In the last few days I've been on an apprentice crash course. From watching to see where the water's coming out, to putting kitchen units together and helping lift them onto the wall to helping pull the wiring through for wall lights - it's been a rapid learning curve.
Plumbing jobs means a lot of standing around and making coffee, kitchen fitting is fun because it grows quickly but the cupboards weigh a ton and today was my favourite - the electrical stuff.
We were pulling cables through for the lights and plug points under the wall cabinets, and they weren't going through as they should. At least I know the wall cupboards are going to stay on the wall, at one point I had my entire body weight pulling on the cables which run over the cupboards. There must have been a twist in the trunking and in the end we had to lift the cupboards off the wall and start again. We got them all done in the end but a job we thought would take us about an hour took nearly all day - hey ho.
This afternoon we had a visit from our next door neighbours, who live on the next hill. We had called over to introduce ourselves a couple of days ago and told them they were welcome to call on us if they saw the car there and today they drove across to us (it's way too far to walk) with 4 cans of chilled beer and some homemade fruit cake - and it was incredibly welcome - we hadn't eaten since breakfast.
Janet & Graham were taking 5 minutes from building the kennels as it was too hot to work this afternoon, (what a comment to make in the middle of October!) and we all stood outside the front of our house surveying our land and trying to work out where our 2 properties meet. We got talking about our trees and in particular, the almond trees. Jose had harvested most of them before we got the keys but there are still some that need doing, in particular the large one just next to the house but this led to our first lesson in farming.
Apparently, there are 2 different shaped almonds - rounded fatter ones and long pointy slim ones, the latter being the better nut and worth more - and our big tree is mainly pointy ones, I won't go into the fact you can get both types from the same tree if they have grafted branches on. Graham reckons there's about 2 kilos of almonds on there - and all we have to do is knock the branches with a broom handle and they'll fall off. Then gather them, peel the husks off them and leave them to dry for a few days - and all this would yield us the grand sum of €1 - as this year is a poor year for almonds and they are earning about 50cents per kilo - hold me back, I'll be out there tomorrow.
They also told us that, if we wanted we could give the husks from the almonds to Bernardo, who lives on another hill, as the husks make good food for his goats. Oh, and while we're on the subject of goats, Maria will walk her goats across our land (unless we have an objection to her doing so) most days.
Oh, how different country life is!
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3 comments:
Oh it sounds so idyllic after communities, Jacqui. BUT I stayed away from hassles THIS trip & DID I ENJOY IT MORE ???
what fun!! I have been wondering if I could grow an almond tree. they do grow down in sinaloa, so I think I can. We do have such similar environments! now, what can you do with goat poop? anything exciting? fire starters? is it good in the compost? maybe you can get some when she walks the goats! LL
Janice - this time you had the weather to put up with, which is frustrating when you are not here all the time - the least it can do is to be sunny. Last year I think the rains were later - so it makes it difficult to plan your trips around the weather.
Linda Lou - the only this I know about goat poop is that one of my dogs likes to eat it. YUK! From what I understand almond trees grow themselves, don't even have irrigation pipes to them - how easy can it get?
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