With daily attention inevitably circling around all that still needs to be done to convert this land into a fully productive, self-sufficient and sustainable source of food and shelter, sometimes it’s good to stop for a breath or two. Stop and glance backwards to see how far we’ve come. Preferably at breakfast time, when there’s fresh strawberries and redcurrants to savour …
Strawberry time. Last year I planted about half a dozen strawberry plants brought from our garden in Scotland, plus another half dozen or so gifted from friends. This spring many of the offshoots they produced were spread about the quinta (as they will be every year) and today we harvested the first bowlful. Discovering patches of ripe strawberries you’d almost forgotten you planted just has to be one of the greatest pleasures of growing your own! Somehow it’s even better than picking them from the beds you’ve carefully sown and nurtured.
This quinta has an amazing abundance of fruit. When we first saw the property back in November, the trees were mostly bare and it was hard to identify precisely what was here apart from olives, vines (both grape and kiwi), and the evergreen loquats with their distinctive foliage. January wasn’t much better, though by then it was possible to see what citrus fruits we had growing, and the persimmons (Sharon fruit) were ripe. Now with everything bursting into life, it’s becoming a lot easier to figure out everything else.
I intended to spend a good half day mapping out the terraces and noting what was growing where, taking photos of the trees so I could identify what they were later if I couldn’t at the time. But as is the way of these things, the camera batteries died on me after only a few trees’ worth and I hadn’t brought spares this time.
Here are some that I did capture though.
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