When agriculture pays off

Is the passion for gardening inherited? In our case, yes, but we are trying not to make it so.

By Lucía Monllor Carbonell. @ten_green_fingers

My name is Lucía, and although I usually manage the Instagram account, we have a great team working in our garden: my family. We are not dedicated to agriculture, but we could say that it is the most beautiful inheritance that our grandfather has left us. Is the passion for the garden inherited? In our case, yes, but we are trying not to let it be so.

I cannot begin to tell you about our garden without first introducing you to my iaio Vicente, a very hardworking and humble man who knew how to see wealth where others cannot see it. He, little by little, cultivated our passion for the field and agriculture, until it is now a fundamental part of our lives.

When we were little, our grandfather would take us to the garden. There we would spend summer afternoons while he proudly showed us the tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers and watermelons that were growing. Curiously, our grandfather would make us caress the watermelons (always carefully and without stepping on the plants), as if the hands of his grandchildren were going to work magic on them.

My grandfather enjoyed his garden all year round but, without a doubt, his favorite season was summer. Vegetables were his weakness, especially tomatoes. We all knew that when my grandfather came home from the garden with a trunk full of boxes of tomatoes, it was our turn to spend the afternoon canning with my iaia. And so we continued to do it with her.

Another of my grandfather’s passions was irrigation. In our orchard, we are fortunate to have a system of irrigation ditches that allows us to continue irrigating in this traditional way. These irrigation ditches are regulated by an association that is more than 100 years old, and of which my grandfather was president for many years.

In addition to this land dedicated to the orchard, our grandfather has also left us more than 300 olive trees to take care of. That is why, although during the week we work or study, in November and December, when the weekend comes, we take blankets and baskets and we go to pick olives, or as we say here ‘a fer olives’. Getting up early, having lunch under the olive trees and taking the olives to weigh the oil mill, has become a tradition in our family… One of the best sensations of the summer is watering with your feet inside the irrigation ditch.

You might think that this passion that involves so much work only made my grandfather happy, but that is not the case. A few months before he left, while we were having lunch after having spent the whole morning picking olives, we were laughing and telling all the anecdotes that had happened to us among the olive trees. My grandfather, seeing us so happy, told us a phrase that we all carry in our hearts: “The work in the orchard never ends, and it is often very difficult to combine it with work and studies”. We do it out of devotion to my grandfather and we could say that our passion for the field is indeed inherited.

Our aim is that this passion for farming and agriculture is not only inherited, but comes naturally. With our networks, we show both the good and the not so good parts of farming, give some tips and tricks, and learn many others.

Green school projects

A year ago we started a very exciting project: teaching in a school garden. After a whole year promoting this passion to the children, we are very proud to have succeeded in sowing this seed in their hearts and to see how, little by little, it is growing more and more.

The Cultivers team has also joined this project and collaborates with us to educate our students on sustainable culture.

Thank you iaio for having shown us that all work has its reward, that ‘el que no sembra no cull’ (he who does not sow does not reap) and that the family must always be taken care of. We miss you very much but the orchard makes us feel closer to you.