about Victoria

Victoria

Shoes and ships and sealing wax... (thoughts, advice and ramblings)

WHAT I LIKED about wwoofing at Finca Luna
the amazing, mad and entertaining world of Stella who opened my mind to so much more than permaculture; the wonderful variety of other wwoofers that passed through and the other animals that live here long-term; learning to milk Beulah, endless DIY, outrageous sunsets, killer views, the tranquility, the goats sleeping outside underneath my window, Paraiso Animal and Friday nights with them in Las Tricias, aprendiendo mas español, the almond trees and festival, tunos, this list could go on and on...

WHAT I DIDN´T LIKE about it
Having to leave - but all good things must come to an end! Truthfully not much was bad, except that sometimes the house felt a bit crowded and noisy.

NEW THINGS I experienced, tried and saw whilst here
the world of goats: milking one, taking them for walks, watching them shag!, constructing a nursery, building and using a compost loo, participating in a traditional outdoor sauna, handling chickens, making clay from scratch, co-counseling, eating prickly pears, gofio, pumpkin on pizza and octopus, making webpages, drinking taponasos, picking and pressing grapes (barefoot I-Love-Lucy style), starry starry nights like nowhere else on earth

WHAT I LEARNED here
blimey, where do I start?! Basic principles of permaculture and biodynamic growing plus all the technical stuff I´ve listed above. And on a more Zen level: the importance of putting faith in other people, not to mention yourself; what it means to support someone and how to listen better; and most importantly that your reality can only be as big as you allow your dreams to be (no, I have not thought about applying for jobs at Hallmark Greeting Cards. Yes, I´m serious. And remember, vomit is hard to get out of a computer keyboard).

WHAT was challenging
Getting past the thinking stage and onto the doing bit. Living with small children. Having to restrain myself from being a workaholic.

WHAT I WOULD do differently next time
I would be more organised so as not to miss anything (am currently seeking a personal assistant-cum-slave!), and I would work harder on learning more Spanish - my many thanks to all those who were so patient with me.

MY FUTURE plans
To return to England and do various courses on bioconstruction and permaculture. To get involved in Earthship and other bioconstruction projects, eventually buy land and build my own eco-house. To quit thinking and start doing!

the potted vic-story Pre-Finca Luna

(cue speedy ukulele music)

Born in London circa 1975, moved to America in 1984 (did Orwell have me particularly in mind?!), eventually completed a fine arts/design degree at the University of Texas in 1998. Moved home to the UK and started work as a graphic designer for a small company in Brighton. Accidentally slipped and found myself in the straight and narrow life: the 9-5 job, shopping at Waitrose, knew the plot of Eastenders, Archers at 7pm, Sunday lunch at the pub, oh-my-god I´m 26 going on 45! So I chucked it all in (sorry Matthew) and buggered off travelling for a year.

Discovered wwoofing in New Zealand. Had a great time hitchhiking around doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things: I helped to build a strawbale house, recycled floorboards, gardened, cleaned windows, plaited garlic, etc.

Came back from travelling with an even greater contempt than before for the straight and narrow, but no real concept of how to move sideways. Paid off my travelling debts. Tried Teaching English as a Foreign Language as a means to simultaneously earn a living and travel more. TEFL wasn´t for me (read: British understatement) so I gave in my notice and became lost in the wasteland of the gloomy British ´burbs and miserable temp jobs. Then I decided to be brave, hold my nose, close my eyes and jump feet first into the unknown: to do things that I want to do rather than things I feel I should do. And what do I want? To employ my lateral-thinking design skills into my general way of life, to tread lightly on the earth, to wwoof, to travel, to improve my Spanish, to meet like-minded people and to forget FOREVER what Phil Mitchell and the crowd at the Queen Vic are doing!

And so you find me at Finca Luna, happily barking at the moon and moving sideways through life...

Projects at Finca Luna

The pond In the beginning there was the hole... Cleverly I arrived after someone else (Michael) had done the hard job of digging it!

Already lined with black plastic and filled with water, my task was to finish it off with hessian sacking and edge it with rocks to hold the sacking down.

before

after

Technical bit... The surrounding ground is loaded with ball clay which we chuck into the pond as we discover it. As time goes by and the black plastic eventually rots away, the clay will form a nice natural lining to take its place. Clever, eh?!

Garden fence Although an anti-goat garden fence already existed before me, they are damned clever creatures and have discovered that they can push down the wire with their front hooves and hop over into a veggie paradise. Yes, goats could rule the world (they're just smart enough not to want to!).

First off, I suped-up the pallette gate (pre-Vic) by adding a groovy wheel at the bottom so it spins on its pole support like a hinge.

A later feature to the gate:
a hi-tech hinged catch.

And now the real work... here you see me drilling holes in the metal posts to tension the wire netting so that it won´t concertina under a clever goat. This bit took ages and got harder as the drill bits got blunter, but I´m now completely au fait with drilling holes into steel tubing!

Oh no! the pond is breeding millions of mosquitoes and we haven´t got a frog yet! So my second order of the pond was to make a mossie-skimmer. Take one old broom handle, some netting, wire and that handy sewing kit (of the kind that you used to get on planes before 9/11 happened - watch out or I´ll darn the Captain´s socks!) and voila!

The net

Until we get a frog or fish or some other natural predator to keep the mossie population in check, the skimmed mossie larvae make yummy after-dinner snacks for the chooks (think After Eight mints but wriggly!). And of course, we leave some larvae to entice any would-be predators!

I learn to milk Beulah...

Goat boobs are hairy!

Oh, the entertainment! Beulah is a goat who knows her own mind and likes to get the business of milking over and done with during the time it takes her to eat her lunch. It´s not as easy as it looks to coerce a goat to stand still so that you squeeze her udders (ooh, er!).

There´s nothing like staring at the business end of a goat for 20 minutes to appreciate that milk in your daily coffee.

Walkies! Me taking Jessica and Beulah on their evening walk. Jessica is the brown one, I'm the one in the pink top, and Beulah's the black long-horned one lurking mysteriously in the back.. The question you have to ask yourself: ¿Quien es mas guapa?

Lemonbread... There´s nothing more satisfying than cooking with ingredients from right here on the finca: lemons from the tree outside the kitchen, almonds from the trees all over the finca, eggs from our chooks and milk from Beulah (squirted directly from her udders by me, milkmaid extraordinaire!).

grate expectations!

lemon tree

bread ingredients
1.5 c flour (12 fl oz)
1 c butter (5oz)
1 c sugar (8 fl oz)
.5 c milk (6 fl oz)
2 eggs
1 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
grated rind of one lemon
handful of chopped almonds

glaze ingredients
3/4 c sugar
juice of one lemon

instructions
Blend butter and sugar together. Mix in milk and eggs. Sift in flour, baking powder and salt and stir well. Finally, stir in lemon rind and almonds. Bake in a greased and floured pan in a medium high oven until a toothpick comes out clean. While the bread is baking make the glaze - heat lemon juice with sugar in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. Remove the bread from the oven and allow it to stand in the pan for 10 mins then pour the glaze over the top. Leave to cool in the pan (if you can wait that long to eat it!)

Almond trees in blossom
The almond trees are in blossom through late January and February and dust the surrounding hillsides in clouds of pink and white petals. To celebrate, people come en-masse to nearby Puntagorda for a mega piss-up otherwise known as the Fiesta de Las Almendras. The almonds get harvested in September.

The vivero (nursery) I began constructing the nursery in September, and as I sit writing this now in mid November there is still fine-tuning going on. This is the biggest project that I have undertaken thus far, and what I knew about nurseries prior to this could have been written on the back of a postage stamp. A lot of projects on the finca are learn as you go!

The basic frame is made from metal plumbing tubes (used widely across the island for all sorts of purposes)

The sprinkler system - operated by a very high-tech electric timer. I learned a lot about plumbing while installing this.

The green cover is an almond-harvesting net doubled over for sun protection.

The back garden roof...

starring Kate as God and Vic as Adam, with a spirit level between them (how very mystical indeed!)

After much hemming and hawing, technical deliberations and wrangling with wonky ladders, we constructed an amazing frame.

Some time later, a cover of palm-leaves (scavenged from the Fiesta de las Almendras) was added by Rosie and Dave. A little bit of Jamaica now lives in La Palma!

Operation Goat Retrieval! When girls get boyfriends - oh the anguish that parents must go through!

Romeo, aka No. 0198, the chivato (a male goat for purposes of breeding) went walkabout and has been missing for a week. Now when we take the goats for their evening walk sometimes they wander off for liaisons with this missing Casanova. When this happens they don´t come home as usual the next morning and brave souls must venture forth to retrieve them.

woman vs. goat

a bit of corn to entice the tearaway back home!

making clay standing infront of the old house... me helping Ali (woolly hatted one) to make clay.

we´re using the old water tank for a work surface - knead! work those arm muscles! who needs a gym?!

chimney cap (patent pending)
3 large tomato cans, a few bits of steel wire and some wire chicken netting... and now Stella can use her woodburning fire without rain or rats coming down the chimney

chicken tractor
(bet you didn´t know chickens could drive!)

hoe, hoe, hoe...

In a permaculture garden you only ever dig or walk on the earth in the garden beds once in their lifetime: in preparation for the first use of the chicken tractor, a chicken coop exactly the size of the bed.

Above is bed no. 6 (of 7), newly flattened, free of convulvus and large rocks.

Before the chooks could move back to bed no.1 in early February, the site needed enlarging and some tlc, so Emily and I did some cathartic digging and in the process removed copious amounts of rocks. At FL we get our rocks off with guatacas!

lunch at Dacil´s

It ain´t all hard work, you know!

In Dacil´s garden, left to right:
me, Olle (mysterious Estonian head), Raphael, Ali, Stella, Dacil

After leaving FL, Olle and Raphael went to wwoof with Dacil, who just happens to run a yummy restaurant in Puntagorda.

(Yes, lunch was fab!)

the Caldera
... a spectacle not to be missed!

Emily and Al v. the giant boulders

El Roque de Idafe (nudge nudge, wink wink!)

potato tyres What a brilliant idea: you plant potatoes in tyres, as they grow, you add more tyres with more soil on top, leaving only the leaves to poke out. Yields loads of potatoes with no digging required to harvest them AND it recycles old car tyres. So bloody clever.

It´s a tried and true method, but at the moment it´s in the experimental stage here at FL - climate and potatoes permitting. We´re also experimenting with sweet potatoes...

el puerto de Garafia
Vic goes to the beach!

the compost toilet
Lovingly made walls of bamboo reeds woven through animal netting - many hours work between Rosie and me. The roof is in the making but in the meanwhile it´s quite a treat to use the loo under a stunning starry night sky with the soft sound of rustling bamboo in the breeze. However, until the roof is finished, it´s not a very dry ´dry toilet´! Depending on the sound of nature´s call I have constructed a double-throne from 2 old chairs (which I wanted to differentiate with the numbers 1 & 2, but apparently Spaniards don´t use these toilet euphemisms).

...loo, loo, skip to the loo,
skip to the loo my darling!

Shoes and ships and sealing wax...

¨The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things,
Of shoes and ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings,
And why the sea is boiling hot, and whether pigs have wings¨

A quote (probably inaccurate) from
The Walrus and the Carpenter
by Lewis Carroll

Here are some of my thoughts, advice (apply liberal pinches of salt!) and general ponderings for other potential FL wwoofers, community members or visitors.

Noise. It´s VERY quiet here - you can hear mice farting at night. On a practical level, I highly recommend bringing earplugs to block out the dulcet tones of other wwoofers snoring! On a philosophical level, silence can be deafening. How often are you really alone with nothing but the thoughts in your head and no white noise (TV, radio, traffic, the humming fridge, neighbours, etc) to distract you? Some find it liberating, some find it lonely - it affects everyone differently.

the Lunar thing We really do follow the lunar calendar here. Each full moon we try to have a sauna. At new moon the chicken tractor gets moved to a new circle in the garden. Different types of things grow better depending on the lunar calendar and so things are planted and harvested accordingly. It´s a nice way to be connected to the bigger cosmological picture and simultaneously be grounded in the everyday details (I know it sounds a bit airy fairy). So if you´re pondering time constraints, how long you want to be here, when to come, what things you want to do while you´re here, etc, give a bit of thought to what the moon will be doing.

the world outside Finca Luna is 15 - 20 mins walk from the thriving metropolis of Las Tricias. In LT there´s a big empty plaza, a small church, a shop with the wares of local artisans, a council office (which I have yet to see open), a bar-cum-convenience store which is closed on Wednesdays but open late otherwise and usually the centre of any activity, several houses and NO post office. A bus service connects LT to other parts of the island; however, the service goes about once an hour, starts at about 8am, finishes around 5pm and runs only twice on Sundays. An hour´s walk through a beautiful barranco, or 10 mins by car/bus lies Puntagorda - think LT with a post office (shut in the afternoons), 5 more bars and 2 hardware stores. The sea is a couple of hours walk from here. It depends on how you feel about the proximity-accessibility of the civilised world. I think Finca Luna is in a wonderful, just remote enough place. Others have commented that Las Tricias is the ´culo del mondo´ and you have to walk 15 minutes to get there! Despite the distance of things and people there is a fantastic community feeling here that is quite unlike anywhere I´ve ever lived. The weekend market in Puntagorda is a real meeting place and a great place to exchange information, skills, etc. Doors are often not locked, people drop by for impromptu visits, neighbours lend you a hand, strangers greet you in the street, etc.. People are unpretentious, look you in the eye and don´t give a rats´ ass if you´re not wearing Levi´s twisted denim and Prada footwear.

being spoonfed It doesn´t happen here. You get plenty of support and there are shed loads of resources - Stella (!!), weekly organisation meetings, loads of conversation, books galore on permaculture and more, an impressive permaculture video library, other wwoofers, a women´s support group (limited to women, of course - but guys could have their own support group if they wanted to), courses if you want and request them, internet access, and so much more. But you have to think for yourself and put forth the effort to make things happen. As a prof at uni once edified on the notion of getting out what you put in: ¨shit in, shit out!¨ Nobody babysits the wwoofers.