I was so lucky to be there with her, as were my two children, her grandchildren. At this stage she was already quite immersed in her own world of dementia, but I still believe that she knew, or felt, that she was not alone, that we were there with her. And she died at home, as was her wish, cared for by a set of dedicated angels, the staff of the ‘Pflegedienst’, carers service. And they also took me into their very big hearts; to this day I receive messages asking how I am.

Back in Andalucia we could enjoy the fantastic beach over the summer, packed as usual, and some guests in July and August.

We made new friends and met not quite old ones, and worked on our finca and me tending to the vegetable and herb garden.

Our olive harvest was very good, considering the amount of time spent pruning and spraying for disease.

LAURIE THE LAMB

Three weeks ago, when we came back from a trip to the beach and El Rocio with our Irish friend Roisin, we came across this little lamb in a field all on its own.

He would probably not have survived the night, so it was either to die or come with us. We managed to get a feeding bottle, milk powder and fed him every four hours. He has now grown already quite a bit, our ram lamb.

He follows Nigel and the dogs out and skips and runs around with them, such a funny sight. He blends in well with his black and white woolly coat and he is the same size as Clyde. Some day he might be matching Sofie’s size.

In the garden, the frost has wrecked havoc with the voluntary beans, tomatoes and sunflowers and my experimental amaranth and courgettes, although I managed to harvest a fruit last week.

But on a more positive note, the about ten year old lemon tree is carrying fruit for the first time. And nice big lemons they are, too. We must be doing something right, because it received lots of organic and also chemical fertiliser, just to make sure, and it worked.

Some mornings the temperature in the house is down to nine degrees Celsius. Then the gas heater needs to keep me warm for breakfast and later the temperature outside will be higher in the sunshine.

ORANGE GLUT

Thanks to our neighbour Steffi, we received a big amount of oranges and I set about making cakes, desserts and our morning juice from them.

All food here has to be gluten~ and lactose free, so that I can enjoy some too. Sometimes it is tricky, to transfer recipes to suit my needs.

INTUITIVE TRADITIONAL ARCHERY

This year I have taken up my bow and arrows again. It has been seven years since I took part in traditional, instinctive archery, with wooden bows and arrows, in Ireland.

It was great fun to roam the woods in the west of Ireland, where rubber animal-shaped targets were set up. All day long we practiced our archery in small groups, wise-cracking and having a laugh, because the club I belonged to, the ‘Warriors of Queen Maeve’ were a motley group of guys, ladies and families with more interest in a pint after and a day out then achieving best results.

Anyway, I dusted down my two bows, got my arrows repaired and a practice target set up.

Archery gives me a sense of reconnecting to ancient ways of hunting, it concentrates the mind, exercises the muscles and is rewarding, when all goes well. I suppose, any golfer knows the satisfaction of a good shot or the dart player hones his/her skills to become the champion.

I am missing the support of the experienced archers that even go as far as making their own bows and arrows. What I am missing here is the comradeship, not so much the competition as you can always compete against yourself, improving your technique and aim.

Bye-Bye 2020

The last night of 2020 was spent in the company of friends. We made up an international group of two Irish, two Moroccans and two Germans. We had live Irish folk songs thanks to Nigel picking up his guitar, some rock, pop and also Moroccan Desert blues. We indulged in delicious home-made treats until we could not move an inch away from the cosy fire. And to top it all, we celebrated a birthday right after midnight, in the very shiny New Year.

This was followed the next day by a walk on the beach in the sunshine and we even received our very first booking in 2021, a very promising start to this New Year.

Kitchen and Garden Magic – Still in part-quarantine

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dav

first carrots and courgettes

poppies amongst the onions

more carrots

productive hens

Sofie

(and not another word of the ‘virus’ in this blog)

There are quite a few very lovely, strong leeks in the garden that started their lives last September. Now they have reached full height and are going to start to push up flower stems inside. We obviously can’t eat them all at once, so they need to be preserved. I am freezing these four leeks.

leeks with lodgers

snails everywhere

trimmed leeks

ready for washing

cut in chunks

ready for freezing

Step 1: stick knife into the ground to loosen the leek from its roots by cutting around it. I keep the roots in the ground as organic matter which is very needed here as the soil is very loamy and sticky, and gets hard like concrete when dry.

Step 2: shake the leek vigorously upside down to dislodge any snails!

Step 3: discard any old, dried and discoloured outer leaves and cut the upper green leaves off from the lighter coloured stalk. I use the entire leek, why waste it?

Step 4: wash the dark leaves; it’s easier when cutting off the part that was attached to the main trunk. Wash also the trunk or stalk part.

Step 5: Cut all in equal big chunks, but keep dark and white parts separate.

Step 6: Blanch cut bits for 2-3 minutes (depending on the size) in boiling water; drain, splash with cold water to cool down and bag up. I blanched the outer green leaves, which tend to be tougher separately and then bag them up together with the white parts.

The other vegetable that starts producing now at an alarming rate is the courgette or zucchini. Last year I just could not get them going, but this year I successfully raised four plants from seed. They are lovely just sautéed with butter (or oil) and garlic, and I add them to almost everything, from soups to Bolognese sauce, curries and chutneys. And the stuffed courgettes were not bad either.

This year I have started to pickle them sweet-sour together with some pumpkin and onions and they turned out very yummy. The next batch will go into chutney.

Let me explain why I enthuse so much about my garden and its successes and failures. I was born and reared in Berlin, when it was still divided by a wall and fenced all around. I grew up in a street with tall old buildings and big old trees, in a district considered fairly good, where we were not allowed to speak slang. My mother is from a town 70 kms to the north-east, my father was from Berlin, but his parents hailed from Vienna.

My mother instilled a love for the outdoors and nature in me. She would take me to the parks, the lakes, the forests and the amazing sandy beach, all in West-Berlin. We took the pleasure steam boats across the chain of lakes, visit the island of peacocks with the mock castle, went swimming in summer and sleighing and ice-skating in the snow in winter. She was once very sporty and loved being active, she never drove a car and so all shopping was done by foot, which kept her active until only two years ago, at the age of ninety-four she finally had to admit to needing help, as she lives alone, still at ninety-six.

I have always dreamt of green fields behind the grey walls of the houses. I always cried when returning from a holiday away from the city. I was always stressed by the people, the traffic and not being able to see the horizon. So it was only a question of time when I would leave the big city behind and venture forth, to lonely places, blue horizons and endless sky.

My first escape out of the city, other than a holiday, was a six month stint on an organic farm in north Germany near Flensburg. I then studied agriculture and that brought me to Ireland, another six months to learn the ways of farming and proper English. Ireland has long been the escapism dream of Germans. Many have bought a small holding there and settled away from the maddening crowd.

There I met my husband to be, eventually got married, lived and worked on his dairy farm, had two children, worked as an agricultural consultant, divorced and finally continued my life with Nigel in Spain. I would not like to live again in a city or even a town. So here I am, trying my hand at gardening in the hot climate. Now you know why I am so filled with wonder, excitement and awe when a little seed grows into a big plant to give us food and pleasure as flower or herb.

More Gluten-free Cake

This time I tried ‘Karina’s Jewish Apple Cake Recipe with Sour Cream’ I found here: https://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2007/03/flourless-apple-cake.html

It came out juicy, lovely, more-ish. As usual I adapted the recipe to what I have available. I believe recipes are not to be taken too serious; they serve me more as an inspiration to try out something new. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

5 medium apples, room temperature, peeled, cored (I used a mix of both and pears)

A little lemon juice for spritzing the apples

Wet ingredients:

3 large organic free-range eggs

1 cup packed organic light brown sugar & 1/2 cup organic cane sugar (this sounded way too sweet, considering that my strawberry yoghurt already had sugar in it, so I only used a ¾ cup of sugar, which was just right)

2 teaspoons bourbon vanilla extract

3 tablespoons extra light olive oil

1/4 cup sour cream (I used strawberry yoghurt)

Dry ingredients:

2 cups almond flour aka almond meal

1/4 cup rice (this confused me, does it mean cooked rice or rice flour or actual uncooked rice? I went with the latter and it gives the cake a surprising crunch as the rice did not fully cook. It’s not bad but maybe milled coarse rice would achieve a nicer result)

1/2 cup potato starch or tapioca starch (I used Maizena, maize starch)

1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon McCormick Apple Pie Spice ( I used ground cloves)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon or cardamom, 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350ºF/180 C. Line a 10-inch springform pan with greased parchment paper. Springform pans are deeper than average cake pans. (Mine is a silicone form).

Chop the apples/pears and toss them into a bowl; spritz with a little fresh lemon juice. Toss to coat.

In a separate bowl beat the eggs with the sugar until smooth. Add the vanilla, oil and sour cream/yoghurt; beat to combine.

Stir together the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Slowly add them into the wet mixture and combine well. Drain the apples, if necessary (you don’t need any extra lemon juice). Toss them in a light sprinkle of cane sugar.

Pour half of the cake batter into the prepared pan. Add the drained sugared apples into the batter. Shake the pan a bit. Add half of the nuts.

Pour the remaining batter on top of the apples; shake the pan again to distribute the batter around the apple pieces. Add the rest of the nuts to the top and lightly press in.

Bake in the center of a preheated oven for ~ 1 hour. The cake should be done in about 60 to 70 minutes. Test for doneness with a wooden skewer. If the cake begins to over-brown before it is done, cover the edges loosely with pieces of foil.

Cool on a rack for ten to fifteen minutes. Loosen the cake gently from the sides of the pan with a thin spatula. Release the clasp and remove the pan ring. Allow the cake to cool completely on a wire rack. Serve warm or room temperature. Obviously best eaten with whipped cream or custard …………….

Karina's Jewish Apple Cake Recipe with Sour Cream’

HAPPINESS IS ……

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… Shelling peas you have grown and harvested in your own garden, under the shade of the olive tree, listening to the small fountain splashing and the birds singing. And knowing your man is yet again slaving away trying to put another of my ideas into existence. This time it is a pergola on the upper terrace, so that wine and bougainvillea and jasmine can wind their ways up on top and give us much sought after shade during the blazing hot summer days.

Our bedroom, which we like to use for the siestas, becomes really hot in the summer, so we need added shading. And our back garden received a small solar fountain:

solar fountain design 2

solar fountain design 1

The weather is like anywhere, capricious and changing. We had really lovely summer days, with people already sun-bathing and swimming on the beach and yet the wind can be quiet chilling. Now temperatures are dropping to under twenty degrees again and we are hoping for more rain.

dav

dav

I had a friend over from Ireland for a few days, which gave me the excuse to show her around and drive to El Rocio, Matalascañas beach and we even took the Doñana tour bus early in the morning to learn about the national park and its inhabitants. It was a jaunty drive along the vast beach, we saw not only sadly dead turtles but a whole range of seabirds, from the ubiquitous seagull, here the Mediterranean Gull and Common Gull to the Sandpiper, Kentish Plover, Sanderling, Terns, Black Winged and Red Kite and , in the distance, also the Spanish Imperial Eagle. A small herd of wild pigs with mammy, daddy and piglets crossed the road in front of us and deer, mammy and fawn, did the same. These are quite used to the green buses driving slowly by. There is a sanctuary for rabbits within the national park, where rabbits can breed undisturbed. Their numbers have been reduced through the myxomatosis virus and have to be protected to increase, because they are the prey for the Iberian Lynx and the many birds of prey in the park.

dav

dav

sdr

In the vast sand dune landscape many footprints are evidence of a lot of different creatures, which make their home there: snakes, beetles, toads, frogs, goats, deer, desert mice, rabbits or hare. Further on the marshes were unfortunately totally dried out. Luckily we saw lots of beautiful storks, spoonbills, flamingos, ibises and cranes and herons on the lake, Charco de la Boca, at El Rocio the day before. The whole expedition takes 4 hours and is quite enjoyable; the driver even had very good English as we weren’t able to follow the Spanish explanations. I will definitely also try the other tour, which will bring us to the northern part.

Springtime display:

pear blossoms

cherry blossoms

tulips and daffodils

planted rondell

After that it was time to see my mum in Berlin, as I haven’t been over since January the previous year. She is now in her 95^th year and hasn’t really changed that much. Carers now come three times a day to make sure she gets up, eats and drinks and takes her tablets. Other than that she is on her own, which she used to like, until her forgetfulness got in the way of many ordinary tasks. She was delighted to see Nigel and me; it has been a long while. She ate with appetite the roast chicken and white asparagus that we so love. It was too short, two days only, so we will return in September.

The rain has come, and gone. As promised, April is the rainy season here, but we could do with a bit more, if it is to last till November or whenever the next rain is due.

puppies

Drops and babies

proud mummy

a safe nursery

In March we got additional family members thanks to Drops; she gave birth to six puppies, four of them survived. The daddy is our neighbour’s terrier-type dog; he had been visiting quite a lot before we were able to put a stop to it. The pups look a lot like him. They were born under the Oleander bush in the front of the house. Nigel brought down a blue barrel to provide a cosy home and shelter from the rain. They are now 3 weeks old, still huddled together with closed eyes. One has ventured out and I can see that Drops is getting sore, she has a few red marks on her tummy, so the puppies are getting their teeth and weaning won’t be long.

We got Sofie in time to the vet, which cost us an arm and a leg, €500 as she is an enormous dog and alone the anesthetic cost a lot for a 70 kg animal. She is over it now and back to roaming the boundary fence.

dav

dav

We had a huge number of guests over the Easter days, so much so that we had to decamp into the caravan, that Germans with a finca in Bollullos left with us for safekeeping. Even our own bedroom was rented out. This was my first foray into caravan life and it was good. That night we had a party of six bikers staying here , or as they call themselves, ‘Circo Mediterraneo’ . I was at first a bit intimidated, not expecting six men to share double beds, but they were very nice lads and up to a bit of fun with their 50cc bikes (they do have grown-up motorbikes at home). They tucked into our breakfast and then went on their merry way to Parque National Sierra de Hornachuelos, north of Sevilla, ca. 6-7 hours on the little bike.

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