Last weekend was puente (long weekend). In Canada Monday, October 12 was Thanksgiving. In the US it was Columbus Day (though I don’t know why the day should be just for him). In some Latin American countries, October 12 is known as Descubrimiento de América or Día de la Raza. In recent years, however, some countries have either changed the name of the holiday (like in Argentina: Día del Respeto a la Diversidad Cultural) or stopped celebrating it as a holiday altogether (like in Paraguay, where instead there are often protests that day by indigenous groups). In Spain October 12 is Día de la Hispanidad, a general, innocuous-sounding title.
Anyway, since it was puente, we had plans for the weekend. On Saturday, Luis and I went to Girona for the day. Girona is about an hour from Barcelona and has a nice preserved medieval city (where, for those who are fans, the latest season of Game of Thrones was filmed). We spent the afternoon strolling through narrow passages, along parts of the old city wall, checking out the cathedral and the old Jewish ghetto. Lunch and a coffee in the plaza in front of the cathedral made for a very nice visit all in all.
On Sunday, Joan had invited us to his family’s country house in the tiny village of Figols de Tremp 3 hours from Barcelona so we headed out in the morning to arrive around noon. The countryside was beautiful as we headed northwest towards the Pyrenees. The mountain ranges in the area would be considered pre-Pyrenees (foothills maybe?) and, if the sky was clear, we could see the Pyrenees in the distance as we wound our way further up the hills. Figols de Tremp was Joan’s mother’s hometown, but as is the case for many small rural villages in Spain in the last decades, most of the people have moved to the cities. In Figols there are only 5 houses and only one older couple lives there year round. The rest are like Joan and his family, coming out only a few times per year. Admiring the view from Joan’s amazing home perched on a hill, Joan pointed out ruins of small abandoned villages, as well as Castell de Mur, a well-preserved medieval castle, and old towers used in medieval times to communicate danger by lighting fires (think Lord of the Rings).
After meeting Joan’s wife, Isabel, and their two teenage kids, as well as family friends also spending the weekend with them, we grabbed some baskets and headed out to a pine forest to look for mushrooms. Joan’s PhD involved working with forest soils so he knows a lot about forest tree species and can identify at least the edible mushrooms. We wandered around the forest for a bit, looking closely at the ground to find good mushrooms, but it seemed others had beaten us to it. We moved a little deeper into the woods and suddenly we hit a spot that was full of fredulics (Tricholoma terreum). We filled our baskets so much we could barely carry them. Isabel told us that normally they don’t collect that many in one outing. We were lucky no one had found that spot and also that the weather this fall has been just right for mushrooms: not too much rain nor wind, not too hot, and not too cold. Back at the house, we set up the table to clean the mushrooms and discard those with worms. As we cleaned, Isabel prepared a delicious dinner featuring mushroom Spanish tortillas. It was fun to be able to say we had scavenged for (part of) our food and then be eating it fresh! (We fully trusted they were edible; so far so good!)
On Monday morning, a group of us led by Joan went for a hike up the mountains to the Castell de Mur. Once again, the walk and the views from the top were fanstastic. We arrived back at the house early afternoon where we had a last meal of sautéed vegetables and fresh mushrooms before driving back to Barcelona. It was really a great weekend with wonderful people and I really appreciated Joan having invited us, it was definitely a very nice gesture.
The rest of my week was devoted to my incubation experiment. I set it up on Tuesday and now it is up and running! On Wednesday I did the first CO2 measurements which involves doing titrations. I have not done this much chemistry since probably high school and I don’t think I even did titrations then. Luckily, Joan is very patient and after showing me how to titrate the first time, it was smooth sailing finishing all the samples. These measurements will give me the respiration rates from the different treatments so we can see how much each biochar-soil combination increases or decreases decomposition. On Friday I did the second CO2 measurements. The measurements this time were a bit strange, so we’ll see how they look on Monday. After that, as the weeks continue decomposition will slow down so the measurements can be spaced out more. We’ll see how things look over the next 90 days!
