Summertime means campers at La Fargassa
This last month at La Fargassa has brought more and more campers to our mountain retreat. About 100x more. What started out as a quiet nook in a peaceful mountain valley in April has, by July, turned into a three ring circus complete with mondo tents and a travelling donkey show. When everyone gets together for dinner the headcount is 50+ people.
Everyone eats together family-style, and on this particular Saturday evening we had the eternal crowd pleaser: homemade pizza! Usually the tables are heavily laden with food, but in this case we had the pizza off to the side and the helpers were serving the campers.
You can see Jon there in the blue shirt trying desperately to serve pizza quickly enough to the swarming throng of Dutch and German children impatient for this precious treat. Somehow the kids weren’t quite as enthusiastic about the stuffed bell peppers I made or the curried rice balls Lizzy made on subsequent evenings but, well, you can’t please all the kids all the time.
Besides cooking up a storm (and doing the dishes that go along with it…sigh) large tents have needed to be erected and Jonathan has been put in charge of heading up the tent team. Campers can either bring their own tent or, if they want to get quite fancy about it, can rent one of the huge and grand canvas tents we set up here. There are seven of them set up each summer and by June they’ve been reserved by streams of families for the rest of the summer. Putting up one of these tents, and outfitting it with everything from beds to whisks to garlic presses, is a full day job. For your pleasure and education we have followed Jon during the building of the tent known as Holly (named for the trees it sits near):
Step 1: This canvas roll looks harmless enough, eh? Well it’s only step 1 and there’s a long way to go before it becomes a full blown fancy tent complete with a double bedroom, a single bedroom and a foyer/kitchenette.
Step 2: Rock Picking. Nobody likes to step on rocks and stub their toe through a canvas bottomed tent…even a tent destined for a wood floor to be installed. Jon and Meera are pick rocks out of the ground (and it’s tedious work so I think Jon may be faking his smile).
Step 3: Laying the tent out, making sure the door is facing the right way, checking that all canvas pieces are intact, poles present and that it still fits in the designated area. You can see Meera on the left moving the refrigerator which will later be installed in the foyer.
Step 4: The middle and front poles go up, everyone cheers that the tent is in the air and on its way to being a full fledged structure!
Step 5: Internal adjustments…
Step 6: Using industrial strength elastic bands and stakes, Jon hammers around the perimeter of the tent, stretching it taut and making it more tent-like.
Step 7: Fine tuning, and more fine tuning
Step 8: Until finally the tent is together and ready to be filled with beds, kitchen gadgets, a gas range and a fridge. It’s camping for those who like to have a juicer on hand and their evening meals home-made for them. In other words, it’s great! And the campers really love the entire experience of being here, many of whom return year after year.
Besides putting up tents (which has now been accomplished as all summer tents have been erected, outfitted and filled with campers) we have been fruit picking. In season are cherries, strawberries, gooseberries, tayberries, plums and raspberries – all of which need to be picked and sorted. The really good ones that aren’t too ripe are weighed out into little baskets and sold to organic markets. The ones that are ripe or over-ripe are firstly eaten by us to our absolute fill, secondly put into desserts for evening meal and thirdly made into jam for our later consumption. I have still not grown tired of buckets and buckets of beautiful ripe organic cherries available for eating at every meal and snack time in between. What a pleasure!
The cherries and strawberries were really ripe and pretty much picked out by last week, so this week we’re focusing on the gooseberries and especially the plums which are just coming ripe this week and next.
Much time right now is spent processing the fruit, “topping and tailing” as the English call it (which means taking the stem off the top and the leaves or flower piece off the bottom). Here are Lizzy and Jon processing yesterdays buckets of fruit: tayberries (maybe also known as lindonberries?), gooseberries and plums.
Jon and I fly away from France and on to Holland on July 15. It will not be easy to leave. We really love it here, love the mountains and the friends we’ve made. We love the availability of diverse hiking trails and swimming in the river during the hot parts of the day. But moving on is what we do and we know that we, like all those campers, can come back whenever we want to.
When we leave here on the 15th we’ll be arriving in Holland about 10 days before we actually have a place to stay and so we’ve decided to borrow some bicycles from Kim and Wim and take a cycle tour of Holland (in solidarity with the Tour de France happening simultaneously)! We will fly in to Maastrecht and take a train to Venlo where the bicycles are. We’ll cycle from Venlo to Utrecht, stay there for a few days, then up to Amsterdam where we’ll stay for a few days as well. After that we’ll take the train back to Venlo and stay there at Kim and Wim’s house for a few weeks.
We’re looking forward to new adventures, though neither of us doubt we will very much miss seeing the majesty of the Pyrenees every day in our backyard.
Tags: June 2008, Tag Index
seeingspain
July 9th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Hey Beckie, have you said “hello” to George Hencapie of team Columbia yet? He’s there! love, dad
July 9th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
It’s cherry season here in Portland as well! I’ve been eating a lot from neighborhood trees…blueberry season is just starting too! Those are my favorites.
July 9th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Beckie, what an adventure! I’m your moms’ high school friend, she told me to visit your site. Have fun, this is the time to do it. Let me know if you go to Italy. I will be there in Oct.
July 14th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
I envy the time you have had there in the mountains. How absolutely beautiful. The tents take us back to our tenting days. We traveled alot with tent, but not all the other fine amenities. As we read about your berries, we too have been picking blackberries and red raspberries along our Blackwater Creek trail. They have been very plentiful and I eat as many as I put in our containers. Grandpa doesn’t eat them and I just about made myself sick overeating berries. Holland will have different adventures I’m sure. Love and hugs, Gram and Gramp
July 16th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
Hi Jon ( and Christine),
Sounds like you are having a great time, helping others, making friends, and seeing the sights. I leave for Germany next Thursday (July 24) where I will be visiting friends for 3 weeks. I will be thinking about you and your adventures as I enjoy myself with friends in a small town in Bayern.
Best,
Doug
July 17th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
“turned into a three ring circus complete with mondo tents and a *travelling donkey show.*”
Dios Mio! I knew they were real! You paint quite the picture.
July 21st, 2008 at 7:13 pm
Hey! So great to read about your travels. I am very glad to see such wonderful people out in the world representing our country.
And I loved reading about the fruit because I love fruit! And it reminds me of when I was a cherry tree.
Love,
Marc
June 28th, 2010 at 1:45 am
It’s cherry season here in Portland as well! I’ve been eating a lot from neighborhood trees…blueberry season is just starting too! Those are my favorites.
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