13 november 2007 - Its olive harvest time again. The summer was dry from midMay to mid September, but the spring was fairly wet so the olives are healthy. We'll soon know how many kilos there are. This year we can take them to an organic mill.
3 december 2006 - The olive harvest is in - 600K which gave us 98 liters of oil. Not a great conversion rate, but not bad. The drought certainly affected the amount of oil, plus it increased the pests as the trees wre so stressed & the weather so hot and dry. For the first time we had problems with the white fly, hopefully the winter cold will kill them.
15 september 2006 - Finally! Rain! We´d almost forgotten what is was like. Over 100 liters in 3 days. A good start to refill the water reservoirs. A couple if days of sun and everthing will be green again.
9 august 2006 - finally a tiny bit of rain, 12 liters per m2, in 10 minutes. It´s been so hot that the tomatoes don´t ripen and the peppers and eggplant don´t set fruit. Atleast we have lettuce for salads and some green beans the other day.
30 June 2006 - 5 months with nary a rain drop. We´ve been watering the fruit trees since Abril and we´re pretty tired of it. We´ve lost most of the trees we planted last fall/winter due to the 1, 2 punch of frost and then drought. Since midJune we've been in the 90s with wind coming up from Africa. Looks like it'll be a long, hot, dry summer.
19 Abril 2006 - Well, the weather must have heard me and decided to misbehave - three consecutivenights of frost have deprived us of basically all the fruit we expected. The cherries, walnuts and almonds have all turned black and the other fruit that was just setting has dropped. Looks like we might get a few apples and pears as they hadn´t started to set, but thats all.
27 March 2006 - the show has begun, all the fruit trees except the apples & pears are in bloom! The almond blossoms are falling, it always amazes me how you can see the almonds starting to form. The cherry blossoms smell so sweet. If the weather behaves, we should have bumper fruit crops this year.20 March 2006 - seems spring is finally here - the daffadils and almond trees are in bloom and the wind is definately warmer. This year even the forsithia is in bloom (last year was so dry that the forsithia didn´t even bloom). We´ve had a long, gray winter and it´s good to see the sun again and notice the days getting longer. Thank goodnes it´s no longer dark when I get up at 6:30 to have some breakfast before feeding the animals and heading off for work (always arriving late).End January 2006 - What a strange month its been, 50 litres of rain in the middle of a normally dry month and now aover a foot of snow 2 days in a row. It took us a couple of hours Saturday to clear the way and and then Saturday night it snowed again! See the foto in the yard series.20 March 2006 - seems spring is finally here - the daffadils and almond trees are in bloom and the wind is definately warmer. This year even the forsithia is in bloom (last year was so dry that the forsithia didn´t even bloom). We´ve had a long, gray winter and it´s good to see the sun again and notice the days getting longer. Thank goodnes it´s no longer dark when I get up at 6:30 to have some breakfast before feeding the animals and heading off for work (always arriving late).End January 2006 - What a strange month its been, 50 litres of rain in the middle of a normally dry month and now aover a foot of snow 2 days in a row. It took us a couple of hours Saturday to clear the way and and then Saturday night it snowed again! See the foto in the yard series.March 2007Finally the construction people have come and in 1 weekend they (Javi & Jose) have tiled the green bathroom and raised half the brick wall behind the stairs. Unfirtunately we hadn´t ordered enough bricks and they couldn´t finish it until the rest arrive. We´ve ordered the tiles for all the bathrooms - the ones we first chose were 1000€ per bathroom (guess we have good taste) so we had to look some more. In the end we like what we finally bought, tho the others would have been nicer.January 8, 2007I took a day off work and painted the fourth bedroom - blue. Now only one more bedrrom left (yellow). Javi´s been chipping away at the double stone wall to open a passageway from the dining room of the house to the sun room. There´s a photo of the large stones he´s removed. But he´s barely started.December 10, 2006The wrought iron stair railing has been installed (30 meters). Now, of course, it has to be painted (by me ...). It has 50 bars and 10 posts and the first of 2 coats of paint took me all day.Javi´s installing the double waste water system - 1 for the toilets which feeds to the septic tank, and the other for the sinks & showers that feeds outside to water trees (they have to be mulched).The exterior stucco is finished and I´ve painted 2 other bedrooms - lilac and peach.August 1, 2006The first bedroom is painted, light green. Now to grout the floor tiles.July 6, 2006The electrical installation is in, except for the outlets in the kitchen. They even installed the flourescent light in the garage, so now when I park the car at night in the winter I can see where I´m going!Javi is finishing the exterior stucco on the west wall and cementing the bathroom walls (prior to tiling).May 15, 2006The plastering is finally finished! What a difference! now the clean up ...March 16, 2006We´re having the upstairs walls & ceilings plastered.March 1, 2006We´re now chipping away the channels for the electrical wiring in the brick walls. Boy is it a dusty job!Currently the following animals live at our farm:
- some 30-odd hens, mainly of local varieties (Pota Blava del LLobregat, L'Empordunesa and Penedesenca)
- 3 roosters, 2 of which were hatched here
- 3 female goats - Mama and her twins born at the farm (Petita and Gorda)
- 1 smelly male goat - Gitano
- 1 young Catalan Ruc (Burro) - Campiona (she was born the day after the Barça won some championship)
- 5 cats - Mimí, Boots 2, Spot, Harlequin and Tito. The first 4 are brothers & sisters and the fifth just joined in one day. Boots 2 is named after Mom, but she disappeared after we paid to have her spayed. Originally we thought Boots 2 was Mom (named Boots!), until one day we realized the cat we were calling Boots was male! So he became Boots 2.
They all live together, tho sometimes the goats and burro step on the chickens, the cats are better at getting out of the way.
Near the house we have 3 female dogs and 1 male:
- Star (German Shepherd)
- Negra (Black Shepherd)
- Soca, Negra's daughter
- Rayo, a small yappy thing
Plus we have an indoor cat, Mini, who, now that she´s been allowed in the house refuses to go outside.