Hello Friends and Family,
This here is my first ever blogamajig thingy, and I thought it would be a useful format for keeping in contact with you`all while I am in Spain for four months. In addition to stories I plan on putting photos and audio that I´ve recorded up here. I also want to keep it personal so if you comment, or write me I will make sure to write you back.
I´ve been in Spain for over a week now. I flew from Seattle to London, and then London to Madrid and arrived very tired from not having slept enough. My first night I found a bed in a hostel, met a Mexican guy named Al, and went on various Metro trains underground. Al and I went looking for the three kings parade, which is a huge event in Spain, and is celebrated as the time to give gifts instead of Christmas. The three kings throw candy from their floats. When I saw a bit of it on TV a king was hit in the face by some candy that someone apparently didn´t like.
The next day I took a bus to Granada, and then a bus to Orgiva, which is pronounced or-he-va. Orgiva is a small town up in the Alpujarra mountains that has attracted many hippies, and new-age aficianados. The place is overrun with British people and other ex-patriots, and I´ve come to discover that Spain is kind of like the sunny California, Florida, or Mexico of Europe in terms of tourism and retirement. Many Brits are driven to escape the rain and cold like I have and come to Spain for the warmth and sun.
Mathis, a german who has founded a farm here picked me up on his motorcycle and I rode up with him to his farm to meet his wife Mariane and then to surprise Eliza and Megan who were sleeping in the yurt. Mathis and Mariane met while living at the Findhorn community in Scotland and they decided to move to Spain because it had better weather for farming. They grow olives for oil, and harvest oranges which they sell to CSAs around Findhorn. They have 3 kids, Bierta 11, Milan 10, and Florina 2. Bierta and Milan are already trilingual. They speak Swiss-german with their mother who is Swiss, german with their father, and English with the wwoofers and at their Waldorf school. They are also learning Spanish, and are all blond.
Everyday we would have breakfast at 8 or 8:30, then pile into the giant blue ¨lori¨ or as we Americans call it, ¨truck¨ and we would drive down to a farm closer to town to harvest olives. The couple that owned the farm are British and were to busy to harvest this year since they sell real estate and have a business helping foreigners move to Spain. I quickly learned the trade of olive harvesting, which is basically laying out big screen nets under the trees and then violently whacking and shacking the branches and olive clusters with long (7-15 foot) bamboo poles, thus making the olives fall on the net. One could also climb up into the tree to shake it and whack from a different angle. There were many jokes going around about putting your long stick into the bush and shaking it... Then we would gather up the olives in the middle of the net and sort through them picking out the twigs and leaves before putting them into a crate.
In addition to Eliza, Megan, and Mathis I was working with a multilingual woman from Holland named Anna, who had been a shepard in Israel, and rode elephants in Africa to look for poachers. And I also worked with a couple, Tony from Ireland who does Ear acupuncture, and Vicki who taught us many cool british slang words like ¨Mingin¨ which means someone or something that is very ugly and smells bad. We taught her the word ¨Bangin,¨ as in ¨Man that olive tree is bangin.´¨ They both live in Glastonberry Orgiva´s hippy sister-city in England. Tony gave us Ear Acupunture on our last day.
One hard thing about that farm was that the food was mostly vegetarian, and for breakfast and lunch consisted of thick multi-grain bread with toppings of avocado and tahini. Dinners were usually very good though. I often felt protein deficient though. Another thing that´s been a challenge for me is that I have really bad Hay Fever allergies here, mostly due to the olive trees I think, because it was worse when I was up in the trees amongst all of the dust coming off of the leaves.
Yesterday we left La Jimena and Mathis´s family and went one ridge over to another wwoof farm, where we will be for a week. This farm is owned by an older queer woman from London named Kate. She has been living here for 11 years, and also sells her olive oil in the UK. She seemed a bit gruff and stressed with our arrival, mainly I think because she already had four other wwoofers there. But two are leaving today, and then we have the weekend off and start working on Monday. Kate has already harvested her olives so we will be working on building projects and other things, which should be a nice change. I´m excited about learning different building techniques, especially the stone buildings that the moors built which are still here. I also will be able to take care of Kate´s white donkey ¨Burra¨.
Eliza and I are staying in a small moorish stone hut by a Eucalyptus grove and a creek. Yesterday I heard the sound of many bells ringing, and I thought that it was people playing music, but when I looke out across the canyon I saw a giant hurd of goats! They and their shepard came down to the creek and I went out to greet them. The shepard had an awesome mullet, and seemed like a metal dude. He told me that he had about 100 goats mas o menos, and a few sheep. He also had four dogs. Many of the goats had very full udders....mmmmm goat milk....
That´s all for now, check out my pictures in the photo gallery, and keep checking for updates. I´ll write you back if you write me.
love,
Tyler
