Today I feel the need to communicate with the outside world. It is 9:15 pm and it feels very late, as it always does here. Tonight it is just Tom, Iacopo, Merlin, Delia and I. The guys are improv-ing as they prepare their next joint. I really like these guys they are very sweet. They have a fresh lemon and sugar habit, using Homayoun's bread that is ever present at the end of the table. Merlin just went out with a flashlight to pick about 5 fresh lemons.

Now we are all making animal noises of all types as Tom plays some chords.

My work often involves being a monkey. I do acrobatics in trees.

There are several methods we use for harvesting the olives. Only one of them actually involves “picking”. The traditional way is to hit the tree with a pole, and collect the olives from a tarp below. We have done this only a little. Nowadays in commercial operations they don't use poles, they use mechanical shakers. The pole method can be rough on the olives and make them start letting out juice/oil before you are ready to press them. Generally harvests have to be stored for a few days at least (we've been laying them out in the upper floor of the house for a week) before you start up the mill (which we will be doing tomorrow). During this time, the oil can start oxidizing if they are already crushed.

We go to a tree and take anything good off the ground before starting. A lot of pruning has to be done, so we take the olives off the pruned branches, which of course is the easiest. Then we go and pick directly off the tree, which I believe is very rare. Normal olive groves are planted in rows and have nothing growing on the ground underneath – it is plowed with machinery. Very easy to harvest. We live in a wild spot. There are pines and oaks between the olives, and I don't know if there is any order to their planting. There is all manner of brush growing below them, including several varieties of terrible prickly things, thistles, wild lavender, mint. (All on steep hillsides).

I enjoy the tree climbing much more than the burning. We have done that several days now in the morning. It is hard work. Dragging cut branches or brush down and sometimes up steep hillsides to a bonfire. Sometimes we have to hack stuff up with these curved devil looking tools, like a mini-sicle. I have fortunately left that mostly for the others. The tools are also useful for dragging large piles of stuff, or getting it to roll down the hill, hopefully not on top of you, especially if it is full of prickles. I have been exhausted by the end of every morning and evening. I started learning to pace myself this morning. I can't throw large branches around, even though I may have been able to once. I nearly hurt my wrist and ended up wanting to cry. Homayoun is a totally awesome guy, but he can be quite strict. In other words he may be a hippy that smokes a lot of weed, but he believes in working hard, and doesn't appreciate people sitting around. I don't think he is going to be displeased with me but I tend to be sensitive to these things. Besides, my body doesn't wake up very fast in the morning, and after several days of hard work, even less. I enjoy this work more than the gardening at the other farm. That was worse, because it involved nearly all bending down and was fatal for the lower back. Also, a normal garden in a flat spot is just less interesting. If we take time to look up, we are looking across a valley at spectacular mountains. This morning after being slightly traumatised by nearly wrenching my wrist, I was happy to hear Tom singing away while he hacked at the trunks of olive trees in the distance.

Uli left this morning, and for her despedida Homayoun made deep fried mushoom caps, at 7:30 am. Picked by him the night before. They were truly amazing. There are quite a variety of wild mushrooms. We have them in stews for lunch sometimes. He cooks excellent food. The first spicy food I've had in Spain. Salads are like nothing I've ever had. All manner of strange greens picked on the premises. With a dressing of fig vinegar made also on the premise, from figs from the numerous enormous and twisted fig trees which you can walk under or could maybe live under, and oil, squeezed on the premises, garlic and tomatoes also of course grown here.

During the afternoon, I've been laying on the grass soaking up the sun. During the day it is like Vancouver in June or September – long sleeved t-shirt and light pants weather.

Tonight my job was cleaning the pool in the large sauna area, along with Merlin and Tom. I insisted on cleaning enormous and numerous cobwebs from the ceiling first, and then convinced the guys to do a decent job. The cobwebs were not simple ones – they were full of dust or rather, dirt, and loaded with dead bichos of all sorts. Cleaning the pool was not very straightforward, as there was a large and heavy bunch of boards with metal set on the bottom, which had to be moved around to get at the filth which was still an inch deep with water, and no hole to drain anything. The guys normally dive into another (filthy) pool out in the front of the house, after working. Nobody worries much about showering except me. I've gone 2 and 3 days without, but the last few days I've been showering. Except that I haven't used conditioner or even shampoo – just regular soap. Add that together with having to push your head under or through tree branches often, and you end up with some raunchy hair. Anyways, despite the guys saying that they didn't think it was really dirty and that the dirt in the countryside isn't really dirty, or "bad" dirt like in the city because it's all natural, we ended up doing a pretty decent job.

I have managed to at least clean the pillow case and my weekend job is to clean the blanket I am using for a bottom sheet. Hopefully Homayoun will not mind me using the washing machine – it is a large blanket. He is very into minimal energy usage and not wasting anything. Moreso than most other people I know. This is understandable considering that he is partly self-sufficient and off the grid.

Now it is the next day - I saved this in Open-Office last night and am posting it now. We work only part of the day Saturday and have Sundays off. I have little motivation to do anything. 

So far along with the work I have described, we have also harvested Carob (aggaroba) which is in big pods fallen to the ground, planted beans, collected walnuts, and this morning almonds, as well as undoing a fence and turning over the soil in one of the many beds in the terraced hillside. We have eaten fresh pomegranates, persimmons, and a small persimmon they call a kaki, which looks exactly the same. They have no resemblance at all to any persimmon I've tried out of a supermarket at home. The granadas (pomegranates) don't either, very much. Which is to say these fruits actually taste good here. Homayoun has given us fermented pomegranate juice. He has a still here as well, and saves scraps of fruit to throw into it. The buildings and rooms in the buildings are quite numerous. I am still finding new ones - some of which he has to show us, like the still, because it is normally closed. The still, semi-open kitchen for making vinegar or preserving olives, in the courtyard, the olive oil mill, and other parts of the house are ancient looking, with ancient looking equipment and tools. 

Also there are madroñas, a small fruit with spiky things that are soft. There is the odd tabacco plant, auto-seeded. Homayoun explained today at lunch that tobacco seeds are very small, and get caught in drops of water in clouds. These get turned into ice even. They get carried far away and deposited. We have not seen Diego for a few days, but he also imparted to us some pretty fantastic countryside knowledge. If you have a sliver from a chestnut or some such thing, you grab a horsefly by the hind legs and put it over the sliver and it will grab the sliver out. We weren't sure whether to believe him, but he seemed quite insistent.

I have adjusted so far quite well to the lack of cleanliness. I have said in the past that if I am pressed, I could live fine as long as there is hot water and a way of making hot drinks like tea. Mostly this has shown itself to be true. I use the squat toilet because everything is dirty anyways, and I am used to is from China. Here in this place it is cleaner than the other one. There is hot water for showers. I have gotten used to grotty dishes, and a filthy tea towel on which I wipe the odd grotty spoon before eating off it. I attempted to tell the boys not to leave their lemons and sugar all over the bread board. They made a valiant effort for a bit, but I don't think it's going to work.

The only thing I lack is time alone. That is actually a good thing because I prefer having enough people and needing to escape for peace and quiet than being lonely.