Photos from rural Spain

Out in the country

I'm back from one last romp in the countryside with our friends Becky and Martin and their farm in rural Spain. 

I love going there for many reasons, but one of them is because it's so ridiculously photogenic. I'll post more photos tomorrow, but for now, I'm loving this one that I just pulled off my camera:

Can't you just smell the grass and sunshine?

A winner of a contest, and a winner of a video

First, thanks to everyone who entered the drawing to win Bittersweet!  I used a random number generator to pick a winner, and the number out of the hat was #20.  The 20th comment was left by...*drumroll please*...

Yard

You lucky duck!  Thanks again to everyone who entered.

And now, I leave you for the weekend with this lovely video, copyright The Mister.  As you can see, he and I are dandy farm hands, and there is no hint of ineptitude about our manual labor skills.


Extremadura from Gski on Vimeo.

How British People are Secret Evangelists

Marmite....really, England? REALLY?

Staying with our new English friends Martin and Becky was a bloody rockin' good time.

We learned about tea cozies, digestive biscuits, milky tea and lots of it, tried Marmite, and acquired an entirely new vocabulary of words like "bloody", "bollocks",  and "bloke". We learned that "rain boots" are actually "wellies" and rain coats are "anoraks" and that a "minger" is defined as a "right-proper slappy tart", which in the end didn't really clear up matters at all.

Teatime!

We watched The X-Factor, the British American Idol, which, by the way, Simon Cowell is actually nice on, leading me to conclude that it isn't that he hates mediocre singers, he actually hates mediocre American singers.

We stopped for tea several times a day, and we learned that boy bands are still a cool thing in England. We learned the difference between Essex girls and East London girls, and we learned that up north french fries are served with a side of mushy peas.

In short, we experienced some pretty serious cultural immersion last week, and you're lucky that we are still American and aren't wearing Union Jacks and throwing down bangers and mash.

One thing though distinctly non-British:

the food.



Did I mention that Becky and Martin are fabulous cooks? If I did not, let me remedy that: Becky and Martin are fabulous cooks. They used to own a restaurant, and so the whole "British people have terrible food" thing was not part of our experience.  Moroccan-style vegetables and couscous, cinnamon-y risotto, homemade pear and vanilla jam on homemade toast, and lentil soup that was warm and inviting as the crackles of the logs on the ever-present fire.

Warm loaves of fresh bread

Salad straight from the garden

Overall, it was the best possible kind of cultural interchange.  We Yankee-fied them a tad and they U.K.-ed all over us, and nobody threw anyone's tea in Boston harbor and nobody claimed anyone else's land as their own and no one got tarred and feathered.

A right proper success, I'd say.


P.S. Last day to get your entry in to win a free copy of Bittersweet.  I'll be announcing the winner tomorrow!

On the finer points of olive picking

Here's what olive picking entails. First, go to some impossibly picturesque rural place where there are lots and lots of olive trees.



If it's a nice big tree, you spread a big net around the ground, set your feet in one place, and then start picking the olives in great big clumps, letting them fall on the net for later collection.  If it's a smaller tree, just pick them and put them in a bucket.  Get a partner, if possible, because then you can sing duets.



Repeat. Two hundred or so times. Oh, and don't be alarmed that they look like grapes. Exactly like grapes.  Don't taste them either - they aren't good yet. I know, because I tried one. Once you've collected a big bunch, you are ready for the next step.



Sorting! Time to get all the leaves and twigs outta there using a special slotted table.  Now is also a good time to a.) set aside really delicious-looking olives for eating straight, while the rest to into the pile for olive oil, and b.) singing duets (are you noticing a theme?)




Then roll them all down the table, which is kind of fun actually. Try to resist the urge to start an olive war with your fellow sorters.



Now, collect your filtered, sorted olives into big sacks. If at all possible, this should be accomplished while wearing the most ridiculous outfit you can get ahold of. It makes the olives taste better.



Now, go to the olive press and get liters and liters of buttery yellow, delicious olive oil. We missed out on that last part, because we had to leave just a few days before the olive press was available. But I heard that the olive oil from the olives we collected was top-grade.

I'm pretty sure that the olives just like being sung to.

"I love olive picking", when said fast, sounds like "olive olive picking"

Well we had a dang good time in Extremadura/Portugal last week. I include "/Portugal" because our trip rather unexpectedly took us there - the farm we were on contains the international border, so we ended up spending a little time on that side, tootling around and doing a bit of sightseeing.

Olive picking turns out to be not too bad of a gig at all, and when you're in the deep rural country, surrounded by stunning views from basically any angle, the work goes by even easier.  The only sounds to break the quiet were sheep's bells, the clucking of chickens, and The Mister's earnest but rather faulty falsetto.

He decided that all farm work should be accompanied by singing, chain-gang-style; group sing-alongs preferred, but he isn't shy to go solo if need be.  Anything to suit his public.  So there really was a lot of singing going on.

The front yard

Pickin' olives in my olive pickin' clothes

Captured mid-song

I wasn't lying about the chickens

HelpXing in Spain's Wild West

My last foray into self-harvesting: a fresh-plucked almond in Jerusalem last spring.

Mmmm...furry. And tart. Very, very tart.

Next week will be a little quiet around this blog.

It's a school holiday here in Spain, so The Mister and I don't have to work all next week.  We took advantage of the free time and are heading off to the rural Spanish province of Extremadura (sometimes referred to as Spain's Wild West) to stay with a family and help them out with their olive harvest.

We found the opportunity through a website called Help Exchange (HelpX), which hooks up travelers with people who own agricultural property (vineyards, farms, fruit orchards, and so on) to facilitate exchanges with travelers who are willing to get their hands a little dirty. We get an inexpensive trip to the countryside and free room and board, and they get company and helping hands.  Seems like a good exchange to me! We are headed to stay with a British couple who has a vineyard and a few hundred olive trees that are ready for harvest. It's our first time HelpXing (oh yes, it's a verb too), so we're pretty excited to see how it all turns out.

While my internet access will be sporadic at best and I may or may not get to post at all next week, rest assured I'll be photography and journaling the whole thing so I can share it in all its glory when I return. Agricultural humor, here I come!