The farm in late April

Our latest home video taken over the last few days on the farm

Living Food

No, this isn’t a blog entry about indulging in eating live oysters; this is about freshly picked “living” fruit and vegetables grown on soils rich in organic matter and abundant in life.

I used to work as a “professional” horticulturist growing vast acres of tomatoes on hydroponic systems. The plants were grown in sand and watered with solutions that contained all the necessary nutrients the plants could need.  Any weeds were controlled with weed killers and a weekly spraying of pesticides would keep the plants free of any bugs. Plants produced in this sterile lifeless environment might look good but I am sure they were lacking.

Hydroponic tomatoes in sterile lifeless conditions

 

Tomatoes growing in our vegetable garden with lots of life rich compost.

 Now I am a small scale organic grower and amongst other things I regularly mulch my vegetables. As I fork the compost around the plants I am amazed  to see all the different types of life crawling around; worms, centipedes, spiders and many insects I have no idea what they are. Then there is all the life in the compost and soil that you know is there but can’t see; fungi, bacteria, protozoa, nematodes etc. All this life or “biotic mass” is present in our organic soil living in harmony with the plants and making an array of different organic compounds available to them. The soil looks so healthy and full of life, and so do our vegetables growing in it.

Healthy vegetables in a healthy soil

There are studies which say food produced in sterile hydroponic systems is as good for you as organic food. I don’t believe it! The problem is; on farms like ours with soils rich in organic material and full of life there are just so many different components present its difficult to understand how they all help to make a healthy crops. But what is for sure is that healthy living soils produce healthy living food and healthy living food produces healthy living people.

I often look with concern at salad packs with a 15 day shelf life sitting under a neon light on a supermarket shelf. The salad leafs were probably grown on a sterile soil dosed with pesticides and then packed in a bag with a modified atmosphere. Can that really be healthy eating? 

Freshly picked vegetables

 Here at the hotel I normally go to the vegetable garden about four o clock in the afternoon and pick the vegetables from our living soil. By eight o clock our team of cooks has prepared these vegetables into an array of delight full tasty salads and then the first guests start to serve themselves. 

The hotel salad buffet

Now that’s healthy eating.

The vegetable garden this Easter

Mange tout peas yesterday.

Easter has come early this year but the vegetable garden is well under way despite heavy snow three weeks ago. Here are a few photos to show some of the jobs we have been doing and some of the changes underway.

Potatoes and weeds!

With longer days, plenty of sun and rain  everything starts to grow fast, weeds included, so a lot of time has to be spent weeding. 

The same potato beds a couple of hours latter just after weeding and earthing up.

Our vegetable garden is dynamic, some crops and varieties do better than others and we try to grow the best tasting varities that are most suited to our conditions. We have been growing the standard strawberry variety Selva for some years. It produces lots of firm large red fruits but the flavour is a big disappointment. So we when we got offered some suckers from a local organic grower of the flavour full variety Albion we jumped at the offer. We over wintered the suckers in pots in the greenhouse and have now just planted them out in a new bed. In the existing strawberry beds we are interplanting with artichokes and more raspberries with the idea of removing these strawberry plants after they have fruited this season.

The new strawberry bed just planted.

Artichokes interplanted in one of the old strawberry beds

Raspberry canes interplanted in another of the old strawberry beds

One of our established autumn raspberry beds shooting well.

At this time of year some crops are in their prime for harvesting and some of the best plants we select for seed production.

Asparagus ready for cutting

Abundance of late purple sprouting ready for harvest

A superb swede plant selected and left for seed production

From the greenhouse we are cutting lettuce and we will soon be planting tomatoes where the lettuce are. However at this time of year the majority of the greenhouse is dedicated to producing plants for planting outdoors.

Lettuce in the greenhouse ready for cutting

Pepper plants in the greenhouse house

On a farm like ourse there is always plenty of maintenance to be done

Andrés repairing the compost bins

Like much of Europe we had more snow than normal this winter with a big snow storm three weeks ago. The dammage from the snow wasnt from the cold but from the weight of the snow.

Three weeks ago; tree branches next to the hotel broken under the weight of the snow

Two weeks ago;  broad beans flattened under the weight of the snow.

Yesterday; the broad beans fully recovered from the snow and enjoying the warm weather.

Our early potatoes yesterday only 3 weeks away from cropping and showing no signs of snow dammage.

 Happy gardening and healthy eating!

Our first photo competition

As you may well know if you receive our newsletter of are a friend of the hotel facebook page we have decided to run a photo competition. The theme we have chosen is “outdoor holiday experiences” and there is a chance of winning the attractive prize of three nights’ accommodation for two people at the hotel including breakfast and evening meals.

We are looking for beautiful, evocative and uplifting photographs associated with experiences in the outdoors. The only requirement is that you are subscribed to our quarterly newsletter or that you are a friend of the Hotel facebook and the competition closes on the 30^th April.

So why have we decided to run a photo competition?

I suppose the first and obvious reason is to try and give the hotel a little more publicity and encourage people to keep in touch with what we do at the hotel either through facebook or our newsletter. Another reason is I personally enjoy photography. I am only an amateur but I am always interested in looking to see what make a “good” photo, all be it very subjective.

We have an interesting panel of judges to whom I  thank for agreeing to help, they are;

Juan Iglesias from www.photowild.es    

Lidia Fanjul from www.sense-experience.com  

Gavin Owens from www.whereisasturias.com  

John Shackleton from www.wildasturias.com

And myself; Nigel Burch from  www.posadadelvalle.com

This is a great opportunity to send your favourite outdoor photo moment and win the opportunity to photograph Asturias. Simply send your picture, (one photo per entrant) which must be at least 1Mb in size, along with a brief description, your name, address, telephone number, the date and the location of the photo to hotel@posadadelvalle.com

 More information on how to enter the competition here.

Wild daffodils

 Wild daffodils on the woodland path by the hotel.

Spring is on its way and with it, early spring flowers including daffodils are starting to bloom. In Asturias there are four different species of Narcissus, three of which I have seen recently. On the short walk starting from the Hotel to the Santa Marina chapel there are plenty of Narcissus leonensis or Narcissus pseudonarcissus growing by the stream.

Narcissus leonensis growing on the woodland path by the hotel.

In Asturias there are four species of daffodils or Narcissus. Narcissus pseudonarcissus known in this area as Narcissus leonensis is the larger species with leaves up to 35 cms long. It grows in a variety of habitats and there is quite some variation in the flowers with in the species. It’s the species growing by the stream and I also saw a few days ago on a rocky mountain side at about 100m altitude. 

Narcissus leonensis growing on a rocky mountain at an altitude of 950m.

A week ago we discovered a few plants of Narcissus bulbocodium flowering on the farm in the Castañarina meadow. (It is probably the sup species “cantabricus” an endomism of the Cordillera cantabrica, but I don’t want to get into a taxanomic minefield so want delve any deeper on names.) This leaves of this species are up to about 24 cms.

Narcissus bulbocidium growing on the farm.

For me one of the prettiest of daffodils is Narcissus asturensis with leaves rarely reaching more than 12 cms. Its starting to come into flower as the snow melts away high in the mountains and can be seen in quite large numbers.

Narcissus bulbocodium on a mountain at 600m

For me one of the prettiest of daffodils is Narcissus asturiensis with leaves rarely reaching more than 12 cms. It is just starting to come into flower as the snow melts away high in the mountains and can be seen in quite large numbers. The photos of this species were taken  at an altitude of 1,450m

Narcissus asturiensis

Narcissus asturiensis emerging just after the snow thaws.

 The fourth species of daffodil that grows in Asturias is Narcissus triandrus and is quite often found in the Ponga area.

Narcissus triandrus

The wood land footpath from the hotel, happy walking and happy botanising!