Bon nadal

Catalan Christmas has a distinct theme running through it - and, well, there's no easy way to say this to a British audience, it's shit.

The Catalans are very proud of their scatalogical Christmas culture and our Catalan friends have spent quite a bit of time talking to us about it.

Catholics like their nativity scenes, but if you look carefully at a Catalan version (pessebre) you might well spot the figure of a little man squatting in the corner with his trousers down. He is a caganer. Often it's a peasant-like figure, but sometimes it's a famous person such as a politician. There's one in the window of one of the butchers in our village.

The village butcher's caganer making his deposit, left

There are lots of theories about why the caganer has appeared (just Google it), but most people just seem to think it's quite funny.

This evening Catalan children will be singing to the caga tió (shit log) which - after it's been hit with a stick a few times - will then poo out some presents for them.

Caga tió: might not be so cheerful after being hit
with sticks by small children all evening

You can watch Stephen Fry chuckling about Catalan Christmas on QI...

Mucho viento

When the British think of Spain it's often a Mediterranean sun, sea and sand-scape. We remember sunburnt August package holidays but have little understanding of what the weather is like during the rest of the year.

Here in Catalunya, we get the intense heat of the summer, but there is so much more weather too.

When the wind blows here it really means it. It roars through the trees, howls down our chimney and throws the bin around (if we leave it in a foolish place). A strong north-westerly has been blowing since Saturday without much let-up ("Siempre viento in este país," said the man in the garden centre this morning), and last night was the fiercest so far.

When I'm awake and listening to the wind at 4 o'clock in the morning it seems as though every gust will be followed by a bang or a crash as a tree snaps, something falls from the house or the car takes off. But when the sun comes up and I look out of the window everything is as it was. The pine trees simply seem to bend to the force (think of wibbly Van Gogh cypresses) and each patch of olive trees on the hillside turns into a pool of shimmering green waves as the leaves are flipped over and back, catching the sunlight on the way.

Our little house nestles into the southerly side of the hill so we're often protected from the worst blasts. Sometimes the wind can be tearing away behind us while we enjoy the sun on the porch, not feeling a whisper.

On the plus side, a nice steady north wind gets our wind turbine spinning happily. Right now we're getting about 6 amps from the turbine and when the sun's out too there's actually too much energy generated for the power system to use - even if the fridge is on, the laptop is charging and the TV is being watched.

But the wind is wearing - it makes the puppy hyper, dries out my skin and stops us all from sleeping. I hope it calms down soon.

More veggie thoughts

We were kept awake for much of last night by high winds roaring through the forest, howling down our chimney and throwing around our dustbin.

At one point - possibly between pondering whether the puppy could actually be swept off the porch and listening to The Now Show podcast - I thought of a few more veggie in Spain things. (See previous post here for more.)

• At a Spanish wedding David was served nothing but a plate of lettuce; and the waiters came out to look at him.

• We once ordered huevas at a restaurant instead of huevos. These were small grey sausages of squashed together fish eggs. They weren't nice.

• Champis are delicious little snacks served at some bars in the north of Spain. (We've had them in Zaragoza and Bilbao.) They are mushrooms fried in oil, chilli and cider speared onto a piece of bread with a toothpick.

• Even gazpacho can be fraught with risk for a vegetarian. Eateries with ambition serve it with some tiny pieces of chopped up pig (plus perhaps boiled egg, onion and pepper) - for extra flavour, of course. (David makes a very good gazpacho with chilli croutons.)

A veggie in Spain

Reading this post about being a vegetarian in Spain on the Tales from Toriello blog by Ian and Luis made me chuckle.

My husband David is a vegetarian and we face exactly the same challenge - the fact that most bars and restaurants in Spain don't cater for, understand or want to acknowledge the existence of vegetarians. (I love eating meat and fish, but enjoy cheese and bean-based dishes too, which is fortunate for our marriage.)

We've never been able to enjoy one of the super bargainous menus del dia (a three-course meal, usually at lunchtime, for 10 euros or thereabouts) that you get in such a lot of restaurants in Spain as there's never a vegetarian option. (I do feel a bit put-out about this.)

In a strange city, we'll frequently opt for an Italian restaurant as we know that there will be some choice for Vegetarian Husband.

And, like Ian and Luis, we know that a tortilla de patatas is often the best (and only) way forward. (As long as there's no random bits of pig thrown in for 'extra flavour'.) Patatas bravas, patatas ali-oli and pa amb tomaquet (bread rubbed with garlic and tomato, with olive oil and salt - a Catalan speciality) are also useful - but not necessarily balanced - stand-bys.

Olive toil

The olive harvest is just coming to an end here. Around the start of November we began to glimpse vast dark green collection nets spread out on the hillsides between the silvery olive trees. As we sat outside a bar enjoying a cold beer in the evening, carfulls of tired, dirty people would pass with sacks bulging with the tiny fruits to join the queue for one of the village's olive presses.

Spain is the world's largest olive producer (see Wikipedia) and there are certainly a lot of olive trees around here. In London, olives and their oil were, to us, an expensive delicacy. But here they are trodden underfoot, we can buy big bottles of luscious, yellowy-green oil for not very much money at all, and quite a few people can't even be bothered to pick their crop as they've got too much left over from the year before.

As it's our first year we were keen to carry out a harvest from the trees on our land and get our own olive oil pressed. We've been anxiously watching the fruits grow all year, wondering whether a green olive would turn into a black olive (it did - via purple) and waiting for an indication that the time was right to begin the harvest. (Some magic meteorological moment determines when the olives are at exactly the right stage of oiliness, wateriness and not-greenness.)

Olive blossom in May

Olives ripening in early September

One warm sunny day towards the end of November, when most of our olives were soft and purply-black, and after our immediate neighbours had picked theirs, we decided to begin. David had been watching the neighbours work their harvest and had picked up some good tips and one of our friends arrived to show us what to do. Our land doesn't have huge amounts of olive trees (although it did once: there are enormous holes in the ground where old olive trees were dug out for some reason, possibly to sell), so we had agreed with another neighbour to pick their olives too. To have our own oil pressed at the Moli d'oli in the village we would need a minimum of 300kg.

We started by clearing the land as much as we could underneath the trees. The flatter and cleaner it is, the easier it is to spread out the huge net which will catch the olives. Where there were slopes (most of our land is sloping, in spite of the terraces) we caught the edge of the net on some low branches to stop all the olives rolling off down the hill. (NB, we learned that it's better not to have a small puppy running around at this time because she will charge right underneath the net and it will be rather difficult to extract her from the tangle.)

David demonstrating how to lay out an olive net
Koko about to undo all the good work

When the nets are ready, it's time to pick the olives. We were lucky that most of our trees have been pruned into a low wide shape so that we could reach most of the branches easily. In our right hand we held our chosen harvesting tool – an olive comb – and in our left we grabbed on to a branch of the tree and pulled it towards us. Then we scraped the comb as hard as we could through the leaves and pulled off the olives which bounced on to the nets below our feet. (This isn't as difficult or as unpleasant as picking carobs.)

An olive comb

An olive comb in action

Some people use mechanical tree shakers. In fact someone is using one right now in the valley below our house. It sounds like a strimmer – they're petrol-driven – and they vibrate the branches really hard so that the olives fall off (you can't really do this with your own strength – we tried). They probably make the job a lot quicker and easier, but some people say that they damage the tree.

Once we'd finished a tree, we had to herd the olives off the net and into a tub, making sure that we didn't flick up the wrong bit of net and see all our hard work tumble off down the hillside.

Some of our crop

After half a day's work it became clear that we weren't going to get enough for an oil pressing, which was a disappointment. Although word in the village is that it's a bad year for olives (not enough rain, wrong kind of wind, who knows?) we're holding out high hopes for next year. But we continued for the rest of the day and decided that we'd cure them ourselves. Update on the results coming soon.

Eco-conquering the washing machine: part two

I've been using Ecoballs with mixed results in the washing machine. (See part one for background to this post.)

In their favour, they massively cut down water and energy use. I've been running the first part - the washing part - of the cycle as usual off the generator. (We tried the heating-the-water part directly from our off-grid system, but got scared when it started sucking more than 100 amps of power out, so switched it back over to the genny.)

Then, as the Ecoballs say they don't need a rinse cycle, when this first part is finished (after about half an hour) I stop the machine, turn off the generator, plug the machine into the wall (so it's running off the solar and wind) and flick the dial around to the final rinse and spin, thereby missing out two rinses and another half hour or so of washing machine churning.

So, by doing this, I've halved the water used and cut the use of the generator by about 60 per cent, which is very good.

However, I'm still not convinced by the cleaning power of the Ecoballs. Some smells and stains linger more than they would with the traditional method. And I can't get the tea towels clean in spite of soaking overnight in Ecover laundry bleach and then washing at 60 degrees.

I think the way forward might be a compromise between washing the less dirty stuff with Ecoballs, and the tougher stuff with soap.

Koko: not much of a guard dog yet

Last month we went to one of the local dogs' homes - just for a look. We had decided that we'd like a smallish dog and we wouldn't get one right away so that we could prepare what we needed.

Later that same day we arrived home with a German shepherd (perhaps crossed with a bit of lab) puppy in a cardboard box. On the journey in the car she cried, did a poo, was sick, then went to sleep. We decided to call her Koko. When we arrived we gave her some water in one of the cat's bowls, rushed down to the village to buy a chicken to cook with some rice and made her a food bowl out of an old water bottle.

We decided that Koko would have to live outside: we've got a small house and we wanted the cat to feel that she still had a home. The first night the puppy cried desperately and without much of a pause for her brothers and sisters. We tried to ignore the howls, but David went out a few times to calm her down. The second night the crying was less intense. And by night three we didn't hear a peep.

During her first few days it rained solidly. We sat outside, shivering in the shelter of the porch with her, learned to play doggie games together and built her a run out of some old chicken wire and bits of wood. Eventually, the Amazon delivery containing much-needed puppy manuals arrived.

Since then, Koko has been mostly growing, eating, playing and charming everyone in the village (in spite of her enjoyment of chewing people's arms and fingers). We've been mostly exhausted. My bedtime reading is puppy manuals. And the cat isn't at all impressed by her waggish antics.

One day, I imagine, she'll be a great guard dog.

Eco-conquering the washing machine: part 1

The other day a clever man suggested that instead of running our washing machine directly from the generator, our solar/wind-powered system could handle a cold wash on its own.

Until now I've been too frightened to even consider trying to run the washing machine without the generator. All that water-churning and spinning must, I assumed, take loads of power: too much perhaps for our little alternative system. As a consequence, doing the washing is a noisy business with the washing machine and generator thundering away together; and not very green or cheap at all as it uses up half a tank of petrol (and, incidentally, about 80 litres of water).

What I do know about washing machines though is that heating up the water takes the most energy out of of the whole cycle. As I needed to wash some sheets and I didn't want to wash them in cold water, I decided to experiment.

I ran the first half of the wash as usual from the generator. This meant that the water was heated up to 40 degrees by petrol power. Then I switched off the genny (oh, the silence!), crossed my fingers and plugged into the other system which was being powered up nicely by the midday sun.

With my hand hovering over the washing machine's off switch in case anything suddenly went horribly wrong, I watched how much energy it was using. It turned out that the sun could manage perfectly well - the machine's needs were relatively modest. (For anyone interested, it took about 15 amps to turn the drum around each time during the rinse cycle, and spinning took about 29 amps.)

A success!

Next step: to reduce the machine's water and energy consumption by getting the ecoballs out of the box and cutting out a few of the three or four rinses that it seems to think that it needs.

Next step after that: to supply water to the washing machine which has already been warmed by the sun (or at least gas until we get a solar water system).

• Spotted today - a lovely big hairy bumblebee and - I think - a hummingbird hawk moth.

Carob harvesting: it won't make you rich

Over the past few weeks we have been harvesting carobs.

It's not like skipping down to the orchard, plucking a few bright apples in the autumn sunshine and spending the evening making crumble.

A carob tree is a tough beast - it survives in poor soil with little water, and its fruit are hard, brown, shiny pods which which cling tightly to the branches.

To harvest the carob (garrofer in Catalan) - even though it's 28 degrees in the shade, you put on your trainers, long trousers and gloves. A hard hat wouldn't go amiss either.

Then you clamber down the terraces, over walls, around (or through) thorny bushes to the tree that you think will most readily relinquish its hoard. If you're feeling particularly organised, you'll tidy up underneath the tree, pulling out suckers, cutting back brambles and moving rocks. If you've got a smallish boy available, you send him up the tree with a big stick to knock off as many carobs as he can so the rest of you can rummage around in the undergrowth picking up the falling fruits and trying not to get hit on the head too much, because it hurts, and hoping you don't frighten any snakes or scorpions.

After many, many hours of hot, hard work, we (well, mainly David) had filled 20 sacks with the smelly dark pods. We filled up the trailer and drove down the hill to sell our produce to one of the many carob dealers in the village.

Lots of carobs: one day one of them might be in your yogurt

The weighbridge confirmed that we'd picked 240kg. We unloaded our harvest onto the giant pile outside the dealer and received 20 cents a kilo in return - a grand total of 48 euros. Like I said, it isn't going to make us rich.

Just a small addition to Spain's 65,000 tonne carob output

Carob farming can be fun

However, there are some interesting carob facts. (NB I've been a very lazy journalist and gleaned some of these facts from the internet. Although I've done a lot of triangulation to check the info rather than simply copying Wikipedia, I've not found the world's greatest carob expert and telephoned them to check the facts. If you are the world's greatest carob expert, please let me know.)

1) The Latin name for carob is ceratonia siliqua. Gold and gemstones were once weighed against carob seeds because people - mistakenly it seems - believed that carob seeds were uniform in weight. A one-carat diamond is 200 milligrams. Today, the carat indicates the purity of gold rather than its weight because a pure gold Roman coin, the solidus, weighed 24 carats, and therefore 24-carat gold is 100 per cent pure.

2) If you're German, you call the carob johannisbrotbaum. This is because St John the Baptist ate carobs when he was in the desert.

3) Spain is the world's top carob-producing country. Wikipedia says that it produced 65,000 tonnes in 2009.

4) The carob dealer man told us that the husks of the carobs that we picked are going to become feed for livestock.

5) And the seeds of the carobs that we picked are going to be sold to multinational companies to make the food additive E410 (known as locust bean gum or carob gum), which is used to thicken yogurts and other foods.

6) Carob is used to make vegan chocolate. But a raw carob does not look, taste, feel or smell anything like chocolate. Better to stick to real chocolate in my opinion.

7) Somewhere on the internet it claims that carobs are fire resistant. If this is true, it would be a very good thing as they grow where there are lots of forest fires.

8) Robert Byron said - rather unpoetically - that a carob tastes 'like a glucose doormat'.

Before we turn on the tap: replenishing our water supply

We were really hoping that it was going to rain around now. Last year when we came here on holiday, we got drenched in September. But, as yet, there has been nothing more than a short shower since June.

Our water is supplied from a cisterna under the house. This is filled up by the rain running off the roof, or by Juan the water man (which costs 90 euros per delivery, or 45 euros if we share the delivery with next door).

As the cisterna was nearly empty and we didn't want to spend lots of money, we decided to get our water from another source. In the village there is a well for the farmers. As we live in the countryside, we have bought a swipe card to gain access to this supply too.

So we took our 1,000-litre plastic water cube on a trailer down to the village, swiped our card at the well and filled up. We hadn't used the cube or the trailer before, so we weren't quite sure if everything was going to survive such a heavy load. But we checked the trailer tyre pressures, made sure everything was secured as best we could and drove slowly back up the hill to the house.

Filling up the water

Everything was going very well indeed until we turned off the tarmac road and up the hill on to the track to our house. We hit a massive bump which dislodged the cube so it slid back on the trailer, burst out of the trailer's back gate and hit the ground, wedging the corner of the trailer into the ground and leaving the cube at 45 degrees, half in and half out of the trailer. We tried to drag the trailer and the cube (which was still half-tied to the trailer) forward with the car, but one of the car's back wheels just spun round and round on bare rock. It looked as though we were going to have to open the tap, let all that precious water run down the road and start again

But our Nissan 4x4 (which until now, I've thoroughly disliked for its bigness, its redness and its unwieldiness) didn't let us down. We tried again and again with the four-wheel drive engaged, changing the angle of the wheels until at last that back tyre found some traction and we could edge forward. The trailer righted itself and - with the cube still hanging out of the back - we crept towards the house.

After that, things were easy. We attached a hose to the cube and ran it down to the entrance to the cisterna. Because the inside of the cube was dirty we held a tea towel over the end of the hose to filter the water. After five minutes or so our cube was empty and our cisterna was a bit fuller than it was before.

And most of you, dear readers, just turn on the tap...

PS - seeing that water is a finite resource really makes us think hard about how we use our water. (See this blog post too.) According to BBC Panorama, the average person in the UK uses 150 litres of water a day.

I think we're using at most about 1,000 litres a week between us, which is an average of 70 litres a day per person - which is still a lot of water when you see it in front of you.

Where does it go? Our washing machine is extremely thirsty - it needs about 90 litres for a wash and we do about two washes a week. I also hand-wash some things using the run-off from the washing machine followed by clean water for rinsing. So I guess this accounts for about 400 litres a week.

That means that we each use about 43 litres a day for washing ourselves, washing the dishes, flushing the toilet and watering a few plants - gosh.

Face to face with praying mantis

Found while gardening...

Ebro kayaking

On Sunday we kayaked down a 12km section of the river Ebro.

I thought that this was going to be a terrifying ordeal - the Ebro is huge. I feared huge depths, vicious currents and lurking giant catfish.

In fact, the stretch we took from Miravet to Benifallet was tranquil, pretty shallow in places and I don't think many fish were going to come anywhere near the 70 or so of us in the kayaking group who were splashing noisily and inexpertly through the water.

The scenery was stunning, the weather was beautiful and by the end I'd almost worked out which side to paddle to turn a corner.

David and me, not kayaking very hard at all, middle right

Miravet from the Ebro

Thank you very much to Jane Shaw for the pics.

Check out the blog post of our fellow kayakers, Linda and Steve, at La Vida Artesania

The kayaking company was BeniEmocions.

The fruits of our (not very hard) labour

When I was in England this August I could feel autumn coming as the days became shorter, the rain colder and the air developed a chilly bite. It felt like back to school, like the start of the six-month British winter, time to pack away light summer clothes and find the Christmas decorations - not good at all.

Even though over the past week or so England has enjoyed a summery blast of heat, I think it's better here. Yesterday it reached 35 degrees in the shade - as hot as it's been all summer, yet the cooler mornings give a bit of a bounce to life. David's been up and out early, hacking stubborn old shrubs and suckers out of the terraces in the early morning light (well, the sun doesn't come up until about 8am), and the plants are enjoying some free water from the overnight dew.

We're benefitting from a longer growing season than we were used to in our north London garden. I planted some serrano chilli seeds on 1 July (thank you for the freebie, Wahaca), they flowered in late August and I thought we were far too late for fruits, but now we've got a good crop well on the way.

I've just planted some more chilli seeds to see what will happen. David says it's a silly idea.

We had a huge crop of figs from one tree in late August/early September. We couldn't keep up with eating them as fast as they needed to be picked so I tried drying some in the sun. They took about two days to become storable, but not completely dry. They tasted wonderful - almost better than the fresh figs as they're not as rich. However, a few ended up with maggots in as they'd been sitting outside smelling sweet and delicious for the flies and wasps. I'll try drying them in muslin bags next time, I think.

I made a few jars of chutney too. I'm giving it a little while to mature before I give you the verdict. It looks nice though.

Bugs

There are lots of dragonflies around at the moment. On my first evening back from England I sat on the terrace as the sun set watching their wings flashing in the fading light.

David spotted an odd-looking beetle a couple of weeks ago. He called it Dali.

And in the evening, the best entertainment is to sit on the terrace and watch as the geckos race each other to snatch up the moths that flutter around the light. I don't have any photos as they're far too fast for me to capture. But I did manage to photograph the praying mantis that turned up one evening.

Paella and politics: La Diada Nacional de Catalunya

In Catalunya, 11 September doesn't mean terrorism or the twin towers, instead it's the Catalan national day. Eating, drinking and having fun are important, but there's also a strong political aspect.

The date commemorates a defeat rather than a grand victory: 11 September 1714 was when Catalans in Barcelona fell to monarchist troops after a 14-month siege during the Spanish Succession War. I'm no great expert on this part of Spanish history, so when I find out more about what all this means, I'll let you know.

At the official ceremony in Barcelona, Artur Mas, the president of the Catalan government (the Generalitat), caused controversy by refusing to speak in Castilian at all. He said: "The Catalan national transition is being carried out." This is against a background of debates about the role of Castilian in schools, see more in El Pais. 

In our village, Catalan flags were draped out of balconies and a wreath was laid at the main monument. After that, the fun began with a 'gran paella popular' prepared for lunch under the shade of the trees at the Ermita. Most of the villagers were sitting at long trestle tables which they laid with salads, bread and drinks. Enormous portions of paella were speedily doled out at about 3pm. It was delicious, full of mussels, prawns and rabbit (even the odd rabbit's head) and generally agreed to be better than Miravet's cherry festival paella. 

Paella for the whole village

After lunch, men at several tables prepared Calmant, a drink that's unique to our village. In a silver bowl a mixture of rum, sugar and coffee are set alight and ladled higher and higher as the sugar dissolves. It's not very nice, in my opinion, and certainly doesn't help you sleep.

The afternoon was finished with the local band playing the Catalan national anthem, Els Segadors, before the evening's entertainments - bingo, skittles, sack races and games for the children - began.

Late summer in England

I spent the last two weeks of August in the UK, and it was cold. I packed for this trip in the middle of the day, when it was 35 degrees and sunny, and I really couldn't imagine feeling cool, let alone very cold indeed.

So it was a bit of a shock to arrive in England and find that it really wasn't warm enough to be wearing just skirts, T-shirts and sandals. In particular, it wasn't warm enough to be wearing such flimsy attire when I went camping with friends for the August bank holiday weekend. One night in my tent I slept in and under the following: trousers, socks, vest top, t-shirt, hoodie (hood up), silk sleeping bag liner (stretched over cold nose), sleeping bag, fleece blanket (doubled), anorak, bath towel and – getting desperate now – slightly damp hand towel over feet. I was still cold.

Nevertheless, the rain managed to hold itself back for most of the weekend, the hailstones that hit Suffolk didn't hit us and we even managed to pack up the tents when it was dry, which made life much easier. And we had a lovely time.

I spent some of the fortnight relishing a few of the things that are good about England: smoked bacon, soft (albeit slightly damp) grass, multiculturalism (yes, even after the riots), deciduous trees, fish and chips and mushy peas, bitter, the first conkers, overpriced East End trinket shops...

I also stepped out of a few eco-habits. When it's tipping it down outside, there's really not much point in saving the few drops of water that you've rinsed out the teapot with to put on the tomatoes. And when it's chilly in the morning it's a real wrench to turn off the lovely warm shower while you wash and shiver.

While it's turning to autumn in England, it's still summer in Spain - hurray! It's great to be back!

Wildlife within

This little chap was hanging around on the ceiling above my desk. When I tried to persuade him to go out of the window, he dropped onto the desk (leaving a slimy belly print on the glass surface) then scooted off behind the bookshelf. Hope he's found the way out of the front door now.

On one of our first days here the cat was delighted to catch a gecko. She cheerfully trotted up to the house with it in her mouth - still alive but bleeding from its tail - and had lots of fun chasing it around the porch until David rescued it and set it free in the garden where - we hope - it might have recovered. The cat hasn't come back with any more since then - perhaps they taste nasty.

Fire and water festival: Correfocs i festa de l'aigua

Your teenage son riding a bike laden with explosives and your toddler sliding around in two-foot of noxious-smelling artificial foam is certainly not most British parents' idea of a suitable Saturday night's family entertainment.

But here they really know how to entertain the young people. This weekend was the annual Festa Jove (Youth Festival). It kicked off at 9.30pm as gangs of young people with drums slung over their shoulders pounded out vigorous rhythms and danced around the square. Then they set the place ablaze.

Most (but certainly not all) of the older boys (plus a handful of girls) were clad in flameproof devil suits and they brandished long sticks with firecrackers nailed on the end. Together a group would hold their sticks aloft, touching in the middle, and set light to the lot. One even set his bike aflame.

 As the firecrackers blazed, banged and spun the devils ran and danced through the streets of the village.

Smaller children chased after them (the Catalan version of health and safety in this case being providing your young offspring with some long trousers and a scarf to cover their face). The rest of us dodged the sparks, drank beer and had a great time. (You can read about the symbolism of the correfoc on Wikipedia - it's all about the powers of good and evil.)

After a brief firework display in the village square, a huge canon jetted gallons of foam into the street until we were knee-deep in it. A good way to cool down, for sure, but it smelt vile. Covered in bubbles, people then moved on to the bars and the disco at the football pitch, which apparently lasted until dawn, although we didn't.

Should I get a mangle? Sensible and not-so-sensible energy-saving ideas

We're off grid - we have no mains gas, electricity or water.

Gas is easy. It comes in big orange bottles which, when empty, you exchange for full ones from garages or the gas man who comes into the village every Wednesday morning.

Under the house is a massive concrete cisterna which stores rainwater drained from the roof. When there's no rain we can get Juan the water man to fill it up from his lorry (90 euros per delivery - last time we shared it with our neighbours), or we can put a water cube on our trailer which we can fill for free from the well in the village. The water gets from the cisterna into the house by an electric-powered water pump.

Electricity comes from our solar panels on the roof, our little wind turbine on the highest point on the hill behind the house or our generator.

Even though I've always tried to be frugal with resources, the whole world changes when you can no longer take them for granted. Here are some of the sensible - and a little bit crazy - procedures I've been putting in place.

1) Not flushing the toilet very often. This saves gallons of water, plus lots of electricity as the water pump takes a great deal of power. Am I a little bit strange for telling visitors who come from the world of plenty that they're very welcome not to flush? NB if you go to a party in an off-grid home, it's perfectly acceptable not to flush.

2) Re-thinking clothes washing. The washing machine has to run directly off the generator. It takes about an hour and a half and 3 or 4 euros-worth of petrol to do a wash. The waste water gushes straight out into a bucket so I can see the huge amount of water that it's using. I'm thinking hard about whether clothes are really dirty before they go in the machine, hand washing some more clothes in the outflow (the water is used twice that way), and beginning to wonder if I could stop the machine before the spin cycle and rely on the sun and the wind - or even a mangle (it's one of these, kids) - to do the drying.

3) Trying to read by candle-light. That doesn't work very well.

4) Buying more batteries. We've been running the CD player off batteries so that we don't have to worry about it draining the electricity system. But do old batteries pollute the world more than us having to put the generator on a little more often?

5) Unplugging things when they're not in use. We've been told for years that phone chargers suck up power, even when they're not charging your phone. I never bothered with unplugging them when they weren't being used - I do now.

6) Trying to work out what volts, amps and kilowatt hours are. I'll get back to you about this.

7) Saving water. I take a bucket into the shower to collect the water that I'm too chicken to wash under before it's warmed up - I'm getting about three litres a day from this, which is enough to water quite a few plants. We're using eco-friendly washing up liquid and clothes washing liquid so that we can throw the grey water onto the garden without worrying about poisoning everything. Obviously, turning the tap off when teeth-cleaning. And doing the washing up all in one go rather than turning the tap on every time a cup is dirty.

8) Not opening the fridge - unless it's absolutely necessary. Because every time you open the fridge it warms it up so the power has to kick in to cool it down again. No more staring into the fridge idly wondering what to have for lunch - a decision has to be made fast.

9) Loving sunny, windy days. This means power!

Some days are better than others

It's not all wonderful views and non-stop fiestas, you know. Today isn't going well.

We had been feeling really pleased with ourselves for learning to manage our off-grid power system. We've been diligently making sure that everything's well charged up and we've been trying to be as nice as possible to the batteries (how to care for batteries is the source of much debate among the off-grid community). Then this morning, just as we plugged in the generator to boost the system, suddenly all the power disappeared from the batteries. They'd been reading that they were 97% charged and they plunged to 0% for no apparent reason.

So it's now 6.30pm and we've had the generator on since about 9.30am trying to get them back up to 100%. We're still only on 62%. I've been trawling the internet to try to find out what went wrong. All I'm finding is more things to worry about (why we're not getting a full charge, whether the solar panels are working properly, whether we've got too many things pulling power out and not enough going in...).

On top of that, there are loads of wasps taking a peculiar interest in my pot of mint outside the front door, and I'm too scared to move it. I moved all the other plants in case they too became similarly affected and I've just discovered that the protective lid has blown off the salad seedlings and they've all perished in the sun.

I got attacked by a swarm of black flies earlier. The tiny mosca negra is much dreaded in these parts - some people are allergic to their bites and they're said to plague the Ebro region. I hadn't worried much about them as I hadn't seen many - until today. So I went into panic mode, coated myself in some honey moisturiser which is supposed to fend them off and sprayed fly spray around the house in case any had come inside. (I know fly spray is bad, but there is a time and a place for it.) The cat then ran back inside the house - right into the toxic fumes - so I had to dive in after her - fireman-style with my hand over my mouth - and pull her out. The spray didn't kill any flies anyway.

And in addition to the generator thundering away all day, David has been strimming while I've been trying to concentrate on work. So much for peace and quiet - grrr.

A few festivals

I've been so busy working that I haven't had a chance to update the blog. (If you're interested in how the UK's fastest growing, biggest and most impressive social enterprises are doing, check out www.socialenterpriselive.com/se100 next Monday night for the release of a big report that I've been editing. What's quite satisfying is that on most days my computer, printer and scanner have been powered only by the sun and the wind - more about our alternative power system later.)

Of course, as we're in Spain, a few more feasts, festivals and celebrations have whizzed by in the meantime. On Sunday 26 June, the villagers celebrated Corpus Christi by getting up at the crack of dawn to cover the streets in decorative carpets made out of different coloured stones and dyed rice husks. On their hands and knees kids and adults worked from the cool of 7 in the morning until the solid heat of lunchtime. In the past, they used flowers, but the wind blew them away. Designs ranged from the conservative floral stuff to Dora the Explorer. Here's some of what they made...

Later there was a procession and a church service, but we missed out on those as we were invited to a barbecue instead. The next day it was all swept away, like it had never happened.

There was also a Catalunyan holiday to celebrate St Joan (or St John). We completely missed out on this one except we could hear the music from one of the night clubs on the seafront thumping up through the hills at 5 in the morning.

One of the local villages was celebrating a saint of fishing too.

I think there are some fun beach party festivals coming up later in the summer.

Oh, and the weather has been great - lots of warm sunshine plus a few very loud thunderstorms at night.

Reasons to be cheerful

In an earlier post I said I thought our new house was like paradise. Here are some things to justify that statement:

1) The view. See below. It's difficult to convey via a two-dimensional photograph, but it's just mind-blowing to be able to see so far from our front door. That's the sea in the far background, beyond a few hills. To our right more hills rise up above our house. These are topped by parades of wind turbines. And to our left are forests of pines leading down to the coast.

2) The creatures. This category could quickly become very non-paradise-like, but while I'm still in the honeymoon period it's worth noting that yesterday evening we sat on our front porch overlooking that view and we saw (a) lots of swifts swooping and looping (b) an eagle gliding over the far hills (c) a toad which pottered out from under the bush right in front of our door (the cat spotted it first but we shooed her away just in time to avoid a nasty encounter) and (d) a line of thousands of ants staggering around with heavy loads of bits of leaf.

3) The weather. The locals have been moaning about how cloudy it's been, and it's not great for keeping our solar power topped up, but, in spite of this, it's lovely and warm and we have seen the sun fairly frequently (certainly more so than we would in London). There's no rain forecast so we've just had Joan the water man fill up our cisterna from his giant tanker. And when it's windy (which is fairly often in these parts) our wind turbine whizzes round and round and makes more lovely electricity.

Shrew in a shoe

Our first visitor. The cat and I aren't yet adapted to country living. I shrieked as it emerged from behind one of our as-yet unpacked boxes and the cat decided she'd rather play with her toy mouse.

Festa Cirera Miravet

Well, we've moved into our new house on the hill and I think I'm in paradise. But first, the cherry festival at Miravet.

On Sunday 12 June hundreds of locals, tourists and ex-pats packed picnics into cool boxes, grabbed their sunhats and piled into cars to drive to Miravet, a pretty hillside village on the banks of the great river Ebro which produces a good quantity of Catalunya's cherries.
Those that got there early bagged the shadiest of the trestle tables set out under the trees around the village square. Competition was so great for the best spots that a fist fight broke out at one. One particularly organised group set their table with a cloth, china plates and terracotta water jugs, then began to create individual bouquets for each place setting. We got out our scratched old plastic plates, disposable forks and cracked open the cans of Mahou.
Around the square were stalls piled high with boxes of cherries - bright red ones, dark red ones, purplish ones and orangey ones. More stalls were selling pottery (another Miravet speciality), wine, cheese and textiles. As we drank our beer, had a few snacks out of the coolboxes and wandered around the stalls, a huge paella was being prepared at the corner of the square. A very hot chef threw bucketfuls of rice and chicken into a paddling-pool sized dish over a big wood fire and stirred it all up with a giant spatula. A woman trolleyed two-litre plastic bottles of red wine to our tables and another delivered huge platefuls of cherries.

Once we had all feasted and drank and chatted, a band plugged in their amps and the dancing began. Later, cherry cake and a strong dark liquer were served. As dusk fell we decided we had had our fill of sunshine and cherries (and beer) - until next year.

Less than a week to go...

This time next week – fingers crossed – we'll have moved into our little house on the hill. What we need now is some rain to make sure our 10,000-litre cisterna is full, then some sunshine for the solar panels to charge up the batteries.

It's difficult not to take for granted the things that we've lived with all of our lives – as much hot and cold running water as we like (barring the odd hosepipe ban in London over the past few years) and electricity when and where we need it. Soon we'll have to fire up the generator when we turn on the washing machine, there will be no more leaving the tap running when we clean our teeth and vacuuming might well become a luxury that we decide we can do without (dust allergy or not).

We're going to swap the chatter and clatter of village life (church bells every quarter of an hour, the neighbour's garage door rattling up and down four times a day, the loudspeakered village announcements preceded by the Chariots of Fire theme, the shrieking house martins) for the silence of the countryside. Mind you, if that silence is broken by the thundering of wild boar hooves, I'm coming right back down to civilisation.