Getting Ready for changes

Many will think I am crazy but I thought I would start this blog now even though I am not yet in the place where this journey needs to begin. I am however, already a vegan. My dream is to have a home in Galicia with land to create a food forest and try to live a self-sufficient life and allow others to be part of its creation and to help sustain it. Of course the pandemic has brought about many frustrations in particular the problem of selling my current property in order to move to Galicia. People are just not in a position to buy and banks are not so happy to be lending, leaving the likes of myself waiting and hoping.

I am at the moment living on the island of Mallorca and have a lovely home with a huge terrace for which I am extremely grateful. Unfortunately my dream is to have green open spaces around me for myself, my two rescue dogs and my ten rescue cats.

For my cats I would like to build them a huge catio so they can spend time outdoors safely and enjoy all the different types of weather and the opportunity to laze in the sunshine, climb trees and do cat stuff. Of course it would be attached to the house and they would have an indoor room as well as a terrace and garden to enjoy. For my dogs, one in her sixteenth year and the other coming up to ten and suffering with a very severe skin problem, I would like them to be able to run around on grass and have the freedom to run without leads. For myself I am looking for somewhere to create my dream, to be as self sufficient as possible, to grow all of my food, to create a food forest and grow annual fruit and vegetables and to hopefully have room enough to share it with others of the same mindset.

As the opportunity to move is limited right now I have been researching all of the things that will help me create my wonderful new life. I have also been experimenting with growing some vegetables on my terrace from seeds. Due to the intense heat this summer has brought to Mallorca growing anything has not been easy and I realise once I get to Galicia the temperatures will be different to here. Having said that I just could not sit back and wait, I needed to experiment to see the possibilities.

I have managed to grow an abundance of green Mallorcan peppers which have lasted at least two months producing more than enough peppers for my use.

I planted squash seeds and have several reasonable sized squash on the way. I did find with the squash that they need space. Initially I put in ten squash seeds thinking that I might get two or three plants and arranged a large rectangular pot to grow them in. I was totally amazed when all ten came up ready for planting in less than two weeks.

Not knowing about how much space they needed I planted all nine little plants in my pot and waited. Incredible growth spurts brought about a mass of leaves and flowers within weeks. I managed to find a large chicken wired door that I could use to hold the plants off of the terrace as I was worried about the squash going mushy on the terrace as there was no air to circulate.

Interestingly there were masses of flowers but from the nine plants I have only five reasonable sized squash. A lesson indeed, it would appear they do not like to be quite so close together and although they flowered there must have been too much competition for the root space. I also think that perhaps a trellis going upwards would be more beneficial to this plant.

I have also been growing some sweet potatoes in a huge pot this year. Last year I managed to grow some in a small pot - just to see if I could - can’t wait until it is time to harvest them this year, I am really hoping for a bumper crop.

This was how they looked just a couple of weeks after planting - obviously my pot was going to be too small for so many plants.

One of my Mallorcan pepper plants.

They are very tasty and not at all bitter like some of the green peppers usually are.

Crazy sweet potato vines, they grow everywhere and they are edible, in fact all of the sweet potato plant is edible. Can’t wait for harvest time!