I love visiting Paco Bedoya’s farm for two reasons. The farm itself is wonderful, a kind of jungle of citrus trees, fruit hanging everywhere, birds chirping, a luxurious green ground cover, it always feels to me a bit like a garden of Eden. The second reason is Paco himself. He is a real character, still going strong in his late seventies, full of pride for his farm and always ready to tell a story or two.
When we visited with the guys from le Recolte (Paris) recently, Paco told us a bit of the history of the farm. In the years before the civil war there was a lot of hunger in Andalusia, and his grandparents worked the land as day labourers mostly growing potatoes and other vegetables for sale in the town nearby. The civil war was full of tragedy for his family (as for many), but fortunately his great uncle had gone to the USA before it had begun. There he was able to earn enough money to send some back to Paco’s father who used it to buy this farm and lift the family out of the poverty inherent to the life of a day labourer at that time.
Paco grew up coming to the farm and has spent at least part of almost every day of his life here. Over time they planted citrus until now it is mostly lemons, with some oranges and mandarins. Paco told proudly how no herbicides have ever been used on the land. When he was younger he used, like his father did before him, a mule to cultivate between the trees to keep the grass down, and the manure from the mule was used to fertilise. Now he cuts the grass once a year and fertilisers with composted chicken manure from a farm nearby, but otherwise not much has changed.
Even at this age Paco does almost all the work himself. When we arrived he had just finished harvesting a couple of hundred kilos of mandarins, the last of the season. When he has to harvest a lot of lemons he gets help, but otherwise its just him on the farm, the third generation of Bedoya’s to take care of this land. I always find it inspirational to visit him and see what’s possible. At the very least Paco has a lot to teach about how to live a healthy and happy life…
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