Leeks, leeks and more leeks

Alternative title: How to survive a host who can’t stand you

Our second host’s location was in a more industrial part of Asturias near the coast. Our arrival was a dispiriting one as we left the beautiful Picos mountains and drove past ugly old factories and belching smokestacks. The town had grown in size recently and housing developments had crawled up the hill from the town center to the hill where our host lived on her family’s property.

Nevertheless, we arrived full of high expectations. Our host was running a market garden and was preparing weekly boxes of organic produce for 21 customers. The reviews from other volunteers on the HelpX website were very positive and mentioned fun trips to the beach and the host’s good humor and sweetness. We hoped to learn some of the best methods to maximize harvests without using pesticides. We asked to arrive a few days earlier than planned as we soon discovered that our original plan of taking 5 days off between hosts would become quickly financially untenable - even the cheapest of hostals (small, independent hotels) were over 50 euro per night and campgrounds were often far from bus stops and supermarkets.

We arrived on a Friday and didn’t know that the volunteers did no work on Saturday and Sunday. We did, however, join the other volunteer after lunch for a couple of hours of weeding as a show of good work ethic. The other volunteer had been there a week and seemed to have a good relationship with the host. We, on the other hand, got absolutely no explanation of how things worked or any sort of a welcome at all. Perhaps we should have seen this as a sign of worse things to come.

Our living quarters - a converted horreo or granary


Common dining area and our host's bedroom (she slept on some blankets thrown over a camping mat and some wooden pallets!


We were quite surprised to see how young our host was and over the next two weeks felt the full consequences of dealing with an immature and undeveloped manager, communicator and coordinator. At first, Michiel and I were unsure if we had done something wrong, misinterpreted the situation, or were experiencing cultural differences. We found her to be self-absorbed, unfriendly (to us, anyway) and inconsiderate (we had to ask for toilet paper for 2 days before we got any, luckily we have learned that while traveling it is always handy to carry some in every one of your trousers), and we discussed early on whether the situation was too intolerable to stay. The success of her garden and some of the techniques she used were compelling enough for us to stick around. From day 2, she made it clear that she didn’t care for us by saying as little as possible to us when we were not working and providing only the barest of instruction and explanation. Questions about why she was using certain rotation techniques were met with responses like, “I follow that book. You should read it”….which happened to be in Spanish and she knew that our Spanish wasn’t very good. She didn’t care for comments like “Why do you do it this way?”. Either she thought we were judging her or she didn’t have the energy or desire to explain her methods to us.

It could very well have been that she was tired (who wouldn't be after trying to sleep on wooden pallets???!!). She had hosted over 300 volunteers in the past 4 years and it was clear to us that she had lost any sort of interest in being a real “host”. She provided little to no instruction, no follow up on our progress, very little encouragement and simple one or two word answers to our questions.

Things got even worse during a tour of the fields when I said, “we ate battered comfrey leaves at our last host’s made with eggs and flour.” She blanched and said, “you do realize that this is a totally vegan household? It was on the website.” I had read so many HelpX host descriptions that I completely forgot which was which. Somehow in our excitement in working in an organic market garden, we conveniently forgot that her household was run on a strict no alcohol, no meat, no caffeine and no dairy policy and furthermore, she had no refrigerator. She looked annoyed, but it was only a couple of days later when she actually asked us, “Do you eat meat?” We weren’t the only ones who said “yes”. The other volunteer also answered truthfully….”um, yeah”. In fact much of the conversations between the three of us in the evening in our little dormitory (we slept in a converted granary that is common on Asturian properties) had to do with food and what we were missing in our diets. We snuck out on Day 2 to eat cheese; the other volunteer went to town almost every evening for an ice cream. On Day 3, we giddily slurped down a bottle of wine with lunch in town. It was unavoidable, really, since all set menu lunches (which is the most economical way to eat) come complete with a bottle of young Rioja. We simply didn’t want to waste anything.

Since I’m on the topic of day menus, I want to wax poetic for a moment about what you can get for 8 to 12 euros per person in the set menus (menu del dia) that are available at all Spanish restaurants. All include at least a salad course, a main course, a bottle of wine or cider, fizzy water, bread and dessert. Some even include a small appetizer. It’s a great way to try out lots of different food for a very reasonable price. Since lunch is the biggest meal of the day, this bonanza feast is a great way to get into the spirit of Spain, especially since a bottle of wine at 2 pm is enough to get almost anyone ready for a siesta. Sadly, it’s really hard to take a siesta in the middle of a city when your bed is a 25 minute walk back uphill, but the parks are usually empty from about 3 to 4 when everyone else is comfortably snoozing at home.

The old part of the city of Aviles


We returned from our excursions to town slightly tipsy and full of the dreaded dairy products (mmmm…..sheep cheese or pizza) that our host wouldn’t allow in her kitchen and crawled into bed early in preparation for the pre-dawn start. The work day was 6 hours and we agreed as a group that we would work from 7 to 11 am and then another two hours from 3 to 5 pm. It made for a long day, especially since the work was occasionally rather strenuous. Our host didn’t believe in using machinery (are you getting the trend?), so all of the garden beds were dug and turned by hand. We also did a lot of wheelbarrow ferrying of mulch and manure from one lot to the other. In addition to lots of weeding and mulching (application of dried grasses on the beds to retain moisture and stop weeds from growing), removal of aphids by hand, planting of beans and basil, and harvesting of strawberries (we weren’t trusted to harvest anything else), our primary task during week two was replanting 2,500 leeks. This was just the beginning of the host’s gargantuan task of replanting 10,000 leeks over the week(s) to come. We were leaving just in time. The replanting work was tedious, backbreaking and boring and it served as an unpleasant reminder to me of how many of our meals were based around leeks.

Leeks!


Our host cooked many of the lunches for us, but agreeing on eating times was a real problem as she didn’t really eat breakfast and, like most (all?) Spaniards found it inconceivable to eat lunch before 2 pm. After a bit of a confrontation, we all came to an agreement that we would eat at 12:30, though she made a point of telling us she wasn’t hungry when we sat down to eat. Prior to the confrontation, this issue was mistake number 3, where Michiel and I attempted to take our hunger into our own hands and start to prepare lunch at 11:15. Doing such manual labor required more than a bowl of oatmeal at 6:30 am to last us until 1 pm. Though our host had no problem, I was constantly hungry and found the vegan diet completely incapable of satisfying my hunger. I became totally obsessed with food and the fact that we were not permitted to self-harvest or eat self-purchased fish or dairy items in the kitchen made me totally insane. We were only permitted to eat items from the garden that our host put in the kitchen for our use with the exception of currants and arugula, which we could harvest ourselves. These were mostly surplus or unsellable vegetables. For snacking, there was beyond-prime fruit given to the host by the organic shop and white bread and, of course, our own supplemented purchases of nuts, dried fruit and muesli bars. Michiel seemed to do just fine, but for him, it was a bit of an interesting experiment. I had done vegetarian for 16 years and had troubles with my energy levels and blood sugar. I knew it didn’t work for me, but hoped that a new attempt with a new chef (not me) would succeed where I had failed. I’ll give credit where credit due , our host was good with a pressure cooker and beans and lentils, and she did come up with different ways of cooking the same old ingredients.

The market garden was really a family home plus two separate lots, each with their own greenhouse and rows and rows of vegetables. The host’s mother and sister lived in the house and it was clear that the mother didn’t care for us either, which made the place feel quite like a prison compound, complete with iron bar fencing and barking dogs.

One of the greenhouses


Beans


Panorama of one of the garden lots


We gritted our teeth, made the most of our location to do a bit of sightseeing in the city we were in and in nearby Gijon, as well as the beach town of Salinas, lost some weight and vowed to be far more selective in choosing future hosts. On our last day, our host drove all of the volunteers to the bus station and she made a big deal of repeating to the other woman that she was welcome to return any time. We took note of the absence of a similar invitation when she thanked us and sent us on our way.

Gijon


Traditional folk musicians performing for a wedding party...notice the wooden shoes!


Needless to say, this wasn’t the perfect host, the perfect place, nor the perfect vocation – organic market gardening is hard work and the profits are small to non-existent. During this stint we thought back with increasing fondness to our first (quirky) host and appreciated the freedom we had experienced, his incredible generosity and the creative living-off-the-land skills he taught us. We wondered if we would change our opinion of this host during our future HelpX assignments as well (hint: NOPE!) We hoped for better things ahead.