Lunch with locals, exciting packages & more garden beds

Finca update #4

A little bit of everything, I'm doing a little bit of everything and everything takes much more time than you think. I thought I would need two weeks to clear out out the living area, the area around the caravan and the little casita (the stone house which actually is a tool shed). I'm here now for three weeks and although there's a lot of progress, the job is not done yet.

It might not help that I'm also building garden beds with stones I find on the land and have to carry from one side to the other and that my garden plans are rapidly expanding. Instead of fencing the living area, I want to make edible hedges formed by tomatoes and beans and peas. They also need a garden bed, because the ground is rock hard and covered with gravel. At the same time I started pruning the olive trees (so much fun!) which results in an ongoing supply of branches. Branches I don't want to burn, so I'm processing them by cutting them in smaller pieces. The sticks I can use in the garden or the rebuild the fence around the property.

So yeah, I've been busy and the area starts to open up, but I didn't put up my hammock yet to enjoy the result. Maybe I shouldn't wait till a result, but admire the process from my hammock. Yes, I'll do that today.

Meeting my neighbors

Earlier this week I've been invited to have lunch with some neighbors. An old men, Anjo, regularly passes by my finca when he's going for a stroll. He collects stones and I think he used to search for them in the barranco that crosses my property. We already met before I even lived here. The first time when I camped a few nights on the finca to get a feel for the place, he walked on to the property, surprised to find someone there. In the six years he lived in the village, he never saw anyone at the finca. He was enthusiastic and encouraged me to buy the place. Which I did. And now he introduced me to some of his friends.

Anjo is in his seventies and his friends are maybe 10 or 15 years younger. I'm the young one, but I don't mind. At the moment I'm not really looking for new best friends, it's more important to get just get to know the people that live nearby. I've been alone most of the time here, but got to say that I haven't been bothered by that one single moment. I'm doing really good and I don't feel like I miss something or someone.

I did really enjoy the lunch, Anjo's friends were kind and also a bit eccentric like he is. Marga, a woman from Barcelona hosted the lunch and she really went the extra mile to prepare a vegetarian meal. So incredibly kind. Marga lives on an olive grove as well, in a renovated casita. Very nice to see what the possibilities are and what adding windows does to the space. Funny thing was that she had lived in the Netherlands for 30 years and loved to speak Dutch. She practiced her Dutch, I practiced my Spanish. And the other friend, a real local spoke Catalan.

Picking up packages

Because I live on an olive grove, I don't have an address yet. I'm registered here and I can get a mailbox at the post office (which is open only 30 minutes per day), but I can't receive packages here and there's no delivery point in the village. In general I prefer to go the store to buy things, but the stores are 20 kilometers away and most things I need, are not on stock or only available online. A bike trailer for example. Since I don't have a car, I figured it would be useful to put a little trailer behind my bike in order to transport larger items. But how to get it? Well, there was the kind Anjo who let me use his address. I still don't want to order things online all the time, but it's good to at least have the option. And oh I'm so happy with the trailer!

Another big upgrade has been electricity. Untill now I've been using a small 21 Watt foldable solar panel to charge my phone, but I got to say that it wasn't always working that well. I managed, but I did need an upgrade. So, I invested in a portable powerbank + solar. From 21 Watt to 200 Watt and I can run appliances up to a usage of 1800 Watt. Wow, what a difference that makes! Now I can charge my power tools, because yes, so far I've been only using hand tools. Pruning trees with a handsaw is hard work I can tell you.

Power

What else is new, let me think. Well, I went to town with my trailer to pick up a shower, big buckets and some tools. Bulky things. The shower I haven't used yet, but it's a camping-shower-bag you put in the sun to warm up. I'm still fine with using my bidon, but I'm very excited to soon have my first visitor from the Netherlands here on the finca and I at least want to be able to offer him a shower after a hard day of work ;)

The buckets are life changing though. Two of them fit in the trailer and together this makes a system that functions as a wheelbarrow. It's the little things that improve my life significantly. So wonderful. Also, doing laundry in a bucket is so much easier than plastic bags, who knew!