Jardin Tropical in Andalucia, Spain

In mid-April, I grabbed an EasyJet flight from Milan to Malaga and then took a bus to Almuñecar to stay and work at Plácido's WWOOF farm, Jardin Tropical. With red poppies blooming on the sides of his valley, views of Andalucian mountains in the distance and over 100 varieties of fruit trees, the setting was quite idyllic.

When I arrived in Sicily in early March, my Spanish was sneaking into my Italian mixing me up when I spoke.  Now in Spain after six weeks in Italy, my mouth was speaking Italian while my brain tried to speak in Spanish.  The inside of my brain felt like the swirled poppies above. 

  

For much of his citrus fruit, Plácido waits for it to ripen completely to the point that they fall off the trees and the next year's flowers bloom again.  Thus, in April, his orchard was still full of many varieties of delicious oranges.  

This area of Andalucia near the sea has a unique environment, being the zone in mainland Spain that is most nearly tropical.  Plácido maintains a couple greenhouses to encourage his tropical experiments like this pineapple above.

Plácido's diet is nearly all vegan and raw.  Above is an example of a typical lunch split between the two of us: papaya, banana, chirimoyas and nisperos.

Plácido removes plastic from some successful tree grafts on a pear? tree.  

Close-up of two grafts

Nisperos

Plácido is passionate about his mango tree cuttings from Thailand.

In one of the greenhouses

The top of a mango cutting shows new growth.

Jiaogulan, known as immortality tea

Some fig trees

Plácido took me to a beautiful spot to do some rock-climbing outside Granada.

And I accidentally knocked a rock down into his forehead while he was belaying me down the rock face.

Sogno di un Uomo Ridiculo: a WWOOF Farm in Central Sicily

Lemons are just some of the citrus being grown at Salvatore and Francesca's farm outside Caltanisetta in central Sicily.  Besides their four home-schooled chidren, their farm or Il Sogno di un Uomo Ridiculo (The Dream of a Ridiculous Man), hosts goats, ducks, geese, chickens, lots of olive trees, some fruit trees and vegetable gardens.

View from the house across the valley

Teresa and Benedetta...

Teresa is featured in Salvatore's band's music video seen here.

The group is called Pupi di Surfaro.

Broccoli

Almond blossoms...bloomed a month later than normal due to the unusually cold and wet winter in Sicily.

Drying my shoes was a struggle as there was a lot of rain in March.

View of the top of the property and the home - and olives trees we pruned

Francesco and Angie, other WWOOF volunteers from near Piacenza

The goats...

Angie was the resident hair stylist.

Peanut art in the trees

Fava beans (nitrogen fixer and Sicilian delicacy) line the rows between citrus trees.

Bosco Falconeria

The wondrous view towards the sea and the Golfo di Castellammare at Bosco Falconeria

The sun doesn't go down...it's just an illusion cause by the world, spinning 'round.

The world spins 'round with some grapevines.  I came to this farm to work as a WWOOF volunteer at the beginning of March.  We were mostly assisting with the pruning of the grapevines and the olive trees.

More grapevines...Though I didn't meet her as she was away, the original matriarch of this farm wrote a great book called On Persephone's Island: A Sicilian Journal in which she details her impressions of Sicily and of transforming the farmland.

"Nicola" (Besnik) lives and works on the farm.  He and his wife originally grew up in Albania before migrating to Sicily many years ago. 

Rows of olive trees

Me

The endangered species of Sicilian donkey

Peach blossoms in the future fruit orchard, harbingers of spring

Amee Doyer's Farm in Northwest Thailand

At this farm producing rice, rubber and fruit a few hours northwest of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, I worked alongside Ashi, a refugee from Burma. Together we helped prepare the paddy for planting rice and although he doesn't speak English and I don't speak Lisu, his hill tribe language, we communicated with gestures and smiles.

The paddies were first plowed and then flooded to kill off the grass and weeds.

Main house where I stayed. It was a bit strange showing up to this farm and realizing that no one there had expected my arrival. I had been in communication with a Canadian guy who runs the farm with his Thai/Burmese brother-in-law, but he had left for other hemispheres and failed to mention my arrival to others on the farm. However, even though it took the main boss about week to get around to asking my name, the farm was used to receiving WWOOF volunteers and they were well-prepared to feed me and put me to work.

Jackfruit was consumed almost daily.

Lunch...we usually had pork and rice three times a day but pictured here are noodles.

An unidentifiable inedible fruit. There were several fruits on the farm whose names I was never able to figure out.

Some of the cuter swine...there were over 100 pigs living on the farm, so it was no wonder that we ate pork for most of the meals.

One day this pig was killed by one of its own and so the workers slaughtered it and cooked it up...

Intestines!

Alea posed with a snake killed by one of his workers in the fields. He cooked it up with a red curry, which was spicy and delicious. Despite all the bones, it was some of the nicest and leanest meat I have eaten.

A view of some of the rice paddies.

A patch of rice to be transplanted around to all the other areas.

Here you can see corn in the foreground (grown to feed the pigs), rice and several coconut trees.

Even on an organic farm, the chemicals are often not far away. Here an adjacent field gets sprayed.