Bright Meadow Farms

The year after Franco died, I spent a year in Segovia, Spain, as a foreign exchange student. One of the friends I made was the "ajero", a young man whose family sold garlic at the market on Thursdays. His life was hard. It's no wonder they call a region of Spain Extremadura (extremely hard) the life is also hard in Old Castile. During my many walks through the town and through the countryside I learned a little about the way farmers live in Spain.

I received an advertisement in my email today from "la Tienda". It wasn't spam, as I had signed up for their newsletter. Today they have a touching story about a man who plows with mules for recreation in Old Castile. He raises saffron, the most expensive spice in the world, in the traditional way in the La Mancha region of Spain. You can read the article here. The tag line? "There is something very reaffirming when you spend a few hours with people of the soil." Well, we knew that!