[ENGLISH BELOW.]
Esta primavera mis ocas han producido 29 huevos (15 por parte de las que tienen apenas un año y 14 de la madura, que ya tendrá unos 3 o 4 años). De estos comemos 5 de las jóvenes y solamente uno de la gorda, estando este último claramente fertilizado). Tenía tanta ilusión. Pero el macho parece que no ha podido hacer su parte y sufrí más de un mes con huevos que no hacían nada más que explotar, con la excepción de una oquita que salió bien para luego apenas vivir un par de horas y otra que exclosionó bien pero por alguna razón la encontré muerta una mañana). Al punto de darme por vencida, bastante triste después de haber esperado dos meses (entre las 3 hembras), sin nada, la mañana del 13 de mayo me estuvo esperando una viva. Es la única que tengo, una entre 23, y he esperado 7 semanas para anunciarlo, por si pasara algo (todavía es posible pero cada día está más grande, más ágil y, por supuesto, más preciosa).
Y ahora una buena novedad. Aunque ya habían hecho más que claro las autoridades que nunca me iban a dejar edificar en mi granja, tuve la suerte de preguntar, justamente en el momento indicado, por una caseta de campo que está a unos 300 cientos metros. Y no solamente es que se ponía a la venta, sino que la pude comprar. Qué alegria (ha sido una primavera emocional).
Como está en la entrada al Pas del Llop, y dada mi gran admiración hacia los lobos y los servicios ecosistémicos que proporcionan, nos pareció totalmente obvio bautizarla la Casa del Llop. La foto es de una parra muy bonita, una adición bienvenida al conjunto de frutales que ya habíamos plantado. Hay un limonero también, árbol que hemos intentado pero que no prospera en Senda Silvestre.
It’s been quite some time since I posted, as I had visions of a dozen goslings dancing in my head the entire spring. But sadly, it was not to be, despite the fact that, the two surviving babies from last year ended up being female, meaning Banda Blanca (the male), with these 2 added to his previous partner, had a harem of 3. He seems to have been not up to the task, though the two yearlings produced 15 eggs and shared (or fought over) a joint nest, and Goosey Lucy, the mature female, produced 14. We ate 6 of these 29 eggs, one of which was hers and was definitely fertilized. But of the remainders, only three eggs hatched: one chick, that I heard peeping during emergence but didn’t properly absorb its yolk and died a couple of hours after I found it; one that I found fully hatched but dead outside the nest; and finally a survivor). The second one, so perfect but inexplicably dead, had me, for some reason, in tears, something I, as someone who grew up on a farm and witnessed so much death, a natural part of, well, nature, cannot fully explain.
It’s now 17 days and Bandida, offspring of Banda Blanca, is as personality-packed as my favorite of last year, Intrepid, who sadly is no longer with us, due to natural causes. And I have a positive development to report, which is the addition of a dwelling to the project. The zoning has become more restrictive in the area and it was quite clear it was never going to be possible to build the planned natural construction tiny house. So when one came up for sale about a third of a kilometer away, I mustered all possible resources and bought it in February. This increases by about a quarter the amount of land we have, which is already too much, so we’ll see how that pans out.
It’s on a small connector lane that runs from the road to our farm up toward a pass through the hills, known as the Pas del Llop, llop being Valencian for wolf. As someone so enamored of the ecosystem services wolves provide, I think the name Casa Llop matches perfectly with the valley and its history and also the sense of the main project, Granja Senda Silvestre (roughly translated as Wild Way Farm). It even has some complementary fruit trees, an enormous, beautiful fig and a persimmon, plus a few that we already have but are not regular producers yet: apricot, plum, peach, cherry and nectarine (sadly moribund). The main production crop (citrus, of course) is a late navel, very late, actually, as it has survived another insanely wet winter (by early May, the precipitation totals exceeded 1000 mm in an area that typically sees half that in an entire year). As I write, it is still on the tree, having only been partially harvested.
regeneracioribera 