Good Soil and Access to Water: A Reflection

We are approaching a year of living in a country home in the Girona province about an hour north of Barcelona. Last year at this time we lived a bit south in what is considered some of the best, richest farm land in Catalunya. As it happens, though, that was not our experience.

The only other time in our lives that we had attempted a garden was a small section at our house in California. We cleared a small area and worked it and planted tomatoes and chives and maybe a handful of other things. We did nothing to treat the land, because we honestly thought that dirt was dirt and was fertile in its mere existence. We watered infrequently and inconsistently. In the end, the few tomatoes we got were eaten by our precious dog on the exact day they were ripe to pick. Everything but the chives died without doing much, and lived until the day we left. All of this to say, we did no research nor had any experience.

Last year, we moved into a small garden plot that we rented from a private owner along the riverbed in Caldes de Montbui. After getting it all cleaned up (read more about that here). We had spent the better part of a year working alongside a farmer friend and now it was our turn to get started. It appeared to have everything we needed so we got started planting. We quickly discovered that the water tanks didn't retain water nor could we get enough pressure to water by flooding the canals. The dirt appeared to be ok, but we really did nothing special to prepare beyond some tilling and weeding. So, once the summer hit at 90+ degrees, the combination of spent soil and lack of water, we had an atrocious crop. The 60 tomato plants barely produced 5 kilos combined and died in July. When we moved out to our current location, the non-producing pepper plants were still alive, so we uprooted them and they actually began to grow peppers for the remainder of the season in flower planters next to the house.

This year, I have been pleasantly surprised by how well the garden is going. I honestly expected that our plants would just die like they always had because I was bad at tending the garden. The neighbor, Josep, keeps complaining about things not growing well, but looking outside of the window and seeing our plants green and growing bigger brings joy to my heart. And, I know they will produce in time, the signs and the flowers are there. All this wasn't magical, though. We worked hard. Josep isn't wrong, though, he has been here for 70 years and the growing season is changing and some crops just don't grow like they used to. All of his fruit either has has disease or gets eaten by bugs and birds before he can use any of it.

In the lower garden, we began clearing the weeds by hand in September and turned the soil with hoes in the hot summer sun, adding soil that had been left by the previous tenant for marijuana plants and a bit of sheep manure. When it came time to expand the lower garden, we started throwing our wood ash from the fireplace and let the chickens have free reign over the area for about a month prior to running the rototiller and fencing it in.

The upper garden was always planned to be our summer garden. It is tucked in right next to the house and only has sun in the summer months. it had been the owner's summer garden 30 years ago but had been left to become a grassy patch in recent years. Josep came by and did a rough till of it in February and we left if for the chickens until late April, adding wood ash every time we emptied the fireplace. The chickens spent hours picking over the land, pooping and scratching. Now, it holds our tomatoes, corn, peppers, green beans and pumpkins. Even the starts that seemed too small to transplant are out there and thriving.

We are still using public water as there is no supply free water available. The next project is installing some rain gathering solutions to drop the water bill for the coming year. Hopefully for the fall we will be able to take advantage of the compost we have been creating over the last year as well!

So, with good soil, and plenty of water to survive the hot summer days, we are seeing and eating the fruits of our labors!

Happy Accidents in the Garden Part 2 (Jeff's Version)

We sat down to write two different blog posts and when we traded them to read each other's, we discovered we had basically written the same post. So we decided to post both, from each perspective. Enjoy!

We rented a little garden in our town of Caldes de Montbui. It’s a fully mediterranean climate with 4 olive trees growing down the middle. It cost us 50€ a year and isn’t much more than 200m2. Our first job was to clean the whole space. It was piled high with years of weeds that had been chopped, and mixed into that were mountains of plastic and garbage. We even found the back door of a refrigeration truck amidst the brambles of an overgrown blackberry bush. The owner told us we had to practice organic farming, but how can one be organic when throwing so much plastic and garbage into the mix?

As we finally got the ground cleared, we found a patio next to the small shack and could see just how much space we actually had to work with. It was clear that many things had just been left to grow wild and pile up. While being extremely hard work, it was incredibly rewarding to see the potential of the space.

Upon clearing the ground, the weeds began to grow. While walking though with our friend, Gerard, he bent over excitedly and said, “Es manzanilla!” It’s chamomile! He bent over, picked the small leaf and chewed it. I did the same, and I could taste the very distinct sweetness of the chamomile in my mouth.

About 8 years ago, during a routine medical check, the doctor informed me that I had extremely high blood pressure. I’ve had to change my diet, begin exercising, and at times, cut out coffee. With the subtraction of coffee, I switched to drinking chamomile infusions every morning.

So, right then and there, we decided to leave certain sections of the chamomile to grow wild and see what happened. Well, we didn’t have to do much, the chamomile has grown out of control and we often have to remove plants because they just don’t stop.

As the flowers began to appear in the spring, we have picked the heads off and set them to dry, letting the plant live to produce more flowers. We can pick for a couple of hours at a time and usually only have a coffee can worth of flowers to show for it, but the flavour is worth it.

So far, we are only using it for tea. There are a myriad of health benefits and the plant self germinates every year, so all we have to do is choose where we want it to grow and we will always have a crop. We hope to continue discovering all the uses of the plant so we can further take advantage of its healing properties.

So, while trying conventional vegetable growing, we are finding the benefits of learning what the ‘weeds’ are which may carry some benefit and value.

Happy Accidents in the Garden

We moved outside the city of Barcelona hoping to learn more about farming. We are still living in an apartment at the moment, but about 7 months ago we began renting a little plot of land in our town where there are many private gardens. Back in October when we were first given the keys to the space, we spent a lot of time simply cleaning it. There were weeds up to my forehead and lots of trash and broken equipment just laying around. There was only one small space of a garden at that time, but as we began to uncover the earth and land, we began discovering things.

One of the exciting finds was that we had a tiled patio just off of our tool shed. I think I legitimately leapt for joy at the sight of it. We cleaned it up quickly and put a table with chairs there. We carried load after load of trash up the hill to the garbage dumpsters, there were numerous plastic bottles in our garden (don't worry, we recycled those), and random wheels and metal bars...it was a mess.

Once the trash was out, we started working with the soil. There are two separate parts of our garden separated by 4 olive trees. As we raked up leaves and clippings, we spread them over one side of the garden as our plan was to use it for Spring/Summer so we wanted to keep the soil moist and healthy.  We had no clue what was under all the debris and weeds so we weren't very careful as we cleaned. Luckily for us, plants are very strong and resilient. What we found at the very end of winter was that we had raked over calla lily plants and damaged them badly. We saw other calla lilies in our town so we knew they grew here, and as we watched others in town blooming and getting tall, nothing was happening with ours.

...Until...it did! Those calla lily plants fought their way back to life and grew big and tall producing so many beautiful white flowers. We've even given some away to friends and cut them and put them in vases in our home.

As we weeded and tidied up, we noticed a fresh, sweet, familiar smell coming from the ground. We had stumbled upon several small mint plants that looked incredibly healthy with a deep green color. Since uncovering the mint, we have dug up a few plants and given them to friends who are planting it on their terraces and in their gardens.

Another herb that was lingering under the middle olive tree was parsley. It was a small plant with only a few leaves when we first discovered it, and now it is practically a bush, lush and full! This has been a great find as many recipes use fresh parsley for cooking and it's easy to grab some whenever we need it.

I'm unsure if these things were planted at one time by another gardener years before us, or if the seeds were carried over by birds, or if this was just what was growing wild once upon a time.

The most recent discovery we have made is probably our favorite one, just after we cleaned the garden and had planted some spring pea seeds, a friend of ours noticed a new weed that was coming up. He bent down to grab it and put it in his mouth. 'Creo que es manzanilla!' he exclaimed. Manzanilla is Spanish for chamomile, a tea infusion we drink almost daily at home. Fast forward 4 months later, we have bushes and bushes of chamomile growing wild in our garden. We are just finishing drying the first big batch and hope to begin selling it to friends and neighbors. We are enjoying the excess of this beautiful plant and I am enjoying a cup of it right now.

And last, but certainly not least, our roses are heavenly. I trimmed back the rose bush we have in the back of our garden in the winter and it is out of control with big beautiful peach and pink roses that smell better than any I've smelled before. We cut them for every room in the house and still the bush is full of blooms every day.

Even without planting a single seed, we had an active garden that was giving us herbs and flowers. It's been 7 months of learning and looking and having patience with the land and then, just now, we are beginning to receive in huge abundance.

Changes

The internet is so helpful, as we are learning and discovering more about gardening, farming, and homesteading, I can glean so much information from those who have gone before us.

Except for one small part; our terrain, our climate, our country.

Just over 6 years ago, we moved from California to Barcelona. We lived in the city for several years, and it wasn't until recently that we made the decision to leave the city and move to the country. We had been talking about wanting to learn to become more sustainable and care for our own plants and animals in a greater way, there's only so much 'gardening' you can do in the city, and only so many pets you can care for. Originally, we thought the farming idea was our retirement plan. We talked about it like it was off in the future, our reward for doing life. And as we continued to talk about it, the dream became more and more of a reality.

...But...

Everything is harder when you're an expat. So moving just 20 miles outside of Barcelona felt huge. And studying to get our driver's license here feels like a milestone. The little things we take for granted living in the culture we grew up in feel like the biggest feats here.

And that is why we thought about starting this blog, because possibly, just maybe, there are other English-speaking expats out there who are learning about the same things we are learning about and we can share information. We live just outside of Barcelona which means we experience the hot Mediterranean summers and slightly cooler winters the more north you are, due to the mountain ranges (Pyrenees). Inland tends to be slightly drier and hotter in Summer, and nights are cooler than the coast.

As we learn about our soil and climate and what things grow well and when to plant different seeds, we will share our findings and hopefully this can be a helpful tool and an open dialogue with other 'wanna-be' farmers out there.

Our long-term project goal is to have a Bed & Breakfast/Farm where we can practice sustainability and continue to learn, while providing hospitality (my passion) and integrate it with the earth and plants and creatures. We will share as we venture into this process.

Figuring It Out

‘We are just kind of figuring it out as we go along’, I say pretty often these days as I reconnect with friends who are living in the U.S. They are interested in our country life, wondering how we are doing having moved from a flat in the heart of a busy city to where the forest meets the mountains. We are trying to become more and more sustainable. Spring is just around the next bend and we are beginning to plant starts and imagine growing our garden, flock, and maybe even build a barbeque. We are trying to figure out the healthy balance between hosting people and events, and just being the two of us alone. We are always cold these days, the winter sun is bright and warm, but not enough to change the temperature of the house enough to warm our bones. We recently found out the hard way how expensive heating is, and are seeing it as a new challenge to overcome. How do we stay warm, what is the most efficient and cost effective way to heat the house? 

The days are growing longer and longer and I know that as soon as we have that question answered, it will be time to figure out how to keep the house cool and keep mosquitos out. There will always be new challenges, but it doesn’t feel daunting. It feels hopeful and exciting to be constantly learning. It feels like we are learning a new trade, but it’s just learning how to live, how to do life with the living things around us. We are learning how to go back to basics, the thing we abandoned years ago when factories and consumerism conquered the world. People learned how to take the ‘easy way out’ by having machines do it for them, then they were able to work more and more hours in offices designing computers and then the corporate world boomed and the dot com world took off, and what was made ‘easier’, in effect became ‘harder’, and the need and desire to produce, produce, produce took over.  

When I visit the U.S., I have learned that when you say you are ‘busy’, what that actually means is that you are important. The busier you are, the more important you are. But what people don’t realize, is that the busier they are, the more they miss out on life and love and spirituality and just the people around them. Slower life isn’t always easier, but it is always more rewarding. When you make time for connections to the earth, to people, to plants and animals, depth happens and your soul gets filled. In the lives of busy people, their souls are ignored. 

I want a soul that gives and receives, that is full and deep. I want time to notice the generosity and kindness around me, and time to be generous and kind. That takes thought, which takes time. So I think I’d rather be judged for being slow or ‘un-productive’ rather than soulless and unkind. And that, we are just figuring out as we are going.