Last summer
Since our last blogpost a lot of things have been moving in the right direction, slowly, and as always with a few setbacks. As we have said in our last blogpost, the road to the land was our number 1 priority this summer. And so, we contacted several companies to see what they would advise us and what the costs would be.
Apparently it’s going very well with the local road building businesses, because one of them didn’t want to give us a price yet, because they wouldn’t have time for another 3 or 4 months. Anyway, we decided to continue with a company that had time and wasn’t too pricy. In about 2,5 days time they took out a lot of bushes and trees, flattened the worst parts of the road, broke through a few walls and made ramps over the last 2 walls. Making a road in rocky terrain is apparently a breeze, with the proper equipment. Of course the road was far from perfect, but it was now possible to reach the land by car. Without risking a trip to the car garage.
And then gota fria happened. Not just once, but 3 times in 2 months. These intense rainshowers washed away the topsoil on 2 parts at the end of our new road. So now we have small, rocky gulleys of about 40 centimeters deep. Which makes a trip over our road a peril to your tires once again. Luckily the gulleys are not very long, so it will not be a problem to fix them!
During the summer Maja worked in a frozen yoghurt store in Peñíscola. This meant she had long days of about 12 hours with a 4 hour break in between, the siesta. While I spend my mornings working on the land, pruning the olive trees and watering the new trees and our vegetable garden. And in the evening I did my amo de casa things! Groceries, cleaning, preparing food. Amo de casa or ama de casa for women, literally love of the house, is the Spanish word for housekeeper. We think it has a pretty nice ring to it!
Working on the land was warm this summer. Our region experienced two short heatwaves, with 42 degrees Celsius on the warmest day! That is fine when you are near the pool or chilling at the beach with a nice sea breeze, but you can’t carry water bottles in scorching sun for too long. So some of our newly planted trees died from heat and drought stress. Besides this, also the wildlife wasn’t too friendly on our new plants. Rabbits and squirrels caused some minor leaf damage, but that was the least of my worries. Two young trees were dug out by javelinas, wild boar, looking for water. I hope to replace them in autumn. After the heavy rains everything is doing extremely well. The mulberry, oranges, pomegranates and lemons are all growing rapidly and so are our vegetables.
Sunday the 27th of October we had 25 hours to celebrate Maja’s 25th birthday. Thanks for that daylight saving time! Congrats doll 😀 As always she loved every minute of it and looks forward to the next! Some of you might spot a hint of sarcasm in that sentence and guess what, you are totally right! For her birthday we went on a little daytrip to a nearby village called Vilafamés. We will soon write more about this village and its sights in a separate blogpost.
The best news is that we have to share is that we have received the permission to build a well! So hopefully water will be less of a problem next summer. Besides, we need a well to be able to build a house. I already visited the land with a well builder, who drove his truck over our damaged road as if it was a highway, that has pinpointed several possible locations for the well. The only problem is that the truck to drill the well is a lot bigger than the one he used to drive to the land. Which brings us back to our main priority. We have to improve the road! So the last few days I have been busy breaking boulders, carrying rocks, filling holes, rebuilding walls and pruning branches hanging over the road. So that by the end of the month we can hopefully drill for water.
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