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!)