I live in Spain; we moved here some six years ago, and one of the many reasons for doing so was that the climate was so much better than the one we had previously enjoyed in the UK. My lasting memory of our final winter in Manchester was of grey skies, and prolonged showers from September until we left the following February.
We did not come here for the sun, although it played it's part, we came here because the growing season is so much longer. What does not grow well in the heat of the summer, flourishes in the winter, and vice-versa. Lettuce for Christmas Day = no problem.
We could not have hoped to be able to grow all the vegetables that we wanted to in the climate, and also in the amount of land that we could afford in England. Here, we have seven acres to go at. Admittedly, it is not all arable, being covered for the most part in olive trees, but you can grow a lot on half an acre of well-irrigated deep beds.
Seems a long way and quite an upheaval just to grow vegetables when we could just buy them. Yes but, I have a strongly held belief that all vegetables have a season, and that they should be consumed within that time. Not for me the 'cardboard' tomatoes in January, picked green and artificially ripened during their costly journey from warmer climes. This sort of food is bereft of nutrients and vitamins, and taste.
I also firmly believe that modern commercial methods of farming are not sustainable for the planet, and are storing up problems for later. The aggressive use of weed-killers, fertilisers and pesticides are creating crops that are weaker than their less-dependent ancestors, and furthermore are a container for an extremely hazardous mixture of chemicals. These cocktails are not only finding their way into our bodies but also the natural ecosystems surrounding the land on which they are grown. Not to mention the amount of fuel that is consumed in the process.
"Grow-your-own" is where we are now. When we have to buy fruit and vegetables, then we buy from local grocers, who in turn have been supplied from local farms. The less food miles the better, both in freshness and also in cost. We compost as much as we can; 200 olive trees, although evergreen, still produce a lot of leaves. The olive farmers here burn their fallen leaves and they spray weed-killer two or three times a year on their land. Studies have shown that land covered with weeds retain much more moisture than those clean olive fincas of which the Spanish are so fond.
When the rain comes (and boy, does it ever), the whole lot shoots off the clean farms and into the rivers. It seems to hang around a whole lot more on our land.
One of my friends here has told me that he has spent over €1000 on chemicals for his olive farm this year, and we have not reached the harvest yet. If you add in the time spent actually treating the trees with this potent brew, then it is much more. His profit will be greatly reduced this year. He was surprised when I mentioned that I do not spray for anything. What about pests? What about leaf drop?
I do have problems with pests and leaf-drop but not on the scale that he would like to believe. Furthermore, whilst I may have less fruit from my trees, it is not going to be €1000 worth, and I am not poisoning the environment, and myself into the bargain.
If you leave these pests alone, and they become too many, then Nature will send a 'bigger bug to bite them'. If you spray some chemical on them, it may alleviate the problem for the moment, but may well hasten in something worse. Let Nature sort it out, it has been doing quite well for a number of years.
We do not spray anything on our land, plants or bushes. Our weed-killers are a family of five goats, who cost almost nothing to feed and fertilise our land wherever they roam. They may well eat their weight in olives at the moment, but in time they will provide for even more fruit from the trees with their excretions.
We are beginning to see a small shift away from the dependence on these chemicals here, but it is 'poc a poc', or bit by bit. There are however more people beginning to consider that maybe the days before chemicals were simpler and less costly.
Our hens eat the scraps and greens that we throw out, as well as some grain; we have to buy this in at the moment, but have trialled some sweetcorn this year, and will growing it mostly for the hens next year. We compost their 'dirty straw' full of nitrogen and this in turn helps grow more greens for them. A nice, neat circle. Oh and we have fresh eggs every day.
In John Seymour's Guide to Self-Sufficiency he states that the most fertile farms were those using the 'high farming' methodology of the 18th Century. Good crop rotation, and each crop or animal contributed to the fertility of the whole. Without the addition of fertilisers brought in from elsewhere, mono-cropping cannot hope to achieve anything comparable in production per acre.
In our own small way, we are beginning to see the benefits of this 'high farming' and it costs nowt!
La Dieta Mediterranea contributed greatly to the health of this nation in days gone by but increasingly faster food is beginning to replace it. The slow foods of their grandparents are being superseded by the supermarket shoppers of today. "Why cook a tomato sauce from scratch when you can save time by buying our ready-made tomato sauce" was the main thrust of an advert on the television recently. Why indeed, well if you do not know, just read the list of ingredients.
There is another advert for a popular pizza company which appears to stress the home-grown element of all the main ingredients of their pizzas "just like mamma made", but what is not shown is that the majority of the ingredients are all sourced from large concerns; the inevitable face of global consumerism and growth.
Take a moment to have a look at the contents of the salt that you put into your salt cellar. Here in Spain, it almost universally comes with an anti-caking agent, in our case E536.
Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticaking_agent ) informs me that E536 is in reality Potassium Ferrocyanide - but it's OK as "Potassium ferrocyanide is nontoxic, although upon contact with strong acid it can release toxic hydrogen cyanide gas."
Nice having that in your body. Don't put too much vinegar on your chips if you have added salt!
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