Las Huertas

The Kitchen Gardens

Appears in

MoVida Rustica: Spanish Traditions and Recipes

Published 2009

About

IT WAS LATE MORNING AND I WAS WATCHING A STOCKY OLD MAN WALKING ACROSS A MEDIEVAL STONE BRIDGE WITH A BIG BUCKET OF TOMATOES ON HIS SHOULDER. FOLLOWING HIM WAS HIS WIFE, CARRYING AN ARMLOAD OF ZUCCHINI (COURGETTES) AND A PLASTIC BAG FILLED WITH SMALL APPLES. SOON CAME OTHER COUPLES, SOME CARRYING SACKS, OTHERS PUSHING WHEELBARROWS. ONE MAN HAD TIED BLUE PLASTIC CRATES TO HIS HORSE’S BACK AND FILLED THEM WITH GRAPES. SLOWLY THEY ALL LUMBERED UP TO THEIR VILLAGE ON TOP OF THE HILL.

This was their daily ritual: work in their huerta — what we’d call a kitchen garden — during the day, and return to their home in the afternoon. Their little huertas were patchworked across the fertile flats of the Río Francia that meanders a few hundred metres below their millennia-old town of Mirandar del Castañar in the Sierra de Francia, an hour south of Salamanca in western Spain. Here, people grow what they eat and eat what they grow.