Don’t underestimate the amount of 200 trees and plants

Never underestimate a project, it can even be bigger than you thought it would be. The project of planting new olive trees and grapevines started with a lot of reading and interpretation. Questions like what variety of olives and grapes do we like, which ones are appropriate for this area, what conditions are necessary for this specific variety. How do we need to prepare the soil for the planting. And many more questions. 

Driving a nice tour from Polop to Cocentaina, doing green business. 

Secondly, where will we find our trustworthy and competent supplier(s)? Most of the suppliers you find on the internet have a gamma of trees for decoration in your garden. We are not looking for decoration. Our purpose is to have trees and plants that give us food.  To prepare for oils, wines and marmalades. So we had to talk, question and think a lot to decide where we would go to select our final supplier. This field and desk research both in our current network and even out of it resulted in visiting a grower in remote Cocentaina. A nice one hour drive from our finca. The story is that we visited the grower last Summer for the first time. Our first impression seemed okay. We agreed to come back last September to make things more concrete and do some green business.This second visit was nice, he took us to fields with olive trees and explained a lot about their size and preparation before planting. But at that moment already things were insecure about the variety we wanted, he didn’t commit to our request yet, he kept being very vague. The Spanish way is that they say they will call you whenever they know more. Don’t try to mention any deadlines you want to schedule, they simply don’t care. It appeared necessary to make a third visit in November, we do like tours to have some distraction as well, but things need to be a bit more efficient sometimes. When we were there he started calling colleague growers in front of us, because the specified order didn’t yet work out. Before leaving he assured us that it would work out fine by the time he would deliver in January. Otherwise he would give us a ring. We established a date for delivery. A bit disoriented, unsatisfactory, we drove home.

Commitment is a choice

Now I will shorten the story a bit. In the end all went well but not without a lot of problem solving and asking for help in our network. As you know at this moment olives equal the value of gold and there could have been the possibility that our order had value for others. But knowing a lot of people who at their turn know a lot of people is really of great value if business could go the wrong way. So our grower finally kept his ‘promise’.

To be honest, this was again a challenging project. Because of our good skills in handling difficult situations where it easily could go wrong, our creativity and not least our perseverance. Knowing that preparing the land took many weeks, preparing the soil and also water supply. Secondly, once prepared it needed also to be conditioned. In the third place, once the trees are delivered they need to be planted as soon as possible. 

What more could possibly go wrong?

A very big problem was that the whole order, our more than 200 trees were delivered on a Saturday evening (we agreed on a Thursday morning), luckily our handy daughter and our flexible employee could help with the sudden job. Big surprise for us was, we simply forgot that fact, that in the last months we only have water available during working days, because of the current drought. Luckily my husband had his tractor and filled big barrels with water and transported it to our field with the new trees. 

With clear thinking and common effort we succeeded in having our tree project work.

Nature helps nature, being followed by bees

When you look at the picture you see only stumps of trees. To give the trees the maximum capacity to grow it is needed to cut away all branches and their leaves. The open surface on top of the stump needs to be protected from water and bacterias. The advice was to buy and use some kind of chemical product which I immediately refused, imagine that we run an ecological finca. No chemicals on our land. So, the first thing I did was to put a layer of fresh aloe vera on top of it. After that we put beeswax on it. Nature helps nature. Funny thing was that while we were putting beeswax on it, bees were following us. They liked the smell of the work of their sisters and brothers. On a daily basis I walk on this land with its new trees and feel very happy about the result we made. 

The next three years our new habitants, our trees, don’t need to be pruned, just some water and attention. I am looking forward to it. I imagine, they will become beautiful trees. Imagine they cover the land with their branches and leaves, making a lot of shadows on Mother Earth. Fantastic!!

Vineyard, new grapes

Our extension for grapes is a nice one. In order to avoid a tunnel vision we keep on tasting other wines and try to distinguish the different varieties. So we met a very tasty variety, well known in this area. Professional winemakers in our network happen to use this grape as well, they make lovely wines. But finding this grape was a tricky one. Finally we succeeded. 

Now  I am already looking forward to the first harvest, probably next year. To start the process of perhaps making a beautiful combination with our current white grape. First thing is to grow this new species on our land at Finca Libertad, look how they stand, small and with the blue coat they wear. They have been delivered this way. Our daughter’s first idea was that we had a new type of irrigation. It looks weird but with some time, we always need to be patient, you will see it will grow into beautiful plants. With leaves. And grapes!! Lots of grapes. For lovely wines. Wines from Finca Libertad. Made with love and craftsmanship. 

Our needs for projects are commitment, honesty, passion and a lot of love, mind that.

Warm regards,

Mónica