Sweet chestnuts, kiwi fruits and a lost huntsman

November mists

November is chestnut time here in Galicia. I vividly remember the first year we stayed in a (icy cold) rented flat here; we went walking daily, just to warm up a little. The lanes around were littered with sweet chestnut husks like a particularly spiky shag pile carpet. I was so fascinated by the sight that I wrote a short story entitled ‘Walking over Chestnuts’ in honour of Chris Stewart’s Driving over Lemons, which was one of my inspirations when moving to Spain (albeit a very different and ‘danker’ region of this huge country). Part of that short story found its way many years later into my first travelogue memoir, Plum, Courgette & Green Bean Tart. That first year we picked unsquashed chestnuts off the road and roasted them on a skillet over the gas hob in our freezing flat. Did I mention that the place was freezing?

Plenty of sweet chestnuts for Christmas dinner last year in Galicia

The previous year, we had celebrated Christmas with my mum in the English Midlands. I had a new recipe for chestnut stuffing I wanted to try but none of us could find fresh chestnuts anywhere. Canned. Yes. Vacuum packed. Yes. Fresh. No. Not a single one. I remembered that Christmas as we walked over chestnuts in Galicia.

Sweet chestnut woods abound

We still pick up sweet chestnuts when we go on our walks through the woods. We have a dozen trees of our own now and could, if we ever made the time, pick the chestnuts to sell as our neighbours do. They sell for around a euro a kilo to the local co-operative which makes marrons glacé to send to France and canned chestnut puree – no doubt to sell to the English for Christmas. The irony.

Leaves for my vegetable beds

I used to think winter would be a quiet time in the allotment but November is still hectic. I’m collecting the fallen chestnut and oak leaves for compost and to mulch my vegetable beds over the winter. The last of the tomatoes are ripening indoors for a special December birthday treat next week and the apples are sitting snugly in their boxes in the barn. There are both eating and cooking apples on our land; the latter cook down to a sweet fluffy puree with virtually no work on my part other than peeling and chopping them. These make delicious pies and puddings, cakes and crumbles and last for a few months in our cool barn below the house.

Inside or out, there's always pudding!

We had always planned to turn those barns into a separate guest space. It’s really quite a large area, but we seem to have an abundance of living space as it is, what with two houses and five bedrooms between them. Anyway, where would I store all my produce without the wooden bread boxes in our barns for the apples and kiwi fruits, the hooks for my onions and walnuts (not this year sadly due to an inconvenient late frost which scorched the newly formed flowers on the trees), and the buckets of sand for my carrots and potatoes? To say nothing of the garden tools and piles of cardboard boxes waiting to be turned into compost or used to line the chicken shed floor to keep the hens cosy over winter. No, I think we need those barns more than we need extra living space.

Kiwi vines are beautiful year round

November is the time to pick our kiwi fruit crop. We have five plants; one male and four females. They grow against the slatted front of our other barn, the Long Barn, which hubby S has been reroofing. The kiwi vines face south and are taking over the driveway with their tangled mess of shoots. S prunes them at least twice a year but, like Jack’s beanstalk, they just keep on growing. We couldn’t get the car out this summer for the mass of fruiting branches hanging directly over the drive, and the old roof was a tangle of stems.

Still plenty of fruits, despite the frost

That late frost means we had less flowers than usual but there will still be over a thousand oval, furry green fruits to store over the winter months.

We pick the kiwi fruit just after the first frost on a warm sunny day and store them in boxes in the barn. We were eating kiwi fruit on breakfast up until July this year; they mature slowly in the cool barn, keeping exceptionally well. Of course, any that start to ripen too quickly make delicious jam which means we can savour kiwi fruit year-round. Sadly, it’s the one fruit Mum doesn’t enjoy. Pity when one has so many!

Stored kiwi fruit and many preserves

I mentioned our weekly walks in the woods around us earlier. One thing we have to be wary of at this time of year, besides prickled fingers from the sweet chestnut husks, are the local hunters. From late October onwards our previously peaceful woods ring to the baying of hounds and the dull thuds of shots echoing around. There are many wild boar around here, the main prey for the hunters, and they can cause havoc to farmers’ crops. Boar have a special liking for corn (maize) and can rip up a field full overnight. I’ve never been convinced that our hunters actually keep down the boar population though. For one thing they make far too much noise for any self-respecting boar to stick around to be caught. For another, they never seem to be the brightest sparks in the bag.

The hunt love our woodland

Last weekend we were on the terrace drinking our morning cuppa when I heard yelling. I knew the hunters were around but this sounded somehow more plaintive than the usual barked orders and excited conversations about possible boar sightings.

I wandered to the edge of our garden and looked down into the sunken lane which runs alongside. A hunter stood there, phone in hand, rifle flapping around. He spotted me and waved. I ducked instinctively as his rifle followed the arc of his body and shouted a friendly ‘¡Hola!’

His next words surprised me. ‘What village is this?’ he asked.

‘This, erm, well.’ I spluttered; my Spanish even worse than usual. ‘Don’t you know?’ I had to ask.

‘No. I walked from Vilar,’ he replied, waving the mobile around. I could have told him the signal is non-existent hereabouts but he seemed to have worked that out for himself. Instead, I told him where he was with an almost straight face and ducked back into the relative safety of our garden as he frantically moved his phone, and by association as it was in the same hand, his rifle around. I pondered on the possibility of a safety catch on a hunting rifle, on all the accidents I hear about, and the probability of him being rescued anytime soon.

Life is nothing if not exciting around here! Happy November everyone.

Every cloud!