Aranjuez 2

And the reason for the one woman blog fest is that I am on holiday for a month, so I've got time to catch up, and pin down my memories afore they disappear.

And because I'm going to be away for the next fortnight, WWOOFing again!

That's tootling off to be a Willing Worker on an Organic Farm - I get country life and board and lodging, and my hosts get cheap enthusiastic labour. As long as everyone's honest about what they can offer, and realistic about what they can expect, it works a treat: townies get a break from urban crowds and noise, and a chance to get some dirt under their fingernails; and organic farmers operating on a tight budget get affordable help in the months when they need it.

Wwoofers also get a chance to learn new skills and explore new ideas. You can WWOOF for a week, or months on end; with one host, or a series across a country - maybe even a continent if you factor in some casual or seasonal work to keep you in petty cash and have something in the bank for contingencies.

And in that time, depending on who you go to, you can acquire hands-on experience of animal husbandry; poultry; planting, cultivation, harvesting, preserving and cooking; traditional and alternative building methods; woodland maintenance, alternative energy; water management - the list goes on.

WWOOF hosts provide details of their land and activities, their location and neighbourhood; when they need help, and how many hours a day and days a week they expect (Some want 8 hours a day, five days a week, some 6/6, some 4/5 or 4/6.); plus info on accommodation (which ranges from a separate cabin, caravan, yurt or tipi, to a shared room and meals with the family); and diet - local, vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic; whether they can accommodate children; how they feel about alcohol, smoking and drugs; and what languages they speak.

Then there's the whole range of personal beliefs and values - it's an 'alternative' lifestyle after all, so while the safety net has a larger mesh than the 9-5 urban lifestyle (9-5? Run that past me again?!) there's more scope for going your own way. Many organic smallholders come from a philosophical base, or are motivated by conscience; others simply want more personal space and control than city life admits; and then others want to focus on the spiritual dimension that city life tends to squeeze out. For every host trying to combine a conventional business - growing food, running a small hotel or offering residential courses in painting, horse-riding or cooking -with raising a family, and a sustainable rural way of life, there's another practising and teaching meditation, holistic therapies, and so forth; and another who wants to restore and reawaken land that has been abandoned, or exhausted by modern farming methods; and another who wants to introduce or experiment with sustainable alternatives where high energy consumption and wasteful building practices and materials have been the norm; and another....... People, you know?!

WWOOF is pretty well worldwide these days, either with national organisations, or, operating through WWOOF Independents for countries that don't have their own organisation - yet! I had to join W.I. in 2006, but WWOOF España has since come on-stream, so I've gone through them this year. Very welcoming. Very thoughtful. The website is in English as well as Spanish, and many hosts provide profiles in two languages. If they don't, you need to have some Spanish!

When I went WWOOFing for the first time a couple of years ago, I had a challenging but very satisfying month in Andalucia, watering and weeding (and picking stones out of) an established huerta (fruit and veg garden), and clearing land for a new one; helping to clear the damage the river had wreaked after freak April hailstorms turned it from a thing of peace and beauty into - into a force of nature; helping a neighbour restore his huerta, which had been obliterated by the river (We were setting iron fence poles into two-foot-deep concrete footings, because the original posts had been swept away). and feeding and watering chickens and doves. I also saw the tragedy of Dutch Elm Disease, discovered that English thorns and burrs - and wasps - have nothing on Spanish thorns, burrs and wasps; discovered the beauty and extraordinary staying power of olive trees; saw pomegranate trees in flower; learnt how to shell walnuts and almonds - in the barn, with a no-messing thumb-squishing hammer - and put up bugscreens, and use a Spanish long-handled dustpan, and a long hoe, and a short sickle; and I also learnt a little bit of Spanish (really useful stuff, like the lombrizo, pared, pozo and hoz -worm, wall, well, and hoe) which has stood me in good stead at job interviews and cocktail parties ever since. And I was very well fed and housed, and really got used to having a swimming pool, and watching swallows play Dambusters in the afternoons when the sun began to let up a teeny bit. By the end of that month, I knew I wanted to do it again, just not in Andalusia in frikkin' July!

This time round I knew what I was looking for, and just needed to match up place, time slot and potentially useful experience. Of course, I've got so little experience, just the balcony plants and a collection of gardening and Earth Garden magazines (plus books on raising chickens and ducks!) that almost anything would be helpful; but I'll only get two chances a year to do this(Holy Week and the summer vacation), so I want to make the most of them.

I have no interest in olive, almond or cork farming (temperature, acreage) or indeed anything commercial - so no ostriches either. We're talking smallholding here, a.k.a. large garden(s).
On the food side, my interests lie with -
Fruit and vegetables - What works where, and how to keep it alive and productive.
Poultry and ducks: ditto, e.g. What kind of ducks do best here (depending on whether 'here' means southern, central or northern Spain!).
Livestock - Do a goat's plus points (milk / cheese / yoghurt / personality / general reprobate charm) outweigh the negative (wanton destructiveness / voracious omniverosity / sly intelligence / traditional representation as devil incarnate)?
Is there an argument or two (milk, wool, meat, fertiliser, weed/grass control) for keeping sheep?
Should we keep a pig (voracious omniverosity / friendly intelligence / pest control / fertiliser / everything-but-the-squeal) or not - (big!) ............?

On the domestic side, I want to see how other people have got on with alternative building materials, energy media and the waste / water management systems I've been reading about. This side will have to wait for now. But I want to try a small-scale 'grey' (bath) water treatment experiment this autumn. I've become rather obsessive about water - use, re-use, quality - in the last couple of years, but that's probably no bad thing these days.

So next week I'm off to a place near Aranjuez, which has 4 hectares of land given over to cereals, fruit trees (I love fruit trees and fruit bushes!) and vegetables. They also have 2 pigs, 2 donkeys, a mare and some chickens. They used to have sheep, but not anymore, which is disappointing, but I'm looking forward to the pigs: they had some tremendous sows at Rice Lane City Farm and Hackney City Farm last summer, and although the breeds will be different, it's all going to be new to me anyway. And mine hosts have been very welcoming and helpful in response to my emails. I'm excited!

Aranjuez

It was only yesterday that I realised I'd never posted our day out in Aranjuez in June. Too busy doing to write. Of course, Habibi is more organised! So here we go.

We walked down from the Moorish style railway station - shades of Toledo - along tree-lined roads, stopping at a corner cafe bar for a break, and then rounded said corner to find we were almost there. The palace of Aranjuez used to be a royal summer residence, an escape from the heat of Madrid. The town is 47km south of Madrid, and 200m lower. It's got a proper river, the Rio Tajo (the River Tagus, en route from Toledo to the sea) - and another one too, as I recall - and it's own micro-climate, which enables local farmers to grow strawberries and asparagus. Which makes it downright lush compared with sun-baked Madrid. In the past, I get the impression that Aranjuez was to Madrid what Kent was to London. - its kitchen garden.

Anyway, what was a royal refuge is now a peaceful, elegant day out for us plebs, about 40 minutes by train (if that) from Madrid Atocha. In the summer months, you can ride on the Tren de Fresas, the 19thC steam train that used to transport strawberries to Madrid, along the line that was built for the purpose. The train staff wear 19thC dress, and serve strawberries to all the passengers. Or, if it's sold out, there's a regular service every 10 minutes or so, all day every day. It was. Ah well.

On the Sunday we went, the town was quiet and closed, apart from the cafe bars and restaurants. The area closest to the palace is quite old, as we discovered when we went looking for lunch, though it has it's share of tall apartment buildings.

Clearly, modern Aranjuez has expanded, but in the opposite direction from the palace and the railway station, which I think is surrounded by farmland - hard to be sure on the basis of a day out! We liked what we saw, and had a very good lunch at a very friendly restaurant - it was on a corner, had a yellow interior and a very nice owner, and I just wish I could remember its name!

We left it rather late for a proper tour of the palace itself, and I for one was more interested in the gardens than the furniture, so we saved the palace, and the porcelain house, the barge house and several other curiosities of royal leisure for another occasion.

NOTE TO SELF FOR NEXT MAY & JUNE. We just missed the Música Antigua Aranjuez, the annual Early Music Festival, this year. The concerts are held at the palace itself. Don't miss next year's festival! P.S. Especially if Jordi Savall & family are on. End of note to self.

Crossing the big cobbled square, and taking time to admire some handsome stone and brick buildings, we passed through a gateway into the first of the gardens.




(Yup, there's a bee in this picture. If you want to know more about the humble bumble, look it up!)



There were statues, bronzes, ponds and fountains everywhere, as part of formal open vistas; or set half-hidden at the end of shady avenues; or tucked away in woodland glades and clearings.

I just love the grin on her face! 'Hey! Just look at me stark naked in the middle of a royal garden!'

...and that sky.....




Now this fellow is Bacchus. Most Bacchus paintings and statues are more Michael Hutchence than - erm - middle aged fat bloke of your choice - but there's a definite ring of truth here. And something familiar......
Here's an impressive water feature. I imagine they wanted to protect the palace from the river.


(Madrid's Rio Manzanares was a proper river in Roman times, and maybe still qualified in the 16thC, when Madrid replaced Toledo as the capital but it hardly counts these days. You can see the attraction of all this rippling cool in the summer's heat.)

In the quiet water downstream there are hundreds and hundreds of fish trying to swim up river. Some just hover in place, holding their position against the current, but others get as far as the first rise, and then there's nowhere to go.

More water. The royal barges used to be moored at the jetty below. One king, who didn't have a war to go to, used to have mini naval battles staged on the lake, with live mini canons. Others just floated around in fancy dress - very special fancy dress.


This is a relic (evidently still in use) of a water mangement system that goes back to the Moors and beyond. Water is directed through acequias (irrigation channels) which can be opened up and shut off at various points, to allow proper irrigation of all parts of a piece of land. Andalucian farmers used to agree responsibility for maintaining their sections of the acequia network, and a schedule for opening and closing the water flow to the different farms on the network.
And another reference to old ways: this apartment building is not so different from the old courtyards that developed into the corrales de comedias of the 16thC and 17thC.

When Londoners were going to the Rose, the Globe and the Curtain to hear the latest from Kyd and Marlowe and Shakespeare, Spaniards were at the corrales de comedia for the latest from Tirso de Molina and Calderón de la Barca. There's still a corral at Almagro in Ciudád Reál, and they have an annual theatre festival.


The Rio Tajo continues beyond the palace walls, with alder, willow and honeysuckle growing wild along its banks.
And you might find the odd toadstool, or skeleton leaf, or eggshell.



Maybe the odd beetle?

If you're into that kind of thing?