Our spanish farm Blog 
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If the times comes I have never considered myself a “prepper.” I don't have an underground bunker. I'm not preparing for the collapse of civilisation. And I certainly don't spend my evenings calculating how many tins of beans I need to survive the apocalypse. But I do believe in being prepared. There is a big difference. Living in the countryside has gradually changed the way I think about emergencies. We have power cuts. We get severe storms. We live with the possibility of

There is a moment every year when the vegetable garden starts to change. The tomatoes are still producing. The peppers certainly haven't given up. There are flowers everywhere, and in the middle of the day it can still feel very much like summer here in Catalonia. Cabbage is going in the ground But the light is different. The mornings are cooler. The shadows are getting longer. And suddenly I find myself looking at empty spaces in the vegetable garden and thinking not about t

My not so fantastic sweet corn harvest... There is something almost comical about this photo. This spring, I planted 240 corn plants. Two hundred and forty. In my head, I could already see the harvest. Baskets overflowing with beautiful golden cobs. Corn for summer dinners, corn for the freezer, corn for soups and stews during winter. Perhaps even enough that, by September, I would be wondering what on earth I was going to do with all of it. Well. Here is what I have to show

There is a point every year when I realise that summer is ending. It is rarely a particular date. There is no dramatic change overnight, and here in Spain September can still be very warm. Yesterday we had 34 degrees (93 f) The tomatoes are still hanging on the plants, the dahlias are flowering, and there are still plenty of jobs waiting for me in the garden. Changing of the guards But something changes. This week, I changed my garden slippers for my office shoes. And somehow

Well, this is slightly strange. This is the 100th post on Our Spanish Farm. One hundred. When I started this blog, I don't think I really imagined what post number 100 would look like. I'm not even sure I genuinely believed there would be a post number 100. I certainly didn't have a grand plan. There was no content strategy. No five-year vision. No carefully prepared editorial calendar. Summer garden 2026 I had a garden. I was learning how to grow things. I was learning how t

There are parts of the garden you proudly photograph. And then there are parts you carefully crop out of every pic. My potting station was very firmly in the second category. For quite some time, this corner beside the house had technically been my potting area. I say technically, because in reality it had slowly evolved into something between a storage area, timber yard, plant nursery and general dumping ground. My brand new - Hand made set-up! There was an old table. There

August has arrived, and the preserving season is now in full swing. At this point in summer, preserving is no longer something I plan to do. Making sauce There are vegetables coming into the kitchen almost every day, jars are slowly filling the pantry shelves, the dehydrator is running, and every time I think I have caught up, I walk outside and find something else ready to harvest. And this month, it is all about tomatoes. I'm making tomato sauce, another batch of garden sal

It feels slightly ridiculous to talk about a winter garden when it is still brutally hot outside. Winter crops waiting to be planted The summer garden is still producing, the tomatoes are hanging on, peppers are growing, and there are still plenty of things to harvest and preserve. But at the same time, trays of cabbage, kale and other cool-season vegetables are waiting in the shade for their turn. This is one of the things I have slowly learned about gardening here in Spain:

If you'd asked me a year ago what a tomatillo was, I'd probably have guessed it was some unusual variety of tomato. I couldn't have been more wrong. When I planted the seeds this spring, I really didn't know what to expect. I'd never tasted a fresh tomatillo before, never cooked with one and certainly never grown them. I simply liked the idea of trying something different. Weeks harvest! ;) That's one of the things I enjoy most about gardening. Every season feels like an oppo

Every summer, I asked myself the same question. "Why am I doing this inside?" Anyone who has ever pressure canned in the middle of August knows exactly what I mean. The kitchen turns into a sauna, every window ends up wide open and, somehow, you're still standing over a pot of boiling water while the thermometer outside is already creeping past 35°C. Loving the simple canning station Every year I promised myself that next season would be different. Then another summer came an

A few weeks ago, I opened the door to our second house, walked over to the pantry and immediately knew something wasn't right. Bath time! A few tiny droppings. That's all it took. I don't think I've ever gone from calm to mildly horrified panic quite so quickly. For anyone who stores food, finding signs of a rat is probably close to the top of the list of things you never want to discover. My first thought wasn't about the rat. It was about the hundreds of jars lining the she

For the past few years, almost every spare hour has been spent somewhere behind the house. How it turned out That's where the vegetable garden has slowly taken shape, bed by bed. It's where the orchard has started to grow, where the chickens have their run, and where I've spent countless weekends building an outdoor kitchen and a canning station. The front garden, on the other hand, never seemed to make it to the top of the list. It wasn't that I didn't like it. It was simply

When we moved to the mountains of Catalonia, we knew we were choosing a different way of life. We traded city traffic for winding country roads. Our neighbours became vineyards, forests and olive groves. Summer meant long evenings outside, vegetables growing in the garden and the constant sound of cicadas. Of course, we also knew that wildfires were part of life here. Every summer there are fires somewhere in Spain. You see them on the news, hope everyone stays safe and carry

I always think August feels different. Sweet corn is having a bumper year! The excitement of sowing seeds has faded, the beds are full, and the garden has settled into its summer rhythm. Every morning begins the same way. Coffee in hand, Klaus trotting beside me, and a slow walk through the vegetable garden to see what has changed overnight. This year, I keep stopping at the sweet corn. Back in spring it was hard to imagine that those tiny shoots would end up taller than me.

July is when preserving season stops being a pleasant little hobby and starts quietly taking over the house. Harvest season is upon us! At the beginning of summer, I always feel wonderfully organised. I have jars. I have lids. I have vinegar, lemon juice and a carefully considered list of everything I intend to preserve. Then the garden starts producing. Suddenly there are cucumbers in the fridge, tomatoes ripening on every available surface and a canner permanently stationed

A year ago, keeping backyard chickens felt like one of those simple, wholesome life upgrades. Get a few hens, collect fresh eggs, toss them some kitchen scraps, and live happily ever after. Happy hens! And to be fair, some of that dream is real. There is something genuinely satisfying about walking outside in the morning and finding warm eggs in the nest box. It never really gets old. Even after a year, it still feels a bit magical. But chickens have also taught me that simpl

May always feels like the true beginning of preserving season. The garden is awake, flowers are blooming, and herbs are surging ahead. The kitchen shifts from winter cooking into that familiar rhythm of filling jars, drying trays, and making the most of what the season offers. I like May because it still feels civilized. You’re not yet knee-deep in tomatoes, courgettes, and fruit avalanches. Instead, May offers smaller, enjoyable preserving projects that help rebuild the pant

Last years peppers planted! Every spring, one of my favourite gardening moments is bringing the overwintered pepper plants back to life. After months of looking tired, leafless, mildly offended, and like they may never contribute anything useful again, they suddenly begin to wake up. Tiny green shoots appear, stems firm up, and before long they are ready for another season. There is something deeply satisfying about it. Instead of starting again from seed and waiting endlessl

When people imagine home canning, they usually picture the nice parts. Rows of gleaming jars. A bubbling pot on the stove. Sun-ripened tomatoes becoming sauce. Shelves full of homemade food ready for winter. And yes, those parts are real. My early spring pantry What people don’t always picture is standing in the kitchen surrounded by produce that all decided to ripen at once, realizing you’ve run out of lids, and wondering why you somehow created unpaid factory work for yours

Most people think of butternut squash as a sprawling plant that takes over half the garden, crawls into pathways, and starts making expansion plans into neighboring territories. And to be fair, that is often true. My squash patch wall The foto is from last seasons crops - This years plants are already sown and in fact very ready to go in the soil, and take off! Read more about sowing/planting in this post: Spring in here Give a squash plant open ground and it will behave like

I had a plan... And like many good garden plans, it made perfect sense in my head. Strawberries in neat little pallet collars. Organized. Productive. Efficient. Except… it didn’t really work out that way. I just changed my whole garden setup. If you want to read about it, go to From "forever beds" to pallet collars. The Original Idea I built a setup using small pallet collars, about 40 × 60 cm. I stacked them two high and made eight beds dedicated just to strawberries. The

Every spring, gardeners ask the same question: will potatoes survive the frost? This year, I got the answer in the most dramatic way possible. My babies coming up strong! I’ve been replacing my old metal raised beds with pallet collars, slowly upgrading the garden into something a bit nicer, a bit tidier, and hopefully something that won’t slice my hands open every time I lean over the edge. Read all about that here: From forever beds to pallet collars As part of that project

Plannig your harvest from the start

Lately, it feels like everything is getting more expensive. You notice it at the supermarket first. A few euros more here, a few there. Nothing dramatic in the moment, but over time it adds up. And if there’s one thing history keeps showing us, it’s this Food prices don’t go down. They go up. Slowly. Then suddenly. And that’s exactly why growing your own food matters more than ever. Not because you’re trying to “save money” right now. If you’ve ever built a garden, you alread