Posts Tagged ‘farm’

Our finca is in a very rural and remote area and usually there is very little crime here. We are still living in the town a half hour drive away from the farm whilst a local builder completes our house. When he finishes work in the evening, he leaves his tools laying around outside, and they are still there the next morning. Similarly we have piles of building material out in the open, close to the road and nothing has gone missing.

The other night, at about 10 pm, a neighbour was sitting out on his porch when he saw a car drive down the earth road that leads past our farm. A few hundred meters away from our entrance the car turned off its lights. Shortly afterwards the neighbour saw what he thought was a lantern or torch moving about by our house.

So he went inside, picked up his rifle, and walked down one of his fields to investigate. As he neared our farm he could see an unfamiliar car in our farm entrance as well as someone with a torch by or in the house.

Carefully taking aim with his rifle, he fired three shots at the car.
The torch went out, there was a short pause, then the car reversed out of the entrance and tore up the road like a scalded cat, only putting on its lights as it reached the public road 1 km away.

Crime prevented, job done.

Tuesday 10th May was the first day of some frantic activity.

The site for the house

The 3 point linkage did not fit our tractor.

The new farm entrance looking from the road

Overflowing irrigation ditch added to the 'interest'

Site levelling in progress

Stuck in the flooded new entrance

Everyone busy working before dusk falls

Measuring up for the initial stakes to go in.

April has been a busy month and one which has seen dramatic changes as we enter autumn.

We have had a couple of days of high winds followed buy some early morning frosts and a steady drop in day time temperatures.  The trees are stunning as autumn paints their leaves in infinite shades of green and brown and yellow. Our vines were caught by one of these frosts and at first we were terrified we had lost them all. Apparently not, provided daytime temperatures continue to fall, and provided we do not water them (and it does not rain either), they will start to go dormant for the winter.
A big sigh of relief all round.

Our first section of perimeter fence (last month’s post) now has all 7 wires fitted and tensioned and the wooden spacers wired in place. It looks impressive when viewed from outside the farm and well worth the effort. Only another 300 yards to go!

All 7 wires are now in place

Our quinces ripened and we harvested some to make our own quince cheese (Dulce de Membrillo) and quince jelly (Jalea de Membrillo).

Harvesting quinces

The best fruit was selected

Selected quinces for the cheese and jelly

and once again our kitchen became a jam factory

Quinces in the pan

And now we have quite a selection of home made jams to last us the year.

Our home made jams

At the time of writing a fruit buyer has purchased the rest of our crop but we are still waiting for him to turn up with a lorry and gang of pickers.

Hare hunting with dogs (usually greyhounds) is a very popular pastime here. Many a time we have seen and heard them hunting close by the farm. The other day, when we drove into our entrance, we saw a group of men and dogs at the far end of one field. We drove over to where they were and chatted with them and explained, politely, that we did not want any hunting or shooting on our farm. No problem, they accepted our request and left.

A hare hunter leaves the farm with his dogs

And his friend leaves too

Now that autumn has arrived the whole farm is covered in a carpet of fallen leaves.

27 acres of leaves to sweep up!

Next time you moan about having to sweep up the leaves in your garden, spare a thought for us with around 5 kilometers ( about 3 miles) of various sized irrigation diches to keep clear of fallen leaves!

Ditches become nature's collages at this time of year

But with scenes like this it is a pleasure to rake them up.

Although we are only about 115 miles from the highest peaks of the Andes the atmospheric conditions can considerably change how much of them are actually visible to us. From our viewpoint there seem to be 3 or 4 groups of peaks behind each other. This picture was taken from near the farm on a rare day when the tallest, snow covered peaks were visible. Later, on the drive home it was getting cloudier and the tallest peaks became visible, showing themselves above the cloud layer. Impressive.

A rare glimpse of the snow covered peaks

Sorry, but it is artistic photo time again. This was taken as we left having just completed a night time irrigation of the vineyard.

The moon rises above the farm entrance