Fiesta at the Finca of Pablo Luis

In addition to working hard and gaining knowledge on the actual finca, another goal of these farm stays is to experience as much local color and culture as we can.  This proved to be a little difficult on the Finca Los Tres Alcornoques as the distance from the finca to the pueblo required the use of a car.  There were two bikes at our disposal but seriously, the summer heat of the land locked San Vicente did not turn the bikes into a very inviting option.

Needless to say, when we were invited to a party hosted by a neighboring finca, we were excited!  The owner of the finca was an Extremaduran man in his early forties called Pablo Luis, who in his earlier years had worked as a human shield in Colombia.  His job was to accompany political dissidents thereby insuring their protection from public retribution.  It was in Colombia where he met his beautiful wife, with whom he returned to his family finca in San Vicente.  When Brin told him that she had two Americans staying with her and could we come to the party with her, he gave his consent, as long as we were not marines (don’t ask, I didn’t).

Immediately upon arrival at Pablo Luis’ finca, after the traditional two cheek kisses were distributed, we were offered an appetizer of homegrown figs which had been soaked for 11 months in a liquor equivalent to grappa and then dipped in dark chocolate.  As I bit into a fig, the flavor progressed from the sweetness of the chocolate, to the fruitiness and earthiness of the fig, to, BAM!  Alcohol!  Holy smokes!  Amazingly delicious not to mention that after two figs on an empty stomach, I had a nice little buzz going! 

According to Brin, and as we witnessed firsthand, there are very specific times throughout a Spanish fiesta that particular types of alcohol are to be enjoyed. As more appetizers appeared, including home cured jamón, olives, and of course Spanish tortilla (a very traditional frittata-like dish), we quenched our thirst with Estrella Damm, a typical Spanish lager, and tinto de verano, a refreshing mixture of red or white wine, lemonade, and agua con gas (bubbly water). 

Brin had described Pablo Luis and his friends as “hippy dippies” which translated into a dress code of loose flowy pants and dresses, an overall liberal and friendly atmosphere and the passing and signing of a petition against closing the railway station in San Vicente.  Their “hippiness” also manifested in the array of grain and vegetable based dishes like garbanzo bean curry and spelt with tomato and onion.  Clearly, my cous cous salad with mint, parsley, cucumber, red pepper, and onion was a huge hit, in fact, the first dish to go!  In addition to these dishes, what’s a Spanish potluck without deviled eggs topped with tuna, pan con tomate (bread with tomato) and potato salad?

After dinner and the Estrella and tinto de verano glasses were cleared, out came bottles of wine, a traditional rice pudding and an ice cream cake, not so traditional but yummy none the less.  Clearly this is not a culture that frowns upon mixing types of alcohol as we soon found that there was yet another phase of drinking.  After dessert, the wine was replaced with cocktails and homemade liquors, such as the 11 month old fig liquor and similarly aged plum liquor.  These were unlike anything I had ever tasted.  Strong but pure in the flavor of the fruit, not doused in sugar and artificial chemicals like many of the fruity liquors I have tasted in the States.  And it just keeps getting better as I have recently learned that my dad has planted fig and apricot trees in his yard, and I happened to have a near and dear friend, Katie Blandin, who just happens to be a cocktail mixtress.  Let the steeping begin!

"Your Public Awaits You"

Along with tending the huerta, feeding and monitoring the health of the animals was an integral part of my contribution in helping the Finca Los Tres Alcornoques run smoothly.  In fact, in some ways, the two duties went hand in hand.  Since the arid summer heat was rapidly approaching, the wild grass and weeds around the finca were quickly drying up to dust.  Luckily for the sheep, Borris the donkey, the geese, the bunnies, and the chickens, there was a bounty of delicious and nutritious weeds extracted from the huerta every day. 

One morning, while cooking our breakfast, the sheep were bleating extra loudly, “We’re hungry! We’re hungry!”  Jonathan leaned over and between bites of over-easy guinea hen egg and roasted tomato, he nudged me, “Your public awaits you.”  I scooped up the last of my breakfast and headed out to do my daily dance. 

Coordinating the feeding of the sheep and Borris, who were penned together, literally was a play of stealth and trickery.  See, the nine sheep could gobble up a bucket of Pienso (mixture of corn, grains and other natural goodness) faster than you can say, “Bobs your uncle”, whereas Borris savored his half bucket, fifteen chews per bite, for a good twenty minutes.  Clearly, throwing a bucket and a half of Pienso in the trough was not going to cut it.  Protocol: place Borris’ bucket just outside the fence gate, take the sheep's bucket through the gate, close the door behind me and act as if I were heading to their trough, at which time all the sheep make a mad dash to the trough, then lure Borris back through the gate and tie him up on the other side of the fence to eat his bucket of breakfast in peace.  The duped sheep would stop mid-trot and look at me with their simple minds bleating, “WTF?” until I gave them their bucket.  

Leghorn Chickens

Farm Fresh Eggs

While Borris took his time munching and crunching his breakfast, I fed the leghorn chickens whose cage was located under a shady cork tree near the sheep trough.  This was a pretty easy one: dump the food in their bowl, rinse out their water dish, refill the water dish, and climb into the cage to retrieve the eggs.  The leghorns laid an average of about six eggs per day.  These eggs, along with the "downstairs chicken" eggs, which averaged about one egg per day, were sold on the sly out of Brin’s friend’s liquor store for €1.85 ($2.30) per dozen, which is currently the going rate in San Vicente for fresh farm eggs (compare to the Monterey Farmer's Market price which can be up to $7 per dozen).  

After the leghorns were happily clucking with their breakfast, I would check on Borris to see if he was nearly finished so that I could put him back in the pen with the sheep.  If left too long on the other side of the fence, he would move on from his empty bucket of Pienso to the innocent plants and herbs.  Really the plants and herbs were the least of my worries with the possibilities of what Borris would attempt to eat next.  Jonathan and I were both warned not to leave cardboard, empty cement sacks (a particular Borris favorite) or anything else a donkey might like to sample, and always close the shed and garage doors because he will undoubtedly push the limits to see what kind of trouble he could get into.  Despite his sweet donkey face and long fuzzy donkey ears, Brin admitted that Borris was possibly the most useless animal on the finca and definitely the most destructive!  Don’t be sad, Borris, you are still my BFF!

"Got Greens?"

Next on the list of animal duties were the adorably curious and sweethearted bunnies.  Every time I opened the door to their hutch, the 6 adults and 16 babies of various ages would optimistically poke their little bunny faces out of hiding to sniff my sack…got greens? 

Now before I continue, I need to digress.  At age 6, my baby brother was born.  Within days of the blessed event my uncle was in a terrible car accident that left him in a coma.  Needless to say, my parents had enough on their plate with juggling a newborn and a brother/brother-in-law in a touch and go medical situation without dealing with a rambunctious 6 year old (Me?  Rambunctious?  Never!).  So, I stayed with a few different family friends for a couple of weeks, one of whom raised rabbits.  For food.  This concept was NOT something my six year old brain was ready for, especially when it was considered normal to name the rabbits then casually say, “Ok, so we’re having Fluffy for dinner tonight.” 

Cute Animals

Delicious Cheeses

Thus began my tyrannical rein as Princess of the Dinner Table when it came to determining whether an animal was too cute to be eaten in front of me.  Examples of “cute” animals included: rabbit, quail (when we lived in Jack’s Peak my dad used to catch the baby quail and we would watch them run around in circles before rejoining their brothers and sisters at the end of the line behind their mother-cute!), deer, lamb, veal (duh), duck, etc.  I couldn’t bear the idea of witnessing the eating of said cute animals whereas I had deemed cows, pigs, chickens, turkey and fish as acceptable vittles.  Really, ask my parents, I was an obnoxious little dinner companion!  Then, ten plus years ago I eliminated cows and pigs from my menu, not for moral or political reasons, simply because the Romero family had never really been huge meat eaters anyway (yeah, never had a pork chop until I met my PigWizard!) and I figured that with the amount of fat that I would be eliminating from my diet by not eating beef or pork, I would be able to eat more of the stuff I liked better anyway, like cheese and avocados!

Baby Bird De-bones a Rabbit

Anyway, this diet continued until 2010 (yes, I managed to maintain my meatlessness for the year and a half that I lived in Barcelona, shocked?), when I decided to enroll in the year long program at the Culinary Center of Monterey.  I figured that if I was going to be serious about learning how to cook professionally, I should at least know how to properly cook and season a chili verde or beef Bolognese and  unless you taste the dish, how do you know if it is done properly?  Long story short, I gradually reintegrated meat into my diet and even, after 30 years of cringing, I bit the bullet (or the rabbit!) and ate the “cute” animals. 

So, within the week of living on the Finca Los Tres Alcornoques and feeding the sheep and bunnies, etc., I realized that my whole cute animal aversion had come full circle.  I knew before we left on this farm stay adventure that I would come face to face with the concept of personally being responsible for the caring and well-being of animals that were raised solely for the purpose of food and that it may pull at the heartstrings a little, thereby forcing me to reconcile the “cute animal facor" (oh, but they taste so good!).  Obviously these thoughts ran through my mind or I wouldn’t be sharing them, but, to tell you the truth, I really did not end up having a problem with it.  There is a certain survivalist attitude of farm people that is contagious, even to this city slicker.  You bust you butt taking care of these animals: hauling food and water, monitoring their health, making sure they have proper shelter and the best quality of life you can provide them.  In turn, when the time is right, they provide us with fresh, healthy meat.  Also, when it comes down to raising the animal and thereby personally controlling the quality of the product you are feeding your family versus buying that package of ground beef compiled of God knows how many different cows, if you have the choice, it is a no brainer. 

Preparing the Saltimbocca

Anyway, back to the cute little squishy bunnies!  Like I said, every day the pack of blond and brown coated bunnies would get a sack of fresh weeds from the garden supplemented with a half bucket of Pienso.  Feeding and cuddling these guys was one of my favorite parts of the day, despite the fact that I knew there was a freezer full of someone’s uncle and someone’s cousin, etc.  In fact, Jonathan prepared one of said cousins or uncles into a delicious saltimbocca: bone out the loin, insert fresh sage leaves, season with salt and pepper, wrap the loin in prosciutto, or in our case, jamón iberico bellota, pan fry and finish in the oven.

Baby Bunnies in Birthing Box

Given my love for all things little, cute and squishy, imagine my joy when one day Brin announced that two of the birthing boxes were now occupied by litters of baby bunnies, nine little schnookies all together!  Brin warned me not to open the birthing boxes and more importantly not to touch the babies as the mother will likely recoil from the unfamiliar scent of my hand and abandon the baby to die.  In fact, the technical protocol for touching unweaned babies is to rub your hand with bunny poop so as to disguise the human scent.  Despite this technicality, her logic was that the mother bunnies were used to her scent (despite the fact that it had been me, not her who had been in the hutch feeding and touching the bunnies for the last three weeks) so she performed the task of checking the boxes for still-borns sans poop covered hands.  And when she did, you betcha I was there leaning over her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the two litters, one so young that their eyes had not even opened yet and the other, the size of my palm with teeny little bunny ears.  You think puppies are cute, ha!  Never in my life have I seen such precious little miniature versions of the adult animal!  So of course I did not want to be responsible for the abandonment and certain death of these baby bunnies so, despite my eminent desire to put my pinky finger between their little ears and stroke their little heads, I refrained. 

In the past, a few of the finca bunnies had contracted myxomatosis, a disease spread by mosquitos and ticks, harmless to humans but deadly to rabbits.  If one bunny in the hutch contracted the disease, the whole clan could potentially be dead within two weeks.  As a result, Brin had taken to injecting the baby bunnies with a myxomatosis vaccine.  The tricky part is of course deciding the correct time to inject them.  The sooner they receive the vaccination the less likely they will contract the disease; however, inject them before they are weaned and you run the risk of the mothers abandoning the babies.  Still confident that the mothers were used to her scent, thus eliminating the risk of abandonment, Brin chose to inject these two litters just after their eyes were open, thinking that they were old enough to withstand the stress and trauma of the vaccination process. 

Within a few days, six of the nine babies were dead.   Two out of four babies in one litter had died of stress and the other mother abandoned her litter all together with only one survivor.  Unsure as to which bunny was the mother of the abandoned litter, Brin locked two adult females in one of the cages in the hutch along with the surviving baby, hoping that the mother would once again allow the baby to feed.  As the bunnies were used to free reign of the hutch, a cement enclosure, windows closed to prevent myxomatosis carrying insects from entering (the screens had not been installed yet even though the structure had housed rabbits for two years now), the close quarters of the now locked cage proved too hot for the two mothers and baby and one of the mothers died of heat stroke.  Oh, and the attempt to rekindle the mother-baby relationship failed and the baby died. 

One of the Two Surviving Baby Bunnies

Needless to say, this whole situation was infuriating.  Animals die; neither pet owners nor farmers can control nature as much as they love their pet or rely on their animals for food.  Additionally, I understand that people make honest mistakes and errors in judgment; you learn from your mistakes and move forward.  My issue is when ignorance combines with arrogance and negligence and causes the death of nine animals: five starved to death, three died of stress, and one suffocated from heat stroke.  It was cruel and easily preventable (install the window screens and wait to inject the babies until they are weaned), not to mention a waste of time, energy and money (Pienso, myxomatosis vaccine, water, etc.).  The whole experience was especially crushing considering that I had been caring for these bunnies for three weeks and had just finally reconciled my internal struggle of bunnies as pets versus bunnies as food.  Sigh.

Borris: Ears Back & Angry Slanty Eyes

Anyway, on to happier subjects: geese!  One of my first responsibilities on the finca was the feeding of the "fattening up geese", who were housed in a smallish but by no means shoulder to shoulder cage.  Despite having to learn to navigate the complicated water system (i.e. which three of the seven levers needed to be turned to on to run water to the goose pool), tending to the geese was possibly one of the simplest of tasks when it came to feeding the animals.  Dump out the old water from their plastic swimming pool, add fresh water.  Bucket of fowl Pienso, sack of greens from the garden.  Done and done.  Pictured above is Borris, who had followed me and my bag of greens from the huerta to the goose pen only to be thoroughly ticked off that the ding dong geese scored the bag of greens and not him.  Insert lots of angry foot stamping and donkey snorting!

Escape to the Teepee!  Escape to the Teepee!

Funny side note: ever wonder where the phrase "silly goose" came from?  Well, geese are the most irrationally frantic of animals that I have ever come across.  You'd think that since I entered their cage every day with a bag of greens and a bucket of Pienso (i.e. food) that they would eventually get used to me, stop freaking out and maybe even come to greet me to get their breakfast.  Not so.  Every day I opened the cage, they made a mad dash to hide in their plastic teepee which ironically housed their wire feed trough and was always the first place I headed.  You'd think they'd learn.  Nope, every day, dash to the teepee, realize that I was heading toward the entrance and thereby blocking their escape.  What to do, what to do!  Step on each others heads, squawk, flap their wings, scramble three at a time through the one inch space between the teepee wall and the ground or shove their way through an increasingly large rip in the side of the teepee.  The poor idiots were perpetually scared out of their wits.  In their small minds they were barely escaping with their lives by pushing through the teepee and scrambling to the other side of the cage, one or two splashing into the pool, exhaling with relief until they realized that my next move was to empty the pool, which of course then caused a whole other drama of squawking and flapping to escape back to the teepee..."hey, there's food in here!"  I can't tell you how many times I was splashed with icky goose poo pool water just trying to help a sister out.  Sheesh.  Useless, once a year egg laying, stinky, oily fleshed, scardy cats, geese are.  Geese will not be an animal that you will find on the Roberts farm, I can tell you that much.  

Although, I have to say, if you're having a bad day, recipe of guaranteed giggle is as follows: place one person one the outside of one end of the goose pen, another person on the outside of the other end.  Watch the geese trample each other to get away from one end only to discover someone at the other end, noise or movement on your part unnecessary.  Repeat.  I realize it sounds kinda mean but you gotta trust me, they never actually hurt themselves and it is freakin' hilarious to witness! 

"Downstairs Chickens", Geese & Fruit Trees

Next came the "free-range" geese and guinea fowl who bunked with the "downstairs chickens" at the bottom of the finca property.  Again, the most complicated aspect of feeding these guys was managing the  four well-water systems.  Which four valves do I open to run the water to the appropriate place?  Water the fruit trees, dish out a bucket of Pienso, rinse and refill the water troughs, gather eggs.  Downstairs chickens and geese done and done. 

Guinea Fowl

See the Egg Deep in the Back of the Dungeon?

The most amusing part of the daily downstairs feeding operation occurred at the corner of the free range enclosure: the guinea fowl cage.  Feeding and watering these ding dong beasts was pretty ho hum, but watching me gather the 2" length eggs was the source of much snickering and ridicule from Jonathan.  Firstly, in order to access the eggs, I had to peel back the tarp roof of the cage, angle my sneaker just right between the bars of the cage (without falling), climb up and squeeze through the hole landing just inside the cage, which incidentally was not even close to tall enough for me to stand up straight.  Then, bent over at the waist, I had to crab walk to the back of the cage where the guineas laid the majority of their eggs, grab the eggs, and crab walk back to my sliver of an exit point.  Oh, and meanwhile, while inside the cage, I had to do my best to ignore the ear piercing squawk of the freaked out guineas, while they attempted to launch themselves through the small holes in the cage walls 'cause I was soooo scary and threatening!  Good thing the taste of the eggs, which we experienced every morning with delight, was worth the effort.

Gay Chickens?

So as I detailed above, the regeneration of finca animals in regards to the bunnies did not go as planned.  Thankfully, the same cannot be said for operation incubator!  Just before we arrived to the Finca Los Tres Alcornoques, Brin was given two roosters by a neighbor.  Half convinced they were both a little light in the loafers, she conducted a fertility experiment (no, she did not use a turkey baster, only the old fashioned method) which resulted in an incubator full of about a dozen chicken eggs, some leghorn, some Rhode Island Reds and some of an ugly but tasty breed of featherless necked chicken, as well as about a dozen guinea hen eggs.  

Although the recommended incubation temperature for chicken eggs is between 37.2 - 38.8 C (99 - 102.5 F), and the recommended incubation temperature for guinea hen eggs is 37.5 C (99.5 F), Brin took a chance that one degree Celsius wouldn't make a difference for the guinea eggs and set the incubator at 38.5 C (101.3 F).  The reality is, however, two degrees F doesn't seem to make that big of a difference unless you consider your own ideal body temperature of 98.6 F and turn that into 100.6 F.  If all of a sudden you feel feverish and headachy, think of the damage two little degrees can do to the cells of a guinea egg.

See, No Neck Feathers!

Beep!  Beep!

I guess you see where I am going with this.  After the 21 days of incubation required for chicken eggs, we were rewarded with five strong, yellow, baby beep beep chicks!  As the normal hatch rate for incubators is between 50 - 75%, and considering that these roosters may have been more interested in fertilizing each other than the eggs, five out of a dozen or so was not too bad!  After the chicks dried in the incubator for a few hours, we took them to their new home in a bin under a heating lamp.  We made sure they had plenty of water and fed them mashed up hard-boiled egg (seemed kind of ironic, sick and twisted to me but hey, I guess that's what they eat while in the shell and they seemed to like it, so hell, what do I know?).  Sadly two of the chicks didn't make it but, on the positive side, each of the finca dogs, Marta and Filly, got a crunchy little treat.  I'll forgive a little cringe but wake up and welcome to farm life!  A week later the chicks were eating big chick food and had their own little home outside in a cage under an umbrella.  Their biggest worry was ignoring Cosmo's curious green kitten eyes, which followed their every move.

Requiring a total of 28 day of incubation, we kept a vigil for an additional 7 days hoping to see a few baby guineas.  Unfortunately, after 30 days in the incubator, not one guinea egg hatched.  Ah well, experiment performed, failed=learning experience (expect she tried it again...whatever).

View of the Pig Domain

Vicious Broom Nibblers

Housed next to the downstairs chickens and unarguably my second favorite beasts on the finca (ok, third favorite, only after Borris and Cosmo the kitten), were the half Iberian Blackfooted pigs.  Prior to my life on La Finca Los Tres Alcornoques, I had never really been in touching proximity to any pig, other than the little pink babies in the petting zoo at the Renaissance Faire when I was a child.  So, when Brin asked me if I was comfortable enough with pigs to enter their pig domain, sweep out their piggy pool and fill it with fresh water, I was determined to be confident.  I was assured that as far as pigs go, these pigs were friendly so, broom in hand, I hopped the fence and headed to the pool. Suddenly, before I had taken two steps, I was bum rushed by two snorting black hairy beasts!  As they charged, I kept repeating, "friendly, friendly, I have a broom and I'm not afraid to use it!" When they reached me, they took a few nibbles from the broom and snouted my legs with their mud & piggy goodness covered noses!  They then proceeded to follow me around the pen grunting with curiosity, thus beginning my affinity for these coarse-haired black beauties.

Sipping at the Piggy Pool

One of the many things that our parents instilled within my brother and me from a young age, and that I still rely on heavily in my adult life, is the concept of resourcefulness and wastelessness.  As a family we always saved leftovers from dinner, ate the oldest cheese first to prevent spoiling, etc.  My mom even made us cloth lunch bags so that if we didn't finish our lunch at school we were forced to bring home the rest of our sandwich or our apple instead of simply chucking the whole brown paper sack in the garbage.  Moms, always at least one step ahead of us kids.  

Wasting food or resources is never ok, but vigilance in this area is especially important on a farm where cash flow is limited and people's lives depend on using and reusing all available food and materials.  If it were my property, I may not have left all the junk (sections of broken pipe, random tiles, empty wine bottles, etc.) lying around the finca awaiting re-purposing (sheds are nice), but I did respect Brin's creative ability to think outside the box regarding the varied uses for each leftover bit of material.  

Awaiting Breakfast While Standing In the Food Dish

Along these same lines was the absolute zero waste in food.  Ever since I began living on my own, I have always wanted to compost but have never had the space or means to do it properly (a stinking pile of garbage in your back yard does not constitute as proper composting!).  Living on this finca, I got my chance.  Every bit of uneaten food, from onion peels to egg shells, from cherry pits to half of a quiche that was too far gone for human consumption, from lemon rinds to leftover soggy salad, every scrap was placed into a bin on the kitchen counter and was once per day given to the pigs, oftentimes enough food to maintain half of their diet.  It felt so good to know that not one bell pepper center or one apple core was going to waste.


The only kitchen scraps that did not go to the pigs was meat.  Don't get me wrong, not one scrap of meat nor one bone went to waste either.  The leftover roasted goose bones and roasted lamb bones went into the stock pot and were then portioned to the dogs, Marta and Filly and the cats, Sam and Cosmo.  Any unused bones, sheep heads, lungs, etc. were frozen as reserves for when there weren't any fresh bits.  Although I will say, walking into the kitchen expecting to smell whatever is cooking for lunch but instead getting hit by a wall of boiling sheep lungs is kinda a rude shock.

Look at Those Viciously Determined Eyes!

Baby Bird Caught the Kitten

Even funnier than a faceful of boiling sheep lung soup occurred one day when Brin took a rather large sheep bone outside to cleaver it into fair portions for the canines and felines.  Suddenly, out of the shadows leaped Cosmo the kitten with a lion sized yowl.  He snatched the bone that was easily twice his size and attempted to escape with the whole bloody thing for himself!  Laughing, Brin went after him to retrieve the bone.  She was met with the most guttural, vicious, yet pint sized growl, not hiss, but growl!  She picked up one end of the bone and along with it picked up Cosmo whose teeth and claws were so determinedly attached to his prize.  Finally, after detaching one claw at a time, Cosmo was forced to relinquish the bone.  Never in my life!   All time favorite kitten to date!


Thus ends the five week tale of Baby Bird as caretaker of the animals of the Finca Los Tres Alcornoques. The purpose of our trip is to learn everything we can through hands on experience and to bring that knowledge home with us.  Of course, as Jonathan and I arrived in Europe with varied personal backgrounds, what I consider to be a new experience will greatly differ from what he considers to be a new experience, and some experiences will be equally new to both of us.  That is partially the beauty of this trip; we will inevitably grow as individuals but also as a couple.  From each farm we will glean useful ideas and practices as well as gain an idea of what not to do.  From this farm, I learned so much about navigating small farm life, coordinating the contents of the garden with the season as well as the needs of the animals, utilizing and re-purposing every bit of "waste", and more.  Despite it's high highs and low lows, I truly treasured this, my first, experience of caring for the finca animals.

Next Up: Summertime Matanza: Two Lambs from Farm to Table, PigWizard Style

Duties & Sightings in La Huerta

La Huerta: Half Weeded, Half Wild!

Working on La Finca Los Tres Alcornoques was to be my first farmer Jane experience, and it's not like I'm totally useless but nobody is going to call me if they need a shed built.  So, when our hostess, Brin listed gardening as one of the chores she needed help with I raised my hand, “Me! Me! Me!”  La huerta (garden) is about 20 square years surrounded by fencing to keep out the forever hungry sheep and Borris the donkey, who as we found would eat anything, including empty cement sacks!  Little pea, tomato, eggplant, cabbage, pepper, curly lettuce, and chard plants were struggling to catch up with the almost full grown potatoes, beets and Romaine lettuce.  And by “struggling”, I mean, literally scratching tooth and nail to defend their little patch of earth against the weeds.  The crab grass whose roots were already three inches deep, the nettles who, thankfully, only itch for a minute rather than raise stinging welts when they contact your skin, the wild, lawless bramble that almost jumped out at you to snag your shirt or arm, as well as various other pesky varieties.  Some areas of the huerta were so over grown that it was difficult to distinguish between weeds and the actual planted plant.  Brin said that some of the neighbors regularly come over to shake their heads at the patheticness of the huerta and ultimately end up giving her fruit and vegetables because they feel so sorry for her!  Break out the gloves, the hoe and the rake; it’s wo-man vs. nature!

One thing I forgot to mention in the previous post regarding the inhabitants of the finca, is the overwhelming presence of ants.  And I’m not just talking little picnic ants, well there’s those too, I’m talking at least five sizes and varieties of ants ranging from the little picnic guys to half inch giants who scurry faster than any spider I’ve ever encountered.  They march in hoards in an out of their holes, across the pavement to and from a sheep bone the dogs have finished with, in an out of cracks in the plaster on the house, along the counter in the kitchen if you leave food out, and if you accidentally get too near their anty nest, the little suckers run up your ankles and bite.  I have never seen so many ants in my life.  Really, you can't walk outside in flip flops without ants crawling on your feet.  Gross.

Little Yellow Froggie

Praying Mantis

Three Inch Grasshopper

Little Green Grasshopper

Colorful Caterpillar

Brown Potato Plant Loving Bug

While the ants were limited to a few hills in the huerta, there were many other amazing insects I encountered while tilling the soil, weeding on hands and knees, and digging up potatoes.  Colorful fuzzy caterpillars inched along the soil.  Big black “stink bugs” lifted their butts to spray you with perfume if you got too close.  No insect is as beautifully delicate and spindly as the husband gobbling praying mantis.  Huge horned nose scarab beetles bumbled dumbly around until they flew into something and had to pause until the circling birds quit tweeting around their heads.  Precious!  Creepy Slimy newts, salamanders and creepy centipedes could be found under just about any rock or fallen tree branch.  Amazing grasshoppers ranging from ¾ of an inch to three inches perched statue still, blending into their leafy homes before launching themselves to the next plant.  Sweet little yellow froggies resided in the folds of the cabbage leaves.  Multitudes of unidentified brown insects that looked like leaves themselves inconspicuously covered their favorite potato plant. 

Potato Leek Soup

 

Speaking of potatoes, in the five weeks I was there working on the huerta, several potato plants transitioned from blossoming to death which signifies that the potatoes that have been growing underground are ready to be unearthed and turned into delicious potato dishes!  Note the potato leek soup garnished with thyme flowers and aged sheeps milk cheese! 

Baby Scorpion

95 Centimo Gloves

One day, while digging up a batch of potatoes, I was startled by a silver dollar sized baby scorpion!  Thank God I had my handy dandy 95 centimo ($1.17) gloves on!  I admit I was a little curious about the miniature stinger so I did gently poke it with my gloved finger.  I think the poor little guy was so frightened by the fact that he just had his home destroyed by a great beast that he temporarily forgot his newly learned skills of stabbing the enemy with his tail weapon. 

On to the even more malicious creatures.  One evening, Jonathan come in from work and warned me to be careful when lifting anything that looks like it hadn't been moved in a while.  Now he’s not the arachnophobe that I am but when surprised by a spider with a quarter sized body and big hairy legs, even he jumped a little!  I managed to last 4 weeks without any such spider sightings, and my encounter did not even occur outside.  One morning, I was heading up the hallway from our room to the kitchen when I stopped dead in my tracks.  Not ten feet from where I lay my sweet head on my pillow at night was a monster, lodged in the crack of one of the accordion doors!  Never In my life have I seen such a beast and I hope to never see such a one again.  I apologize for not having photographic evidence as clearly I enjoy sightings of fascinating and unusual bugs, hence the multitude of insecty pictures, but when you are paralyzed with fear and your mouth goes bone dry, reaching for the camera is not on the tippy top of the list.  Luckily, my prince, with his wits always about him, was able to destroy the creature before it skittered away to lay in hiding, undercover just waiting for me to fall asleep before it crawled across my face and bit my chin.  Vomit.

Colorful Gecko

And finally I come to the reptiles that ranged from colorful two inch geckos to lizards of many sizes and skin patterns.  The record sighting was Jonathan’s 15 incher!  Interesting fact: traditionally, arising from years when money was short and food was scarce, Extremadurans ate these lizards.  You can still find recipes online which of course include other traditional Extremaduran ingredients of peppers, tomatoes, onions and paprika.  Unfortunately we were not able to eat lizard as they were at some point deemed endangered and we hardly wanted to be thrown in jail for poaching.  Kinda tempting, though!

Cosmo Eyeballs the Baby Cork Trees

Cosmo Curled Up in Discarded Cork Bark

Anyway, back to gardening.  Other duties included transplanting pathetic little lettuce seedlings, that refused to grow bigger as they were planted in 100% Borris the donkey's shit into slightly larger vessels that contained soil.  I also transplanted a flat of baby cork oak trees to sawed off milk cartons.  Those of you who know me know that I hate milk.  What I hate even more is hosing out the dried spoiled milk that coated the cartons while attempting to avoid being splashed by the smelly filth!  Double vomit!  The concept of nursing a flat of oak trees for future plantation seems bizarre to us Monterey County folk since we have a plenitude of oaks where ever we look; however, in a land where the inhabitants rely on the revenue from the oak bark (future wine corks) and the acorns to feel their Iberian Blackfoot pigs (15 lbs of acorns=1 lb of piggy weight gain, 20% piggy weight gain on acorns=proper Iberian pig), it makes sense.  Scan the Extremaduran farmland and instead of our rows of commercial broccoli and lettuce, you will fine line after line of cork oaks.

So after 5 weeks of sweating in the sometimes 103 degree dry heat with my hoeing and weed pulling, I finally managed to whip the now flourishing huerta in shape.  The plants were still hopelessly scattered in nonexistent rows but at least they no longer had to fight for their real estate.  In the end, my labors were rewarded with fresh veggies coming out of my ears and Brin’s praise, “Now THAT looks like a proper Spanish huerta!”

(Thank you to my dad, Dennis Romero, for giving us the camera that allowed me to take such amazing close-ups of these bugs!)

La Finca Los Tres Alcornoques: Our New Pueblo & New Home

La Finca Los Tres Alcornoques

View from Our Bedroom

We woke up on the next day in San Vicente de Alcántara in the region of Extremadura on La Finca Los Tres Alcornoques (Three Oaks Farm), bursting mostly with curiosity, but with a little hint of “What have we gotten ourselves into?”  In the light of day, our room was still quite skeletal and about as homey as a monk’s ascetic chamber.  And it still smelled funny.  We rolled up the metal grill that covers most modern Spanish windows (keeps out the light and therefore the sun, which is very important when it is 100 degrees outside and you don’t have air conditioning) and saw the view from our bedroom window.  The terrain looked surprisingly like the Carmel Valley!  I guess more like the Sierra Foothills with the dry grass, hills, fox gloves and large boulders.  The main difference is that instead of being spotted with scrub oak trees, this land was spotted with cork trees!  Cork trees are really a type of oak tree but the bark is spongier and when removed it’s fabricated into wine corks!  Oh, and the famous Iberian Blackfooted Pigs whose cured meat is arguable the finest in all of Europe?  In order to qualify as one of Iberia’s finest, the pig must gain at least 20% of their weight from billotes (cork acorns) alone!  We were told that our arrival time would coincide with cork harvesting season so of course we were excited to see the process of tree bark to wine bottle cork.

We crept our way up to the kitchen, found some sliced bread and guinea hen eggs and made some breakfast.  Have you even had a guinea hen egg?  The little suckers have shells so thick that you have to bash them on the counter several times just to crack the dang thing, but once it is in the pan then on your toast over easy like, those orange yolks and firm whites are one of the best eggs you will ever eat!

After breakfast, our hostess, Brin, came in asking if we wanted to go into the pueblo with her; she had to run an errand and then pick up her daughter from school.  We were curious what the countryside looked like and of course the pueblo itself so we hopped in the car and headed into San Vicente.

It had been six years since I left Barcelona after living there for almost two years so I was excited to exercise my very much out of shape Spanish.  After doing a little shopping, (sunscreen, shampoo, soap, etc.), we met Brin and the first victim of my Spanish, an older gentleman named Ilario, at a little bar next to her daughter’s bus stop. 

Blood Sausage

Many Spanish cities are getting away from the tradition of serving a free tapa (plate of small bites) with every round of drinks; however, thankfully San Vicente is still a firm believer in snacks with drinks.  Brin clearly stated that if a San Vicente bar decided to stop serving free tapas, the people would riot and the bar would be shut within a week!  Seriously, I’m not sure how these bars stay open anyway…charging $1.50 per glass of beer, wine, or Fanta Limón plus snacks, where do they make their money?  Don’t get me wrong, the tapas aren’t super fancy or anything: chicken wings, chunks of meat on the bone with french fries, sliced blood sausage, salted fava beans, little chunks of stewed rabbit in sauce, etc., but having said that, the locals appreciate their tapa when sipping a cold beer, and expect nothing less. 

This particular day, as confirmed by our bar mate, Ilario, the tapa du jour was pig snout and “smile muscles” slow cooked with lots of paprika (as we quickly found out, paprika and meat are the main ingredients of traditional Extremaduran cuisine).  The soft yet firm texture of the pig snout cartilage (love!) brought up a conversation about the nutritional value of cartilage and skin, which is primarily what we were eating.  It is the opinion of the PigWizard, that combined with a diet rich in fresh fruits and vegetables and a fair amount of exercise, there’s is no need to perpetually avoid the delicious pig or chicken skin “cause it’s so bad for you.”  Guess what?  SKIN IS NOT FAT!  There is a layer of fat under the skin which is virtually rendered out when the meat is cooked properly, leaving you with the substance people pay millions of dollars per year to have injected into their lips, cheeks and chins: collagen.  Bottom line, eating skin is not necessarily bad for you but in fact adds collagen to your body and increases the health of your skin!  (NOTE:  this statement has not been proven by the FDA, especially in reference to particularly fatty birds such as duck and geese.)

Beer+Lemonade=Clara

After a couple of beers and tapas, we headed back to the finca for the, “lunch”, the large midday meal flowing with wine, beer or the refreshing clara (half beer & half lemonade), traditionally eaten at 3:00 pm, and followed by a siesta (nap) before heading back to work.  In our case, since we had not yet started work, after a lil siesta we followed Brin on a tour of the finca.

As we wound our way through the finca, over fences (very few gates actually opened), we realized an underlying theme: the whole place was jury rigged, few permanent solutions (remember the zip ties that held up our shower curtain), mostly temporary fixes, using the odds and ends that lay in random disorganization around the finca to essentially put out the current fire and move on to the next problem.  For my husband, a man who thrives on finding a clever yet permanent solution to any mechanical, structural, architectural problem, the place was truly an emotional roller coaster of kid in the candy shop and a hellhole of frustration.

Borris the Burro

The Pig Domain

Anyway, back to the tour of the finca.  Down a couple of stairs, through a gate, over a fence lived the first set of geese, kept in an enclosure meant to limit their exercise in order to fatten them up, but still give them plenty of room to scurry about as the emotionally fragile and flighty goose will do.  Past the vacant poly tunnel (green house), the huerta (vegetable garden) and a massive coil of lengths and lengths of busted piping, we then met the sheep, four baby black sheep, one black mama, two white females and two white males.  Their bunk mate was the beast that turned out to be my bestest, most favorite buddy on the farm: the white, big eared, fuzzy nosed, moody burro (donkey), Borris.  We moved on to what I came to call the Pig Domain which housed two half Iberian Blackfoot-half mutts.  Although the Iberian Blackfoot pig is historically a mutt breed, these two managed to retain the necessary gene that produces the iconic black toenails that distinguish them as proper Blackfoot pigs. At any time of the day, these two happy pigs could be found lounging in the shade of their huge boulders or splashing in their concrete piggy swimming pool.

Downstairs Chickens

The Moronic Guinea Fowl

On to the “downstairs” chickens, the name given to the chickens kept at the bottom of the hill on which the finca sits.  Approx 12 free range chickens, including a breed sans neck feathers (kinda u-g-l-y!) and 4 roosters (Brin was convinced two were gay as they had not been able to produce any fertile eggs when penned with her best layer).  Housed with the chickens was another gaggle of about 10 geese, ruled by one great beast whose gray and white feathers were arranged on his body in a manner reminiscent of a boa flamboyantly wrapped around a ham.  Caged in the corner of the “downstairs” chicken pen were possibly the stupidest beings ever to scatter the face of the earth.  Jonathan told me turkeys are so dumb that they will attempt to romantically pursue a wooden stick as long as it is topped with a dead or fake turkey head.  Guinea fowl are unarguably dumber.  As you approach the enclosure, they frantically launch their little heads through the bars of their cage attempting to escape while conveniently failing to remember that the last time they attempted this escape method, they were thwarted by their huge bodies that no way fit through the holes in the cage!

Cosmo the Kitten Stalks Sam

After the “downstairs” chickens, we moved on to the leghorns, yes, as in Warner Brothers’ Foghorn Leghorn.  Eight beautiful, bountiful egg laying, pure white chickens with red heads.  The leghorns’ neighbors were housed over a fence, past one of the four finca wells and a heap of odds and ends and surrounded by God knows what.  They are the sweet faced blond and brown bunnies: 16 babies and 6 adults, two mamas with litters on the way.  Gooshie, cuddly, squishy, baby bunny faces!  Following us on our tour were the two sweet and loving finca dogs, Marta and Filly (short for Filamina).  As the weeks progressed, Marta followed me everywhere whether I was feeding this animal or that animal or just dropping into the kitchen for a snack…puppy love!  Also imminently present around the perimeter of the house were archenemies, Sam, the lean, beautiful, gray, cross-eyed, jealous cat and Cosmo the scruffy, sweet, scrappy, hard-knock kitten.  Cosmo never tired of provoking Sam despite the hissing and kitty death-threats.

"Keep this mangy kitten away from me!" - Sam

As she showed is the lay of the land, Brin told us a little bit of history of the finca and their ownership.  Ten years ago, she and her husband were living in Brighton, England when they decided that their dream was to own a small holding of animals and farmland so they packed their bags into a van destined for Spain in search of more affordable land.  On the last day of their trip they found La Finca Los Tres Alcornoques, which came stocked with sheep so they promptly sold their house in Brighton and purchased the finca for 1/5th the price of their house.  For the next 8 years, they went back and forth with the San Vicenten builder, whose access was limited to rural Extremaduran tools and skills, trying to explain their ideas for a more English style house.  This turned out to be quite a feat, especially given the traditional Extremaduran mind set of building the way they've always built and why would you want to do anything different?  Despite their communication breakdowns and conceptual differences, they managed to build the addition to the original house, which included a pool, the main kitchen, and what was ultimately meant to be a rentable apartment with separate kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, where we currently slept.  

A couple of years ago, when Spain fell into "crisis" Brin's husband lost his job in San Vicente and was forced to return to the UK to work.  Needless to say, there has been no money for renovations on the finca much less to complete the apartment, hence the light fixtures hanging from the walls and the zip ties holding up the shower curtain.  The total disarray of the house and surrounding animal enclosures, random materials piled up around the finca with the intention of use someday made a little more sense to us.  For the last year or so Brin has been relying on HelpX for some relief from single-handedly running the 4 hectare (9.88 acre) finca and raising a strong-willed, headstrong 7 year old.  Boy to we have our work cut out for us!