A view of our activities on this precious earth
The Pig Man
I was out
driving on an old dirt track, exploring, discovering new short-cuts
and old ruins, when I came across the pig man.
The pig man
walks his pigs through the cork oak forest. He lives with them. Eats
his bread with them. Tall and gaunt, the clothes live on his body,
black and brown. I pass and wave from the car. At first he doesn't
react and I think I'm being snubbed, another bloody foreigner, when
slowly he reaches for his worn-shiny cap and raises it from his
worn-shiny head. He swings it round in an arc, an all-embracing wave.
A beautiful, courtiuos movement from the dark ages, of chivalry and
serfdom. I am honoured and humbled by his expansive grace,his
acknowledgement of my passing. Then I am gone, the dust settles, the
noise fades, and he is left with his pigs in the heat-beaten
clearing.
Veggie
burgers,or falafel,or hummus,etc.
The
preparations begin around about November when I start to find Zé.
Zé is a small, round septegenarian, who has a small round, shiny
green tractor. He has no phone in his house and he lives alone, but
he is surrounded by his family. So word gets round. He is found. I
ask him if he can come and plough.
The months
pass. I think that he has forgotton, when one day in spring, he
comes over the horizon, silhouetted by the rising sun.
When the soil
is ready I reach for my chosen implement, the enxada; a one-woman
plough, a heavy hoe, designed in neolithic times, and adapted
sometime in the iron-age, to be plunged, not pulled, through the
tilth. I make a line twenty paces long. I grab the bucket full of
dried chick peas, and cast them, three at a time, foot by foot along
the line. The next line made covers the first, and so I continue
until all the seeds are sewn.
Three months
later they are drying on their stalks in the hot summer sun. I pull
them from the earth. They rattle, the small pods containing one
chick pea each. I lay them in a pile and begin to dance on them.
Crunching and crushing the stalks, the leaves, the pods. The chick
peas pop out and roll. Dancing on a floor of ball-bearings, I twist
and turn and grind them out of their paper houses.
Now they are
ready for the wind. I lift handfulls and drop them through my
fingers and watch the chaff blow sideways as the chickpeas fall and
bounce below. The wind comes in gusts and sighs. I wait for the
next big sigh.
With chick
peas now safely harvested I can prepare the meal.
