2015 an unhappy start to the New Year

The internet brings terrible news of murder from Paris, of chaos in Syria, of violence, of drifting boatloads of refugees in the Eastern Mediterranean, (and  here in the straits of Gibraltar); yet in spite of these horrors and the murmur of xenophobia throughout Europe we have to carry on with optimism and hope. There is no other way.

Truly the image which fills me with sadness is the smiling face of Ahmed Merabet. Let us hope that the mass demonstration of a determination to work towards unity will be of some comfort to the bereaved and will act as a counterbalance to the Pegida marches in Dresden.

It feels 'out of place' to be mentioning all this in our blog from the peaceful Aracena mountains, but it would have been equally wrong to pass through this week without mentioning it.

How to cheer the winter days; mushrooms, gardening, and volunteer helpers.

December is here, almost surprisingly; for the heat of late October transmuted into November and a cool to warm fug, with mists, and rain, dappled days of afternoon sunshine, occasional abrupt winds, which tore the last leaves from the chestnut trees, but real cold? Never.

Now the temperature has begun to drop, and we are promised a first frost, possibly over the coming weekend...so we must hie us to the forest once more to pick the last of the chanterelles and the saffron milkcaps/rovellons/niscalos, which have been abundant this month, so much so that chanterelles on toast with a poached egg, or chopped finely and fried with niscalos, chopped garlic, a little butter and oil, salt and pepper and a sprinkling of parsley....even these have begun to pall. I have been cooking them up for the freezer with sour cream and lemon and chicken  stock; ready for some spring Stroganoff of Iberian Pork fillet.

My seedlings are up and I have started to prick them out into pots.  (The first are for pink hollyhock, green aquilegia, white veronica, mixed vintage stocks, and  drifts and spikes of blue and white sages) - ordinary, I know, but perfect for adding to the borderts or for planting amongst the vegetables in the organic garden, to bring some colour and life, and swarms of pollinating bees, I hope.

I have a mass more seedlings to go, but am a little nervous if the frosts do indeed come. The greenhouse was savaged by the pigs a few weeks ago, and the shredded skirts of plastic let in a stiff cold breeze when the night wind blows. I shall have to try and find some more plastic, or some old window frames to fill in the gaps.

The salads are doing beautifully, even though one day last week one of my curly- headed lettuces had gone for a walk overnight, shifting out of its neat row and across the furrow beside it into the neighbouring row of straight ones. Although standing and looking happy, it was only just lodged in the earth and I had to move it back firmly and stamp it in. I don't think it is a walking or 'haunted' lettuce, but there might well be a mole or mouse in the soil, waiting to eat my beets when they are at their juiciest.

We are getting busy with booking requests for cookery courses next spring, and with young international travellers wishing to stop off and help us out from time to time on the farm or in the house. These generally find us through helpx.net and workaway.info, and the young people passing through the farm liven up those otherwise quiet winter days.

Moura Market, Beja district, Alentejo

Last Saturday, Jeannie, Charlie and I set off for the Moura market, just over the border in Portugal.

It’s held the first Saturday of every month, unless there is a national holiday to get in the way.

It’s a large agricultural fair, with cowbells, sheepbells and goatbells, leather boots, local sheep, goat, or cow’s milk cheeses and every kind of Portuguese smoked sausage and ham imaginable. There are stalls selling roast chickens with piri-piri sauce, grilled suckling pigs, and wonderful lemon-scented baignets or doughnuts and fritters dusted with sugar. Next to these are truckloads of farm birds, ring-necked doves,homing pigeons, fan tails, ducks of every type, dabbling and quacking, and disgruntled hens in small cages. There are turkeys, and partidges and quail, and rabbits with whiffling noses, and across the walkway, cages and cages of colourful parrots, squeaking and squawking.

Here you can find passion-fruit plants in pots, along with feijoa, figs, apricots, pomegranates and blueberry or goji berry bushes. Some of these, we can of course grow here, but many of them will not put up with our winter frosts. (However, in springtime we might be tempted to pop a passion-fruit vine into our van, and buy some marans for their beautiful speckled plumage and  nut-brown eggs, or a few guinea-fowl to squawk around the hen run!)

It’s a great opportunity for us to enliven the table with different ingredients, and also a chance to buy plants and trees for the orchards. We came back with plugs of leeks, cabbages, purple cauliflower, romanesco and broccoli, as well as onions and beetroot to plant in the huerta for winter and spring. We also bough 1Kg of broad bean seeds which we will sow this month so that we can harvest them in March or April.

I’ve rotavated the small poly-tunnel, which had been dunged with the straw and chicken poo collected when we cleaned out the chicken house last spring. It’s matured now into a calmer fuel for the plants, and in went three kinds of lettuce, escarole, and rocket, so that we will have some good saladings for Christmas and January.

The fridge now holds 4 or 5 different Portuguese cheeses, and painho sausages, gently smoked and essential with cabbage or cooked in a cataplana with seafood and potatoes.

We drove on from Moura market into town and found prize-winning Risca Grande specialty organic olive oil. They produce flavoured oils with their own lemons and mandarins; the first of which is sensational with fish or green beans, and the second will enhance any chocolate mousse, or citrus cake.

We drove north with a roasted chicken from the market, a bottle of local red wine, a freshly made loaf of bread and some small sheeps’ cheeses; picnicked in the last blaze of autumn sunshine on the shore of the lake created by the Alqueva dam, a masterpiece of engineering which has created a many-branched lake around 60 Kms long, perfect for sailing and mucking about in boats.

Back home to greet friends, and prepare for a busy week.

Gubbeen, the story of a working farm and its foods.

Loud hooting on the drive late yesterday afternoon, just before dusk; and it reminds us how life has changed over thirty years. A box of books has arrived thanks to Amazon. It actually comes right up to the kitchen door, imagine that; in rural Andalusia, a part of the country where citizens who live in the middle of the countryside are ignored as far as the postal service is concerned. The internet is miraculous!

Another miracle is the Gubbeen book (3 copies; one for us and 2 for friends), Giana Ferguson's story of family life on the raw edge of the Mizen Peninsula in South West Ireland. Well it's perhaps not so raw as Beara with its rocks rising to the sky, but it's still a place of winter gales and driving rain, and it's where the land has been worked and tamed over the centuries to create pasture from bog.

Reading through the book fills me with admiration. I'm a lover of Gubbeen Cheese, and I love these stories of the hard work, and the commitment to a project (or four!) and of how life has evolved at Gubbeen. I'm instantly pulled back to the place, to the warm and cluttered kitchen, the farmyard, the humungous pig which lay in state last time we were there; and the then newly growing charcuterie business which Fingal, Giana's son had started to build up. He showed us proudly around his new home, where, above his bed a small round window framed the distant view of the Fastnet Rock  like a vignette.

When we were there, Clovisse had just started out on her  project of a garden producing herbs, saladings and vegetables, grown in harmony with flowers, to attract bees for pollinating or flying predators to take care of the pests .

Having just written our own Buenvino Cookbook, which came out in April, I can appreciate the effort which has gone into the lovely Gubbeen book. Lord knows how Giana found the time to do it; at least here, where we live from tourism, rather than from food production (although these things do go on here on a small scale), we have downtime in the winter. It's a time for regeneration (the writing of  a book maybe), and time to touch up the paintwork and give the place a fresh look.

*****

Yesterday morning I was up early to the small poly tunnel where we grow our winter salads and herbs, determined to give the new lettuces a gentle spray before the sun came over and raised the greenhouse temperature to something fierce; even though the door is open.

There was a gallumping sound of pigs' hooves galloping across our attempt at a citrus grove ( we are almost too high for citrus, with hard frosts on  winter nights).

The pigs had wormed their way under the fence separating their  cork oak enclosure from the struggling orange trees, and now one of the pigs had come to investigate, grabbing the rather shredded polythene of the greenhouse between his teeth and tugging hard. I turned the hose to the 'hard squirt' position and gave him one in the snout. Happily he drank and dribbled and then returned to the attack.

The pigs are used to an early morning bucket of grain, and of course they get any leftover greens, surplus quinces and pears, figs, cabbage stalks and so on, to supplement their diet of cork oak acorns. So I made off sharp to the shed and filled the bucket before there could be any more damage done to my precious plastic.

A year of Rush....Rush.....Rush! Now bucolic autumn is here, with fewer guests and time for blogging.

I'm horrified to see that I have not blogged for almost exactly a year, which must make our having a blog something almost entirely useless as far as publicity goes.

 It's good to be back with some time on my hands - enough time to sit and write a little once or twice a week - and it's strange to look at the images of last years' mushroom crop, when we are going through the same thing once more.

The weather pattern may have changed a little from 2013, with our relatively cool summer; but after September downpours and temperatures dropping, we  once again have a scorching October.

It's been almost 30ºC once or twice this week, and although our pool has theoretically been "closed" since September ( we put the sun beds away), and we have had the fires lit, and put the eiderdowns back on the beds (all that three weeks ago, with torrents falling out of the sky, and thunder blasting our telephone to smithereens....no internet....no phone), we now have this second burst of gentle summer-like weather; guests swimming in the pool, evening drinks on the terrace until it gets too dark.

The quince trees are heavily laden this year with the branches straining and snapping with the weight of the fruit, so we went down and picked crates and crates of lemon yellow fruit and Jeannie has been making jars of quince jelly,  bowls of carne de membrillo and we have been baking the fruit in sugar syrup and making compotes and 'quince snow'.

We were out mushrooming with Melanie Denny from La Casa Noble in Aracena yesterday, and in a moment of excitement when we were gathering some Caesar's Mushrooms I must have put down my blackthorn stick with the burr handle, and walked on without it.  I see from the link that I could buy a new one, but it's not as beautiful as the old one with the real sharp thorns on it.

I have since walked up and down through the cork forest several times and have not been able to spot my stick. Maddening as it is not just a trusty clambering companion, but a thing of beauty and almost 100 years old.

Mushrooming is a wonderful occupation; almost like meditation. You wander slowly up and down the forested hill, and you observe nature. The bracken has turned to yellow and rust. The new autumn grass is bright green, and the coloured leaves are dropping. The splash and gurgle of the stream tells you that the aquifer is replenishing itself; the rain has washed away the plague of late summer flies, and through the crystalline silence of the forest you can hear the sudden sharp pecking of a woodpecker. Now and then the thud of a chestnut falling, or an acorn dropping from the cork trees reminds you that the pigs have to be out to wander in the woods; but not until the chestnuts have been harvested and taken to the cooperative.

The sheep have started lambing, so we have fenced them into the fallow orchard, where they have plenty of new autumn grass, and windfall apples and pears. We miss the tinkle and clank of their bells as they pass by below the house, crossing the steep forrested slope to get to a warmer hilltop resting place at night, when the temperatures cool down.

Dried Ceps/Porcini/Penny Buns/Tentullos

Once you have cooked and eaten, or sliced and frozen the most perfect small, tight, pale specimens, it's time to deal with the imperfect mushrooms; those ones that have gotten too big, have looser pores and imperfections. 

They are perfect for drying. We place them on racks over the iron range, with the temperature set to low. They will be dry in about 5 hours, or if really soggy,  after rain for instance, allow them to be there overnight.  Once they are completely dry, bottle them into airtight jam jars. They're the perfect Christmas gift for foodie friends.

Amanita Cesaria/Ovuli/Oronges/Caesar's Mushroom/Kaiserpilz

 One of the most delicious mushrooms we find at this time of year is Amanita Cesaria, known locally as La Tana. It bursts through the ground in a white caul, and it's inadvisable to collect it at this stage as it could be confused with other deadly Amanitas which start out in the same way, but do not reveal the brightly coloured head. The mushroom should catch your eye like a piece of discarded tangerine peel, but it often hides cunningly amongst autumn foliage.

 To prepare the mushrooms, wipe the cap with a damp cloth, and peel back the caul from the stem, which is revealed as  lemon yellow. Cut off caul at base.

 When you have your mushrooms cleaned, slice through them thinly. You will see the delicate structure of the yellow gills, and the stems are creamy  white inside.

 One of the ways to enjoy them and their delicate flavour, is simplicity itself. Get a fresh organic lemon.

 Squeeze the juice of half of the lemon over the mushrooms slices.

 Pour on some light virgin olive oil

 Sprinkle with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

 Toss and eat.

Alternatively, fry your slices up in a little olive oil and butter, with 2 cloves of garlic sliced into 4 chunks each. Season to taste when they are cooked, and serve in a small dish for tapas, or on toast.

Porcini Schmorcini

3 more kilos of mushrooms this morning, so after lunch we had to chop and prepare porcini sauce with onions and cream and parsley, so that it can be kept in the deep freeze for use when the mushrooms have stopped coming.

This morning started cold, 11ºC, but by this afternoon the sun was blazing  and we were up once more into the mid twenties.

We now light the fire in the evening, and no longer dine in the patio unless there is a freak heatwave, which is still just possible.

Autumn Photography, the Mushrooms are here!

My goodness, but I've been slack about posting.....forgive me, all two followers (me and my dog). This year has been hectic as we've been working on the Buenvino Cookbook, about 200 pages of life, laughter and deliciousness. It's been hard work, but a blast, as Jeannie and I remembered events from years past. For more images go onto Tim Clinch's photography page and click on the image of the dish of scarlet prawns.

After a heavenly, hot summer, autumn has arrived, with balmy days, cool nights and enough dew in the early mornings to encourage the funghi porcini, or Tentullos as they are known here.  Even as I write there are shrieks of delight, and someone has come in from the forest with another Kilo of them.

Extravagant breakfast:  Slice up a few Boletus mushrooms to the thickness of a 1 Euro coin. Put lots of butter in a pan with a little olive oil, and heat until the butter has melted and is beginning to froth a little with the oil. Add the mushrooms, only so many as will cover the bottom of the pan. They will shrink a little and allow space for further additions as you cook them. Sprinkle with sea salt. Fry on a medium heat until golden on one side, flip, and warm through the other side. 
Now prepare soft poached eggs, two per person. Golden mushrooms on top. A grind of pepper and you are ready to go.

Of course, you could always go completely over the top, like our Milanese guests, Massimo Volta and Rebeca Willig, (who you can see here in Massimo's short film "Muse in Chains") . They insisted on a little jamón de bellota to go with it....¿porque no?

The sudden hot weather has meant that last week's cookery course was agreeably complemented by lunch under the arbour, and dinner under the stars.

The new saltwater filtration system, and solar heating are almost completed, so we are looking forward to chlorine free swims!

Jeannie and I were at the Bruce Springsteen concert in Seville on Sunday night, in the Olympic Stadium. An incredible concert. The man sang for 3 hours solid without a break!

The Struggle for Work at the Rio Tinto Mines

‎60 miners have been walking from the town of Rio Tinto for the past week; staying in sports halls, being fed by friends and volunteers.
Today, they reach their goal, the Andalusian Parliament in Seville, to protest at the unbelievably slow, foot dragging of the Junta de Andalucia, over the re-opening of the mines.


Miners have been locked into the Corte Atalaya pit for weeks now in protest of the lack of jobs in the traditional mining town.

Emed, the international mining company which has taken over the mines have been allowed to languish in spite of huge investment and a willingness to provide many jobs which would kick the local economy into action and give unemployed families, who are many of them living on an economic cliff edge , an opportunity for life and dignity.

The longer the Junta drags its feet, the longer we wonder what is going on in the background....are there economic interests muddying the issue? Does someone, somewhere want a bigger slice of the action?

Why, when a country is crying out for work opportunities, and there is someone prepared to start an important business, is there no positive action taken?

Today, the protesting miners will be demonstrating outside the parliament buildings at 1pm.

If you are in Seville, show up and give them some support, please

Spring Preparations

Fresh from our travels to the historical wonders of the Highlands of Ethiopia (Lalibela, Gondar, Axum and the painted monasteries of the Zeghe Peninsula in Lake Tana) , we returned home to find Andalucia basking in its fourth dry month of constant sunshine.

What about the orchards? To sow or not to sow? Should we plant the spuds and use sprinklers?

This year we have imported rare heritage potato breeds from Caroll's in Northumberland; Shetland Black, Highland Burgundy Red, Pink Fir Apple, Salad Blue and the wonderfully floury British Queen, which we had only seen before for sale by the road in West Cork, Ireland. We remember it's fluffiness when baked, and slathered in butter. Mmmmm. Not very Andalusian, but we can look forward to having our varieties for sale in the local burgeoning farmer's market this autumn.

Holy week was mostly a washout, although some of the processions could go out, noteably La Madrugada, the solemn night-and-dawn procession through Aracena, which starts around 5 am. We took our clients, and it was a cold, starry night. We punctuated our street-side wanderings with visits to bars for carajillos (coffee and coñac to warm the blood), and as dawn came up and the first birds were singing we brought home Aracena's unique potato churros, to serve to our guests with our fresh farm eggs for breakfast. (Our Violet Andalucians are beginning to lay well)

Now at last we are going through a period of April showers and sunshine, and things are beginning to grow. Soon the Spanish chestnuts will be in leaf. The goats are producing a lot of milk and I am making yoghourt, hard cheese and flavoured cream cheeses. These are delicious with our own sourdough breads.

We start ploughing on the top of the far hill next week, to clear the flatter ground of cistus ladanifera and pink heather and to try to re establish some pasture under the oaks. (The wild shrubs, though beautiful, are a fire hazard and can grow 1.6 metres in height over a period of 3 or 4 years.)

Kind neighbours have lent us their ram for a week and he is covering the ewes....doing his duty, so we hope to have some lambs in the autumn, in time for the winter pasture.

On June 9th, the village Hermandad de la Virgen de Gracia, is coming to Finca Buenvino to cut down a poplar tree. The men of the village then carry it back on their shoulders, stopping every 20 metres or so to refresh themselves from a barrel of punch. Later the tree will be erected in the village plaza, with much heave-hohing,the Spanish flag fluttering from its tip. This is an annual springtime rite and we're honoured to have the tree selected from our farm this year.

Los Marines' Romeria is on the last Sunday of the month of May, Sunday 27th. We still have room for two couples if anyone is interested in coming for the weekend.

Our new solar heating panels and saltwater installation are being fitted to the swimming pool even now, so we will soon have lovely chlorine-free water, and an extended swimming season!

On the 18th June we are running a 6 night cookery course. The total cost, for tuition, meet and greet and drop-off in Sevilla, excursions to Jerez wineries, restaurant outings and all food and drink and lodging is €1200 per person+8%VAT. We only have a few vacancies (max cooks 8 if sharing rooms, or 4 if all want singles) Single supplement €50 per night.

If anyone is interested, drop me a line at buenvino@facilnet.es

Mia Dabrowski and Laurence Creamer have just left for their honeymoon at Caños de Meca after a fabulous wedding weekend.

The weather was perfect; after a hot day the air cooled as the sun sank into the pink horizon, over densely forested misty blue hills.

Guitar music played as Daniel Dabrowski walked his daughter down the steps to the mown meadow where the wedding guests were waiting to hear Mia and Laurence take their vows. Melissa Marshall read "A Vow" by Wendy Cope and Hannah Roberts read "I Carry Your Heart" by EE Cummings.

After a romantic ceremony, bride and groom were joined by friends and relations for tapas and pink Castell de Vilarnau Cava on the terrace, before sitting down to hear the speeches from groom and best men Gregory Cooke and Robert Osbourn, before tucking into dinner (see my facebook page for the full menu details!)

At last we have started working on the Finca Buenvino book, which will have a mixture of recipes, anecdotes and fabulous photographs by Tim Clinch (http://www.timclinchphotography.com), who will be running this year's food photography courses at the finca. Courses are filling, but we have a space or two left on our September course. To find out more got to http://www.naturallightnaturalfood.com

Autumn Activities; harvesting, cooking, eating and drinking!

October was an interesting month; beautiful Indian summer weather punctuated with days of rain, made it the perfect time to start sowing the winter vegetable garden. Leeks, broccoli, broad beans, peas, and winter salads have gone in and are flourishing.

We were kindly invited to dine at Sally Clarke's restaurant in London, by our good friend Johnny Grey, the famous kitchen designer. The occasion was not only the celebration of 30 year's work in the Kitchen design field, but the launching of a new book of Elizabeth David recipes, At Elizabeth David's Table: Her Very Best Everyday Recipes, published by Jill Norman, in order to bring her recipes to a newer, younger audience.

After dinner, pheasant with apples, pears in red wine and spices, perfect madeleines and chocolate truffles, Jill Norman spoke of her friendship and years working with Elizabeth David, and I spoke, perhaps more flippantly about the early days, when Johnny and I met in that deeply mystical rural idyll which were the South Downs on the Hampshire/West Sussex border in those days of the early 70's.

Here's a short exerpt to give you a flavour of the place then.....there was something akin to a Withnail and I atmosphere to the cottage:

"In late 1970, I was lucky enough to be allowed to rent for a peppercorn, a knapped flint cottage which was hidden away in a secret fold of the Downs, near South Harting.

Except for a few alarming and boozy dinners with an angry cousin of Samuel Beckett who lived on the next hill, and carried with him a miasma of Soho drinking dens, it was very quiet on my side of the hill.

On spring days there was the silence of the bluebell woods and on winter nights the wind whispered it’s sinister Cold Comfort Farm type message through the kale fields which rose darkly to the horizon.

There was also a ghost apparently; a baby which cried in the cupboard from time to time, but it could only be heard by women so I wasn’t bothered.

After a quiet month or two I began to wonder where the action was. In spite of importing guests from London every few weeks, writers, photographers, art students and debutantes who veered towards hippiness, silence reigned supreme for 90% of the time. I could almost hear the weeds growing.

Over the busier weekends, my cooking skills improved; road-kill venison, arrived in the back of the police van and was butchered in the bathtub by the village bobby; it was cooked with cream and coffee and apple jelly; to be followed by wild plums stewed with vanilla, the juice thickened with egg yolks,and the whites beaten to a meringue with sugar, the whole, baked in the oven. Thick yellow raw Jersey cream came from a mad hatter of a woman down the road towards Nywood.

She took to bringing me cream and staying for a cocktail, her muddy boots leaving good clods of heavy clay down the passage to the living room. Undoubtedly these hills were filled with loons and strange passions."


So much for 1970-71 in an ancient cottage in West Sussex, now back to the Sierra de Aracena 2010.

This month is the month when HelpX saves our lives. We have the chestnut harvest to cope with, hills to clear of scrub, and now that the first rains have fallen we are allowed to have bonfires to get rid of the heaps of Cistus, Gorse, and Broom which have been uprooted from the damp earth. If allowed to run riot, these plants can take over the hillsides, grow to a height of almost two meters and become a dangerous fire hazard. Today we let out the sheep onto the cleared hillside, so that they can benefit from the chestnuts overlooked by the gatherers.

First arrivals were three graduates of Sewanee, the University of the South. Patrick, Matt and John were with us for a couple of weeks and worked hard on picking chestnuts during the early stage of the harvest, when the first nuts fell to the ground. Then came Mark and Melanie Slagle from Buffalo New York, both with great restaurant experience and an easy manner.IThey got down into the stream to find some of the biggest and roundest nuts, and are surely responsible for improving the overall quality of the pick! In Early November, the Dunphy family, Ed, Brenda, Jacob and Rebecca arrived from Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island they pretty much finished up the harvest, bringing the total to about 2 metric tonnes. Now we have Daniel and Adam, from Birmingham, Alabama, taking huge pride in the beautiful clear chestnut forest. This morning the smoke of their fires was wafting down the valley.

The chestnut trees have turned from yellow to red, and leaves are falling rapidly. The poplars along the stream bed are now bare of leaves. Nights are getting cold, and soon frost will put an end to what has been one of our best wild mushroom seasons. Boletus Edulis (Porcini), Caesar's Mushroom (Amanita Caesaria) and Saffron Milkcaps (Lactarius deliciosus) have been plentiful, and if the frost keeps away over the next two weeks, we should start finding chanterelles.

In early November we hosted a five day cookery holiday with Sue Clark and Joanie Ott from Denver, and Judy Lozier from St. Louis.

We were joined by Emma and Clive Gilbert from Sintra and we worked intently in the kitchen, but also had time to go down to Sanlucar de Barrameda and visit Javier Hidalgo's charming Bodega, and sample some of his fine La Gitana Manzanilla Sherry and his Napoleon Amontillado and Wellington VOS Palo Cortado.
The weather was wet and windy, and the swollen River Guadalquivir ran greyish brown with silt,where it emerges into the Atlantic Ocean.


Still we had a bright moment and were able to take some snaps in front of Restaurante Poma, where we had an excellent fish lunch. Gambas Blancas de Huelva, Sepia en su Tinto, Salmonetes a la Parilla, Puntillitas, all washed down with that fresh Cadiz white wine, Tierra Blanca, in which the Palomino grape is blended with Riesling, to give it a helping hand.






We also had a morning visit to Juan Mateos Arizón at Sanchez Romero Carvajal, in Jabugo. Here is a picture of him checking over the Jamón in the cellars.

25th-28th November 2010 we are expecting the arrival of London Chef and food and travel writer, Nick Balfe who is bringing a group of cooks for a long weekend of Spanish cooking using amongst other things, the local Jamón Iberico de Bellota.

For 2011 we are planning a new series of week-long workshops on food photography and styling. The courses will be run in spring and Autumn under the title Natural Light, Natural Food, and will be an extension to the courses already run in Gascony, France by well-known photographer Tim Clinch
at Kate Hill's Gascony farmhouse the centre for working with La Cuisine du Sud Ouest. This is the region for Agen Prunes, wonderful orchard fruits, Classic sweet wines such as Monbazillac, and pork and duck rillettes, various duck and goose products, such as foie gras, and confit....Heaven!

Our Natural Food, Natural Light courses will concentrate on the products of Andalucia and Southern Extremadura, which is very close to Finca Buenvino.

Dates for these courses and four our own cookery weeks or long weekends, will be published in this blog and our website shortly www.fincabuenvino.com

Skye Wedding

Early October, and we flew up to Skye for Jack Elles' and Amy Russell's wedding. The weather was perfect; Skye was a dream; all golden mountains floating in a blue sky, the water of the sea inlets like a mirror. Jack and Amy run their own catering company, The Laughing Stock, and have a fleet of mobile catering vans. They attend Glastonbury, and the Edinburgh festival, where they did all the food at the Udderbelly venue.

Jeannie's Birthday

The day started with a delicious breakfast of smoked salmon and scrambled egg, coffee and Buck'sFizz on the terrace with the kids and Sophie Bligh from Australia, who was staying.

Then Surprise birthday barbecue up at the poolhouse, with 14 for lunch.

Oberesque Luggage!

Just had to put in this photograph to show how Stephanie Oberoi , owner of the Bombay Duck special gifts website, travels en famille! Vikram, her husband , meanwhile roared around the Iberian Peninsula on his fab scarlet Ducati. It was a wet, wet week so not the best biking weather, so perhaps driving the family bus was a better option after all .

The Organic Garden

At last the soil has dried out sufficiently for us to put a couple of mules into the orchards to turn over the soil. Francisco is one of the few young muleteers still working in the sierra. The soil will be allowed to lie roots to the sun for a few days, then we will start to rotovate to obtain a fine tilth, and start planting the potatoes.

Seedlings of tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, garlic, onions and peppers are growing in the greenhouse and will be planted out before the end of April.

The villages of the Sierra de Aracena

I thought it would be a good idea to provide a link to a local website which gives a description (in Spanish) of all the local villages and their history. Finca Buenvino lies between the villages of Los Marines and Fuenteheridos.

To learn more visit: http://www.sierradearacena.net/menu_general/pueblos/pueblos.htm



Danza de la Lanza
From the 1st to the 3rd of May there's an opportunity to see the curious Danza de la Lanza in the church of Hinojales, (click below to get an idea of what it is like to see 100 men or so dancing with castañets inside a church.) The seven leading dancers, all young men from the village, are dressed in starched 17th century petticoats, and blue plus fours.

We are running four short (4 night stay) cookery courses in June this year, if anyone is interested please get in touch. The cost is 800 Euros, including all food, drink, excursions and collection from airport.

You can find more details on our website. (Http://www.fincabuenvino.com) In June, you can mix the cooking experience with a lazy alternative: lying by the pool every afternoon. Courses are for 4-8 people only. Bring a group, and the leader goes free!