Cortijada Los Gazquez - Vida en 1000m. Parque Natural Sierra Maria Los Velez. Andalucia.

By complete coincidence I was talking this morning to our friend Vicente about how I had just started reading the story of the Kontiki expedition. To Vicente it’s a book close to his heart as his grandfather read it to him when he was a child back in Argentina. I remember the fantastic romance of science based adventure as I saw it on TV as a child. In fact I was saying to Vicente ‘where is the science based adventure’? And then suddenly today I came across it, I’ll let them speak for themselves via their web-site…

PLASTIKI

Last night we had  a halo around a three quarter waxing gibbous moon and a sight more beautiful than my photo can possibly describe. It appeared to be an enormous hole in a thin layer of alto cirrus cloud, but could the moon generate enough radiation to evaporate this high altitude moisture? We needed the advice of an expert. So I e-mailed Tristan Gooley (see previous post) this morning and asked for advice…

Hi Simon,
Hard to be certain from one photo, but it looks like a similar phenomenon to a ‘moonbow’. Rainbows, fogbows and moonbows are all arcs, often coloured, caused by reflection and refraction of the light from the sun or moon hitting water particles in the atmosphere.
In this case the moisture may be a thin layer of cirrus cloud. The Arctic Innuit and Pacific islanders have been known to use this effect to forecast bad weather, in western terminology, they can herald an approaching front.

I may be completely wrong though!

best, T

Ah, an approaching front. Let’s check the weather forecast…

there it is.  We are where I have put a red dot. The front is moving to the north of us on a warm south westerly wind. This is often why the east coast of Spain is dry, weather systems seem to move to the north of us held at bay by some Mediterranean high pressure.

Nice things have been written about us by this couple of cool Californians at ‘A World Different‘. But don’t read my words read theirs. Eco-tourism is as much about building / re-building sustainable communities as it is about having sustainable energy systems etc. Globalisation would be a far more ethical and cohesive concept if it was about the sharing of ethical and ecological ideas and knowledge at grass root levels rather than corporate. These folk champion this dream and should be applauded for their efforts.

Awesome, as they say in California.

Cortijada Los Gázquez is looking for a volunteer who (either with experience or is just keen and able) would like to volunteer to help out with a green build. Naturally board and lodging is on the house and all they would have to do is get themselves here.

The construction will be a modification to an existing building in order to convert it into a second studio for the Joya residency. The construction will be cordwood and cob built within a post and beam type of construction. All materials will be taken from our land.

Expect the experience to be rewarding and hard work with lots of sunshine and good company.

This autumn (even though it hadn’t really arrived until this weekend) has seen us take the opportunity to re-install the grey water system. All the grey water from Los Gázquez leaves the house by it’s own dedicated waste water system. When I say grey water, I mean water from the showers, basins, kitchen sinks, dishwasher and washing machine. What is more we only use ecologically safe detergents as this water is used to irrigate a terrace of fruit trees.

To help us with this task we had two wonderful young French men from Lyon. Lloyd and Romaine were on their gap year and they stayed with us for a few weeks on their return from a month in Morocco. (I have to say that if their parents are reading this we must say that they are a credit to them, they are welcome back here any time). The first thing to do was to dig an horizontal swale or ditch with an access point at one end which you can see in the foreground (below). In the excavation we laid field drain. Next we collect the barley straw from last summer and cut the straw from last springs wild flowers.

Firstly the wild flower straw goes over the field drain in the ditch. It has more structural integrity so the idea is that it supports the material we put over the top. We have adapted the idea from Permaculture techniques. The swale will hold the water stopping it from running off and giving it time to soak into the earth. When the earth is dry, being clay, it is as hard as concrete making whatever rainfall we have simply run away.

Lastly, with an audience of eight year olds on my car roof, we apply the barley straw. This is laid like a thick blanket over the whole terrace. The idea is that it will act like a sponge keeping the newly introduced grey water high in the earth, watering the tree roots from beneath. It is also a deep mulch keeping the clay earth soft and allowing worms and such to break down this organic matter, conditioning the soil.

We have three terraces for this system so we can alternate where the grey water goes, freshly irrigating one terrace while the others rest. What is more it’s entirely organic and can be replenished or removed with ease. Last spring we planted four trees on the first terrace which was fed by the grey water in a canal. This was marginally successful but out of the four trees we planted, pear, persimmon, fig and apricot, the apricot died as I suspect it had too much water. The new system will hopefully combat that problem, Let’s see.

And thanks to Lloyd and Romaine.

Here at Los Gázquez we have been scratching our heads. What can we say about climate change that is not already familiar and in the public domain. We all now know what global warming is and we know who and what is causing the problem.

Whilst we believe that this blog, along with thousands of others, may in some way contribute to the pressure which is needed to be exerted upon our political leaders, it is ultimately what we do at Los Gázquez that makes the difference.

So, what have we done at Los Gázquez?

(Regular followers of our blog will already know so forgive us for repeating ourselves)

This is us, high in the alpine deserts of Andalucia, southern Spain. We bought the house because it gave us the opportunity to develop a home and business that would sit benignly on the earth, not contributing to the planet’s problems.

To create electricity we use the sun and the wind. We have a photo voltaic panel and a wind turbine which more than sufficiently powers the house. We don’t have to run around switching off lights or turning off the TV!

The photo voltaic panel tracks the sun throughout the day and when the sun rises again in the mornings the panel turns back to face east and starts the day all over again.

The combination, in our opinion, doesn’t distract from the vernacular architecture, it adds to it.

We also have a solar panel to create hot water. On a good day, i.e with sunshine (which tends to be most days here) the solar panel can easily create 600 litres of hot water. On days when the sky is less clear it will create the first thirty degrees which reduces your need to burn fuel.

And the fuel we burn is wood. We have two large bio-mass boilers that take up to one meter lengths of timber (reducing our need to cut so much). And for the timber? Wel,l we are lucky enough to have sufficient land to more or less provide all we need. The rest we scavange from the forest, the broken trees from last year’s heavy snow which now only represent fire hazards. The fuel is bio-mass, it represents the carbon which is already in the biosphere and therefore does not contribute to green house gases.

We have started to collect acorns (before the wild boar) to germinate and put back on the land ahead of predation and susceptibility to drought. Next year we want to experiment with solar ovens, reducing our need to burn wood too.

Now there are endless books out there advising us on how to deal ecologically with our human waste and they all have witty titles to get you past the taboo nature of the subject. Sewage Solutions, Liquid Gold. They are all good and have been a good source of reference for our own system. We wholesale divided our grey water from our black. What I mean is that when we renovated the house we built completely differnent waste pipes for the loos, lavatories, toilets, or whatever you want to call them, to the basins, showers, dishwashers etc. So, the black water goes off to a septic tank and from there to a system of reed beds which cleanse the water to up to 98 percent. This water we intend to use as irrigation to grow a coppice to provide firewood for the kitchen range.

The grey water leaves the house and is used to irrigate an orchard of fruit and olive trees. And all these wastes leave the house with the aid of ecological detergents. There will be no toxins put on our land.

For water we have no well. Well we have a well, some distance from the house and it’s dry. Juana from the village used to live here when she was a girl. She tells me that the well could produce 20,ooo liters of water in 24 hours. When I asked her what happened, why is it dry, she tells me it stopped raining? Southern Spain in particular is on the European front line when it comes to climate change. Here there is a real risk of desertification. We have a permaculture scheme on the way to try and rebuild a water table and make the well productive again. You will have to visit us again to see how successful we are.

For water we harvest rainfall from the roof and store it underground in a 50,ooo litre deposit. We like taking a shower in rainwater which has been heated by the sun.

Our business from this ‘eco-guest house’ is creative holidays, painting holidays if you like, but very stimulating ones. They are designed around themes of art and ecology. What is more we are hosts to JOYA a residency for artists working within transition culture. Artists are coming from far and wide to spend time with us, to use the studio to pursue their practice whether it is painting or sculpture. Their concerns have to be ecological

their roll as artists is one to interpret ecological change. Theirs is the most human response to the challenges that lie ahead.

The environment here at Los Gázquez has determined what systems we could utilsise to make this property ‘green’. Houses everywhere, of all shapes and sizes, can utilise what resources their environments create for them and in return we can reciprocate by not polluting the very source of our health and wellbeing.

And when the media tell you (as they constanly do) that you will have to wait 20 years before it starts paying you back, don’t believe them. We don’t apply the same principle to an extension, a new kitchen, a car, a conservatory so why to renewable energy systems?

The sense of fulfilment we have achieved, sometimes in the face of adversity, to make this project truly ecological is profound. And if you are tempted to do something similar do it properly, no token gestures, go all the way, make a change.

A wise bear knows that in August, in the heat, a sirocco wind tears up the coast from the deserts of Africa, and the beach is possibly the worst place to be. These people who live in the cities of Spain empty into the sea at this time of year. Desperate for the cool waters by day and the cool air of the night these families of foxes and owls party the month away on the coast, the last refuge of humanity.

But go west from Los Gazquez, across the high plains, the alto plano, past Maria and Orce to Huescar and beyond into the folded peaks of limestone with the evocative names of Buitre, La Cabrilla, Tornajuelos and the mighty Sagra and you will come to cool, blue reservoirs. Not just one but a few, splashed into the recesses of the Parque National Segura y Cazorla.

The beaches are deserted save for the odd heron, a mirror carp digging for minerals. Swap gulls for griffons casting shadows across your beach towels, reach to the mountain peaks for ice to cool your drinks and swim in the still cool waters of these man made lakes, sin olas, sin mareas.