An interesting weekend

Hoping to pick up some ideas for our cortijo, this weekend we drove north past Almeria to a project demonstrating alternative technologies. We expected to be able to see various demonstrations of solar drying, solar cookers, dryland crops and so on. Well, it wasn't quite what we expected - it turned out to be somewhat of a new age gathering rather than demos of technologies. But we did have some great vegetarian food, Rodney made some sourdough bread (with the help of a tri-lingual English-Spanish-German five-year-old) and we were given cuttings of lemon grass, mulberry, carob and fig. Oh well!

Glut at Bordaila

Everything comes at once! The garden is producing far more tomatoes, aubergines and courgettes than we can eat. Though we have no problems with the raspberries and sweetcorn. Sweetcorn picked and put straight into the pot is amazingly good.

Plus, there is a good crop of butternut pumpkins for winter soups. The goats once more are rampaging through the grapes on the bottom terrace - the goatherd looked very sheepish as we waved to him as we passed by the camino on our way up last time -this was before we had seen what the goats had done to the grapes. So, we have to consider whether it really is a good idea to grow grapes down there or whether to just concentrate on those near the house. We're not sure what we would do with a lot of grapes anyway - the wine we buy is very good and not expensive.

Although we are experimenting with solar drying, so raisins perhaps.

Summer at the cortijo

August was a busy month. At the end of July the builder, Jacinto came to take out the old fireplace and extend the chimney in preparation for the installation of the new stove. At the same time, he took out the small window in what we call the 'study' and put in a much bigger window. Now the view from that window is wonderful and in winter the sun will warm us as we work (we hope).

After they had finished we painted over the whitewash in the living room and installed some kitchen furniture from Ikea. This took rather longer than anticipated - a return trip to Ikea (Malaga) as the sink was too big for the unit we had planned to pt it in an had to be changed, and many, many trips to ferreterias, and DiY shops for various bits of pipe and connections. The plumbing in the cortijo is somewhat heath robinson and required much ingenuity on Rodney's part to fix the new to the old.

Last Friday, 5 September, the long-planned-for stove arrived. Three men and Rodney carried the 100 kg carcass down the track from the camino! We haven't lit it yet as the cement in the ceiling and at the topof the chimney has to dry first. Plus, we need to chop some wood.