Fruit from the Farm

Over the 16 years we’ve lived in Asturias we have planted many different types of fruit on our farm, some have been more successful than others. 

Harvesting our cider apples in the autumn

Without doubt the most important has been the 7 acre extensive cider apple orchard which we planted in the winter of 1996. We now harvest about 10 tons of apples year and they go to make apple juice, some of which we serve in the hotel.  Our flock of xalda sheep grazes under the apple orchard and this mixed extensive production system has been reasonably successful and has since been copied by other small farmers in the area. 

Delicious black cherries

 

In the early years we also wanted to plant some ornamental trees around the farm but we were reluctant to plant non indigenous specie. Wild cherries abound in Asturias so we decided to plant some grafted cherry trees around the farm. As well as producing delicious fruit they have lovely blossom which delights the countryside in April and then in late summer they produce gorgeous autumn colour. The trees are now growing well although it can be a challenge to harvest the fruit before the birds eat them.

 Abundant harvests of raspberries

 

 Blackcurrants

 Physalis or cape gooseberries

It was about eight years ago when we decided we wanted more home grown fresh organic produce for the restaurant and that’s when we planted a large variety of different fruit to see what would grow well. Most of our soft fruit has been very successful and we now have abundant crops of raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, black currants and physalis (cape gooseberries) all of which are used to make no end of delicious desserts. Gooseberries, redcurrants and blueberries were unsuccessful and were grubbed after 3 years of trials. The gooseberries and redcurrants were continually defoliated by saw fly and the blueberries always looked a sickly yellow colour as the soil is not acid enough for them. 

Strawberries

.....and strawberry desserts

Of the tree fruit we planted at that time, the persimmons have been very successful as have the plums. The pears and Asiatic pears have done quite well and we also harvest a few meddlers from our slow growing meddler tree. We have however had no harvest from the loquat, peach of fig trees we planted; maybe we are just too impatient.

 Plum blossom

In recent years we are having big problems with voles in the apple orchard. These horrible creatures which are a huge problem in the whole of Northern Spain live under the ground eating amongst other things the roots of apple trees which they seem to love. With damaged or no roots the trees soon fall over and die. We have now lost about 25% of our apple trees and so have started to look for other trees (which have less appetizing roots for voles) to plant in the orchard. We have planted trials of kiwis and “kiwinos,” time will tell if these will crop well on our farm and survive the voles.  We have also planted a small plantation of hazelnuts to see if they will be affected by the voles. We started planting different varieties of hazelnuts several years ago and they crop well on our farm. 

 Kiwi trial

 Large fruited hazelnuts from the farm

So as time goes on, with certain ups and downs and a continual learning process, we are producing more and more fruit on the farm.

Pasture Maintenance

At this time of year many of our pastures and meadows are starting to burst into flower. The photo above shows the mass of spring squills flowering in the hotel meadow at the moment. The pastures don’t look after themselves though. If we didn’t maintain our pasture it would start to revert to forest, which for us would initially mean brambles, accompanied by other species which our livestock find unpalatable. Our pastures are grazed by sheep, horses and chickens, and some are cut for hay but they also require human intervention to maintain them.

Sheep grazing the hotel meadow in autumn.

Horses helping maintain the pastures.

There are three main reasons for pasture maintenance on our farm. They are; to provide our animals with food, to conserve natural biodiversity and to control vegetation in the orchards. Each of these three reasons has a different maintenance approach, and combinations are also possible

Hay harvest; preparing animal food for the winter

When a pasture has been grazed, the plants that are left untouched are the ones that the livestock won’t eat, such as brambles, nettles, bracken, thistles, and gorse. If these are left unchecked they can take over, gradually eroding the edibility and therefore usefulness of the pasture, which can result in the pasture being lost. It’s a vicious circle. This is where the maintenance comes in, removing the unpalatable (undesirable) species so that the palatable (desirable) species can grow. Removal of undesirable species can be done by hand or machine, depending on the species and the extent of the problem

Sheep grazing in the Cuevona Meadow

Three areas of our farm are managed particularly to maintain natural biodiversity, in particular of wildflowers, with the secondary objective of providing food for the sheep. Here the pasture maintenance follows traditional practices and cycles; we cut the meadow for hay in late June and then let the animals graze the re-growth in early winter. Many species of flora have adapted to these traditional practices and respecting these traditional cycles allows this diversity of flora flourishes.

Full Beauty of biodivesity in the Castañarina Meadow

The chief objective for the three orchards is to produce a commercial apple crop, and the secondary objective is to provide grazing for our sheep. Luckily these go hand in hand, with the sheep eating the vegetation beneath the trees, thus making our task of collecting the apples a lot easier.

Picking apples where the grass has been grazed

If your interested in pasture maintenance you will find a document in the how and why section of our web page where it discusses pasture maintenance in more depth.

Our horses enjoying the pastures.

(Blog entry originally posted in April 2010)

The vegetable garden on the first day of spring

This is a 5 minute video of the vegetable garden taken today March 20th, the first day of spring.

Winter Walks 2012

This year we have had lots of good weather during the winter months with plenty of sunny days and lots of opportunity for winter walking. The snow covered mountains have a special beauty to themselves but spring will soon be here and the snow will start to melt leaving only the highest peaks with snow. Here is a short slide show to remind us of what the Asturian Mountains can be like in winter. These photos were taken on my walks in Asturias during the last 3 months. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Animal Farm Life

The horses on the farm

At this time of year we spend more time with the animals, it is a time to restock or rethink the well being of the farm. Meadows are grazed in a way that in the spring new life will come to the hillside bringing with it the flourish of wild flowers. The methodical way the animals are moved from plot to plot is to allow some of the land to rest and recuperate. The reason behind the mixed grazing, horses, sheep and hens is to benefit the animals and land reducing parasites. This mixed grazing means we have to give fewer medicines to the animals and is friendlier to the wild life. There still has to be some hard labour strimming the nettles and brambles that are left behind, but the animals do their share of strimming.

Xalda mother and lamb

Our flock of Xalda sheep now has about 35 mothers, these are used for keeping the grass down, lamb for the restaurant and wool for Samantha’s felt projects. The Xaldas are a very hardy breed of sheep, rarely giving any problems, except if you need to capture one, when they can run and jump well. This is how they survived in the mountains from predators, such as wolves.

Our flock of xalda sheep with the different colour fleeces

They are different shades of brown and white, which gives nice tones of wool for felting. Many years ago we stopped naming the sheep for obvious reasons, though we do still have one named sheep; Lucky, who fortunately escaped from the fox some years ago.

Max the sheep dog who was with us for 10 years

Sadly we lost Max the sheep dog last year, a very fine well natured Mastin. His replacement is Shiva who is now ten months old, she is slowly bonding to the sheep but as with most young animals is full of life. She is quite big for a female mastin, and very energetic and playful, and slowly doing her job of protecting the sheep.

Shiva the new young female sheep dog

Viboli one of our Asturcon ponies

The ponies we have are Asturcones, the Asturian breed of wild pony, and they are still a little wild. They are called Viboli and Tolivia, time passes but I think they must be about 10 years old. They finish the tough grass the sheep don’t manage to eat, we normally send them to graze after the sheep, and they really can keep the grass down.

The Asturcon ponies with their heavy hoofs

At this time of year they are supplemented with grain. Their heavy hoofs can also help with the battle against mole-rats, apparently it disturbs the underground creatures, and they move on, to another part of the farm……

The hens going round together

The hens which are my delight are wonderful to watch, anyone who likes eggs I think must really appreciate them when you see these birds, busy all day feeding but never getting fat. They are very social able creatures as I think any guest would say, whether it is the company or the thought they might get food that brings them forth I cannot say.

The Asturian breed of chicken

I have different breeds of hens, there are only three Asturian ones which are white and black, the reds which are more common are actually the friendliest and the bantam is the oldest. As with all birds they have an enemy, the hungry fox, just when I am thinking they are safe he strikes again.

The black chickens

Wednesday the goat has now been with us sixteen years, we brought her in the animal market in Cangas when we first arrived here. She is alone in her pen because she doesn’t want company, we did try with some sheep, and we had to grab them quick before she rammed them with her nasty horns. She is like a watchdog; she watches the farm from her privileged plot and calls out if something is amiss. I must admit she is affectionate to me, but I wouldn’t take many people in the pen. It is strange to think Wednesday has seen this project from the beginning and has out lived all the animals that have come and gone during the years.

Wednesday the goat

Cheers to Wednesday

Entrance written by Joe

Otter encounters in Asturias

A faint splash and a tail flicking from the water. An otter! After months of looking, this was our first Asturian otter and since that sighting 3 years ago it has become somewhat of an obsession.

Two rivers meet in the Asturian town of Arriondas. The fast flowing Río Sella born in the Picos de Europa mountains joins with the slightly calmer Río Piloña. Both are prime otter territories with trout and eels providing their staple diet. A solitary male otter can travel far, sometimes covering 20 kilometres, whilst the females (and young) tend to remain in one section of the river.

Otters are considered extremely shy, mainly nocturnal animals, so it has been a privilege to learn their routines and observe them so frequently during the daytime. Our sightings can range from the briefest of glimpses to a full-on otter watch, the record being for over 2 hours!

They appear accustomed to the background noise of human activity and also seem tolerant to a distance close enough to photograph with a long lens. However, spotting them on a foggy, dark morning can be difficult, especially as they tend to navigate the river swimming low and clinging to the bank. As we have often frustratingly discovered, if spooked, otters can vanish at will.

Otter eating a piece of lamprey.

An otter's mind is dominated by hunting. Their relentless pursuit of food provides good watching opportunities. They can be totally fixated on the task in hand and luckily for us less distracted by people nearby. Our most thrilling encounter was an otter catching a lamprey, both species can be rare enough to see, let alone together. A lamprey is a scarce, jaw-less, eel-like fish and only able to survive in clean waters. We witnessed a male otter hunting a lamprey of 1.5m in length and it took a further 15 minutes to subdue its violent struggling. The fully grown lamprey is a large meal and the otters often cache pieces and eat them over several sittings.

Fresh otter tracks.

As with all wild animals, the signs they leave behind often provide useful clues. During long torturous 'no show' periods, otter spraint (excrement) and tracks offer some comfort and help us learn about their routines, favourite places and diet.

Other wildlife that inhabits the river provide a welcome distraction to our daily walk. The ducks and moorhens can sometimes give us a heads up to an approaching otter, freezing like statues or fleeing in panic tends to be their strategy. Although duck is on the menu and they certain make attempts, I've not seen an otter successfully hunt one.

Kingfishers, dippers, wagtails, grey herons, little egrets, short-toed treecreepers, woodpeckers amongst others are also plentiful and them alone will make any walk worthwhile.

However, the sight of an otter remains the richest reward, always leaving us craving for more and in turn encourages you to look more closely and with luck encounter something new.

Our most recent sighting of an otter cub

Entrance written by John Shackleton.

A photo blog of wildlife watching in Asturias can be found on his web page www.wildasturias.com

Early Spring Flora on the Farm

The lesser Celendine

Like most of Europe we have had a lot of cold weather over the last couple of weeks, but now warmer weather has come, the snow is melting and the days are getting longer. The mistletoe no longer has any berries as the birds have eaten them all. Yes it feels like we are saying goodbye to winter and spring is coming and with the beginning of spring there are more and more flowers to be seen on the farm.

The lesser Celendine is one of the earliest spring flowers and gives a lovely splash of gold. It is more common in the damper shadier areas of the farm.

The Dog's tooth Erythronium

The Dog’s tooth Erythronium grows in the shady and humid mountain areas of Southern Europe. It’s not so common on the farm, but I saw quite a few plants with their lovely flowers in the Castañarina meadow this afternoon. It’s much easier to find in the higher mountains where the marginal pastures can sometimes have a pinkish tinge due to the large numbers of this flowering plant.

The Green Hellibore

The Stinking Hellibore

There are two types of Hellibore found on the farm; the Stinking Hellibore and the Green Hellibore. The Stinking Hellibore has drooping cup-shaped flowers which are yellowish-green, often with a purple edge to the five petal-like sepals. The Green Hellibore is slightly smaller than the Stinking Hellibore and dies down in the autumn so in the spring all the visible growth is new. Hellibores like lime rich soil and are very common on the farm. All parts of the plant are poisonous and none of the animals eat them.

The Common Dog Violet

The Common Dog Violet is most often found on short, grazed calcareous turf and limestone scree. We have a lot of that type of habitat on the farm and at this time of year there are a lot of Common Dog Violets in flower to be seen. This plant is an early nectar source for butterflies and is the larval host plant for a range of Fritillary butterflies.

Lungwort

Another very common flower to be seen on the farm is Lungwort which flowers over quite a long period of time. The scientific name Pulmonaria is derived from Latin pulmo (the lung). In the times of sympathetic magic the spotted oval leaves of P. officinalis were thought to symbolize diseased, ulcerated lungs, and so were used to treat pulmonary infections. The common name in many languages also refers to lungs, as in English "lungwort" and German "Lungenkraut".

Primroses

The primroses are also starting to flower on the farm and when the first primroses start to bloom its said they herald the arrival of spring and warmer days to come.