Villafranca del Bierzo

Sometimes you just stumble into things... this place is very, very nice! There is no beach and yet it is full of foreigners.


Iglesia San Roque

Castillo de Los Templarios

Ponferrada: above all - defensible.





Los Templarios is an interesting history too.

See this fromWikipedia

Obsession

I've been asking myself how we let capriciousness become obsession. Why did we start this camino anyway? How did we find out about it? Somebody asked me that in an albergue.

Santiago is the patron saint of Spain. Santiago de Compostela celebrates that saint's day. Nobody has been here long without knowing that. It's part of the common knowledge. You don't have to ask, how did you know? Everybody knows. It's understood.

We knew the history, but to think we might be part of it ourselves? Now? It never occurred to us. We would drive past these people with packs on their backs and ask each other, "what are they doing"? Walking the camino? Really?

Then one day... and it grows on you.

After the fiestas in Santiago we returned to Astorga to pick up where we left off and I didn't post anything because I wasn't sure at all how it was going to go.

Leaving Astorga at elevation 858m, one crosses a land not nearly so intensely cultivated as the lands we passed, almost a chaparral really, then rising steadily to 1150m at Rabanal del Camino where apart from a few cows there seems to be no agriculture at all - nothing like we have been used to. All this in a distance of only about 20km. We stayed at the Albergue Gaucelmo which is run by an English organization, The Confraternity of St. James. See the link at left.

From there the camino rises to its highest elevation (1500m) at Puerto del Foncebadón and descends again to 1150m at El Acebo. That in only another 17 km., but over the roughest trail we had seen since Roncesvalles. Then over still another 8km dropping 650m more on equally bad trail and you arrive in a "bowl" between mountains that is known as "El Bierzo" (elev. about 500m). Some of that trail may have been Roman. I don't know. There were places that seemed to have that Roman roadbed under the loose rubble. The name El Bierzo derives from the Roman town Bergidum which is today Cacabelos; the name now being given to the region.

El Bierzo is famous for its produce, vegetables and especially tree fruits. I can never pass up their cherries whenever I find them. We walked in past irrigated vegetables to Ponferrada, a significant city, and on to Villafranca where we were back in vineyards.

Vintners seem to like to attribute their wines to micro-climates or "terroir". I think they exaggerate the importance. Wine making is a skill like many others and vintinors are usually happy to buy good grapes from wherever they find them. But in El Bierzo the climatic difference is visible. There were palm trees outside our albergue in Villafranca at 42°N latitude; obviously imported, but they had been there a while.

Leaving Villafranca the camino takes you through some beautiful small towns, Cacabelos being one of them, following a natural pass through the mountain made by the Valcarce River. The highway engineers noticed this pass too. So, for the next 20 km. the original camino has been paved over by highway. You walk asphalt, climbing steadily to about 670m with the river (at this point more a mountain stream) and wren song, on your left.

Then you leave the asphalt and 9km. later you have left Castillia y Leon for Galicia and are back at 1300m at O Cebreiro.

And there we had to leave the camino again.




Details to follow.

Making Bread Part IV - Farms Race

Wheat production the old way, subsistance farming, the one without tractors as discussed in previous posts, was able to support as many people as were available to do the work. In fact, the limits to production were always - always - a lack of manpower. The history of Castilla, the reconquest, feudalism, the development of property rights, the beginnings of women's rights, and especially the industrial revolution, was always about obtaining enough manpower to cultivate the land.

Mechanization was the important break-through. It allowed for greater productivity, but that didn't happen in Castilla until my lifetime. And not only is it more productive in terms of man-hours per unit of production. The precision with which these machines work raises the productivity of the land itself.

I have no idea what yields were without tractors. Today, on average, Spanish wheat yields 2840 kilos/hectare (42.25 bu/ac). That's a number I looked up. All of the published numbers I find is within those parameters. It's in line with Kansas non-irrigated yields of 30-50 bu/ac and reports that I've seen of this year's crop (2011) at 37.4 bu/ac. I've also seen US averages published as 2990 kilos/hectare. A hectare is 10,000 sq. meters or 2.47 acres.

Rainfall in Valladold, the heart of Spanish wheat production, averages 374mm/year (15in). That's about equal to eastern Colorado or western Kansas. Eastern Kansas is more humid. Likewise Burgos is more humid and receives an average 570mm/year (22in).

Costs - I've been over and over these numbers and this is the best I can do. I welcome your help in refining them, but as a starting point I will suggest:

Variable costs:
Planting: 250€/ha
Harvesting: 50€/ha
Land rent: 0€/ha

I'm not so confident of the planting cost though I believe that would also be typical in the US. It would include all inputs, seed, fertilizer, chemicals, fuel, equipment maintenance and repairs (tires, oil, etc), financing costs and hired labor. I believe the harvesting figure to be reasonably accurate. As a cross-check, a custom harvester would typically work for 1/3 of the crop (or of course for cash). 1/3 of $6.00/bu wheat (more "traditional" than today's prices) would yield 47€ to a harvester working average Spanish yields of 2.84 tonnes/ha.

Break-even on variable costs is then 106€/tonne ($4.43/bu at .65€/$). But that assumes you farm land you inherited and you have no cost of land or rent and no lord over you - which is not exactly accurate. A lot of land here is rented just like in the US. If land were rented at 40€/ha, a plausible figure, break-even becomes 120€/tonne ($5.00/bu at .65€/$).

Fine you say, but here's the sticky part.

Fixed costs:

Tractor 200hp .............. 90,000€
Plows. ............................. 2,000€
Cultivator ........................ 2,000€
Seeder ........................... 15,000€
Sprayer ...…..…............... 2,000€
Combine ..................... 180,000€
2 Wagons ..................... 10,000€
Shop Equip ................... 10,000€

Total 5 yr equip. .........311,000€
.................Total 5 yr depreciation ..... 37,320€

Barn ......................... 139,000€
.................Total 20 yr depreciation ..... 6,950€


Total investment .......450,000€
Total annual depreciation* .................44,270€

* assumes straight line depreciation and 40% equip. salvage value after 5 yrs. Buildings fully depreciated after 20 yrs.


Those are (educated) guesses. Remember, the barn has to be big enough to store a combine and it has to have elect. to run a welder and cranes (shop equip.). You can't even change a tire without a crane.

Here's the question. If wheat is at $7.00/bu, (as I write this it's quoted at $6.92 on CME and people here are telling me they are being paid 180€/tonne which comes to just a little more) how many hectares do you have to farm to break even? I've done that for you. Ignoring subsidies, but assuming both the variable and fixed costs above then, 253 ha.

So you ask, how much money can you make if you plant say 500 ha? Yes, 43,262.20€. Return on capital is then 9.61%

Not terrible maybe if you don't have to work for it, but you're breaking your back and taking a chance. Most important, the averages may be misleading. Some years are wetter than others. Some years' yields are better than others. In 1995 Spanish yields were reported as 1496 kg/ha. In 2000 they were reported as 3078 kg/ha. France and Germany both average just over 7000 kg/ha. There is enormous variation even from field to field. It would be prudent to know the distribution of yields and rainfall too. In a bad year you have to make the bank payments anyway. I haven't said anything about cash flow.

As Red Greene might say, "Here near Valladolid everybody is above average". This land is productive. Average yield may approach 5000 kg/ha. That's what I'm being told. Those are different numbers. Using the same costs a farm that breaks even at 2.84 tonnes/ha makes 91,434€. A 500 ha. farm would earn 223,920€. And this is a better than average year. These farmers are making it.

However, you can't plant fence to fence every year. There's a rotation. Some land is fallow. So, to be able to plant 500 ha you have to control a lot more which would make a difference if renting.

Well, how about 1000ha? ¿130,794€ on average?

¡Au Contraire, mon amie!

No way, José

You have to buy more machinery. I may have already been too generous to assume trade in values of 40%. There is no way you can run machinery harder and assume the same.

There is other pressure too. You've got, at most, 60 days to get that crop in. A combine can work about 30 ha/day. It could do more if the fields were especially large. But it can't work every day. Some days it rains even in places that only get 374 mm/yr. So assuming you can work 40 days - the rest of the year the combine stays in the barn - you can harvest a maximum of 1200 ha. But only if you have a way to keep the grain off the combine - 2840 tonnes! Think of it as 110 tractor trailer loads. At these levels you need both more tractors and more tractor drivers.

Almost nobody in Spain farms that much land anyway. If they do they have lots and lots of equipment and the people (usually relatives) to run it. I have no idea how to lay out a capital budget for a farm that size. I wonder if these farmers are able to do it themselves. Most farms here are probably in the 200-400 ha. range. Remember, 253 is break-even and if they are larger they rent land. More cost, more equipment, lower margins, an even larger break-even threshold - very, very capital intensive.

There are other questions. How exposed are European farmers to changes in the dollar exchange rate that don't mirror wheat prices? I don't know. But they are completely exposed to changes in market prices. None of them are hedged in any way. None. Some things are still very primitive here. Their customers? The wholesalers, co-ops and brokers? Probably hedged, but I don't know.

You can toy with these numbers. Most importantly, what happens if you have a dry year and miss the average of 2.84 tonnes/hectare? Likely you go broke!

These people are in a "FARMS RACE" to get bigger and bigger and buy bigger and bigger equipment and at each step it takes more and more capital to compete. I think these numbers are close enough to show that earnings alone are not sufficient on average to provide the capital to keep these farms competitive - even if all earnings were retained. Which is to say that unlike the days before tractors when the farms could support everybody who worked them, average farms support nobody.

The only way an average farm can manage is with the complicity of the EU "Common Agricultural Policy" (CAP) which is uniform throughout the EU. Unlike the US the subsidy goes directly to the farmer based on the number of hectres he farms. Not on production. (Though it is adjusted to be higher on more productive land.) Tobacco subsidies once worked like that in the US. CAP insures that those who have already gone "all-in" have continued access to capital and that others are kept out of the business. One consequence is that land which becomes idle, for whatever reason, say a farmer retires, becomes worthless; 40€/yr. if you are lucky enough to rent it. Though average land probably wouldn't bring that much. And the really big farms, being more capital intensive still, may be closer to the edge and even more reliant on the CAP.

Centrally planned agriculture and its mis-allocated capital, touches everything and the payments are huge. As much as 400€/ha annually and there additional programs for building barns and buying equipment.

Perhaps worst of all young people are having nothing to do with it. Even in the most productive areas the people who are farming today are those who have always done so. The ones who were here before tractors. These farmers have done their best to change with the times. They have gone "all in"; expanded, rented land, bought equipment. It might appear they control a lot of capital, but this too is ephemeral. Machinery becomes obsolete quickly. The only thing they will be able to leave their children will be their "Rights" (that's what they call what may be better called an allotment) to the CAP. They own those rights, but they are something their children who won't be farming will be compelled to sell on.

To be sure, health care is better. Doctors are better trained and farmers have better access to them. Caloric intake has improved and there is no comparison to harvesting a field by hand and driving an air-conditioned combine. But they have given up everything they had in exchange. These farmers have become slaves to the CAP.

Making Bread Part III - The Gleaners

Millet saw it like this. I never was a gleaner. I always had resources. Anytime I wanted I could get on the plane and go home. But I saw gleaners and I know who they are and I still have some old photographs.

In general (though, not uniformly) the land in Castilla was owned by the people who worked it. Of course, not always. Much of it once belonged to the aristocracy, the church, or the knights. Some still does. Especially in other parts of Spain. Place names reflect that history; Carrión de los Condes, Jerez de los Caballeros.

To obtain the manpower necessary to work the land accommodations were always necessary; initially fiefdoms, later the lands were sold and held independently. But there have always been people without land and in a substance economy to be without land was to be without the means to produce food, i.e. subsist. Rather like being unemployed. You could learn a trade; tinker, tailor, candlestick maker - shepherd. Go into the priesthood. But, it was especially hard on widows. The first changes in what we might today call "women's rights" were made to allow women to hold title to land. It eased the burden on widows and kept the land in production.

As the land passed from generation to generation it was divided into parcels that were so small that in many cases they were too small to farm efficiently. Some were so small that it was impossible to turn a team around, never mind a tractor. Many sat idle. While working those small parcels I was taught that if I were to let a seed head fall to the ground I was not to pick it up. That too had been passed down through the generations.

“Let her glean even among the sheaves, and do not reproach her. And also pull out some from the bundles for her and leave it for her to glean, and do not rebuke her.”. Ru. 2,15-16

There were other safety measures. For example, oxen were insured through local pools.

By any modern measure we would have classed these people as poor and not just the gleaners. They worked terribly hard to feed themselves a diet of chickpeas, bread, eggs and maybe one or two hogs a year. Though, if you had all of those you wouldn't have been thought poor! Poor is relative. They all shared clean water, clean air, strong families, and strong communities to support themselves.

The tractor has replaced all of this. For both better and worse. More the worse I think. Though that isn't my call to make.

Making Bread Part II The Harvest

Once at a dinner party in Williamsburg we were offered turtle soup and one of the women who was seated with us asked a waiter how it was made. He said, "Fust yuz ketches de tuertle..."

I didn't know whether to roll on the floor or crawl under the table. He may have had his own question, "Why would a white woman want to know that"?

The lady's question was not impertinent. We all should know who we depend on and for what. So too, there's a reason I'm telling you things you already know. It will take me a while to get to the point. Please bear with me.

Back to harvest. Fust yuz cuts de wheet - the old way was with a sickle - and lay it nicely in bunches on the ground; all seed heads in one direction. Somebody else will come behind and using a few shoots which have been moistened by immersing them in water, a few moments in whatever creek is nearby does nicely, wraps those around that dry wheat remaining on the ground and knots it creating a "shock" which can be handled as a unit. This method pre-dates steel sickles. There are examples of sickles from the stone age.

I've cut some wheat like this myself, but there were never enough sickles to go around and I was so slow that they put me to tying up the shocks.


There are other ways. I think some might have been cut with scythes. But that isn't very satisfactory. It leaves the wheat helter-skelter and a lot of the grain is lost - so I'm told. In North America they used "cradles" which were basically scythes with an attachment to keep the wheat from going helter-skelter. I suspect this was brought to America from Germany.

Next prepare an "era". That's a Spanish word that I can't translate, but it indicates a flat workplace where they have allowed the sheep to graze the grass down as far as sheep can graze it - meaning golf-green short. Then sweep it with brooms, the "homemade" kind that are made from brush, to remove what the sheep leave behind.


And you are ready to pitch the shocks onto an ox cart, or whatever transport is available, and take it to the era where you can lay it out on the ground and open the shocks by cutting the ties.

Next you have to get the wheat seed out if the seed head. The process is called "threshing". If the wheat is dry enough you can release the seed just by beating it against the floor. Also, there are descriptions of hammering the seed out using flails dating to the times of the Egyptians. Here they used a "trillo". Trillar means to thresh.

top view


Imagine it without the stone weights, this isn't my trillo and I didn't remove them for the photo. I suspect someone had been pulling it with a tractor. Hitch it to the oxen, you can put a stool in the center to sit on, then around and around you go! If you're using mules you have to stand and ride it like a surfboard. The uhh... interesting part is that when the ox lifts it's tail you have to be ready with a coffee can or it will ruin the wheat. Somebody has to do it.


bottom view (detail)

Those are flint stones (no kidding) which are inserted into the wood. As the trillo is pulled around and around over the wheat the flints cut it up until the straw is chopped to about 3cm length and the seed falls out of the seed head. Assuming you were threshing a mound of wheat 25m in diameter and a starting thickness of about 25cm this would take a 2-3 days (using oxen). Almost nothing as compared to how long it takes to cut a field with a sickle. See also: this.

All that's left is to separate the wheat from the chaff - winnowing. Sweep it all into a mound. You can use grain rakes now, the ones with the wooden teeth, and wait for a windy day. Toss it into the wind and the air will carry the chaff away and the wheat falls back to the ground. Final cleaning is achieved by passing the wheat through a sieve.

Later, If you didn't want to wait for a windy day machines were available like this one.


Toss the threshed wheat in the top and the blower at left lifts the chaff out the front. The heavier wheat comes out the back under the blower. There were also models in which you could attach sacks to the machine and the wheat would fall directly into the sacks.

The first point I want to make is that a modern combine does all of this in one pass and it does it in exactly the same way.


That roll up front tucks the wheat into a "sickle bar" exactly like what you've seen in the hayfields and the wheat is fed into a thresher, called in this case a "crib" or sieve where it is passes through teeth spaced precisely so that the seed-head is broken and the seed is not. That's adjustable for working in different crops. The idea is exactly like the trillo. It just goes around a whole lot faster than oxen! The seed then passes though a sieve and there is a series of shakers and blowers that recycle all of the remaining heavy parts back into the crib where anything that didn't get processed correctly goes through again. The straw is blown up and out and wind-rowed (or not, if so adjusted) out the back where it can be bailed. Nothing wasted.

Here's what you get.


It's not yet ready to mill. It still contains weeds and other impurities.

How to Make Bread from Scratch, Part I

Carl Sagan would say, "first you must create the universe". Well no, that's already been done for us. We only have to scratch the surface.


OK, you already know this, but we're starting from scratch. The old way. I wish I had my computer here. I have better pictures. See the stick in his hand? That's used to press the the ox startup button. We used a stick with a nail driven into the end of it. Works great. I just found out that in English it's called a goad. Now you know what they're talking about when they say, "being goaded into something".

The new way has to do with tractors. No picture. You've seen tractors. A typical tractor here would be 200 hp and pull 6 plows. Anyone reading this would know how to start one up and keep it going straight - keeping oxen going straight is something I never learned to do!

After plowing comes cultivating. We would use disc cultivators at home. I don't see many of those here. They use "spring tine cultivators" and more recently variations like this.


I suspect the choice is due to the difference in soils. These are glacial moraines (I think). The American mid-west is predominantly silt-loams. So, here they contain much more sand and, I think, are much less prone to end up as unbreakable clods. I hope to come back to soils again.

Then the seed must be sown. Once this was done by hand too. You've seen pictures. Getting that right takes practice.


Today, not so much practice. This, we call them "seeders", not sowers, is the tractor way. This one can plant 6-7 meters wide, measures the seed precisely and never leaves a gap. And you can drop fertilizer at the same time. Some are made to plant directly into sod. No need to plow, cultivate; just go over the sod with chemical herbicides and place the seed into the soil. This one has springy things on the back. The ones I know have cultipackers, a row of weighted wheels, that insure the seed is in contact with the soil. As far as I know, that was never done when sowing by hand.

Then you wait for the seed to germinate and the plant to grow. The old way, before chemicals and tractors were common, there was a lot of weeding that had to be done by hand. Here today they almost uniformly make one more pass over the field with a sprayer. I know they do because I see the tracks the tractor makes. They wouldn't do this if they didn't have to, but I'm not sure what they are spraying. Nitrogen I think.

Next post, the harvest.