Good morning
May has crept up on us and you can feel it even with your eyes closed. You walk out into the streets of Valencia and it's like someone turned on party mode.
Jacarandas stain the sidewalks purple, bougainvilleas hang from walls as if competing to see which looks more beautiful, and in the countryside every embankment is dotted with flowers. I always say, spring here doesn't enter, it bursts in.
And when I go in the morning to check orders and then harvest, that sweet scent wafts in, reminding me that everything is starting up again.
Furthermore, {nombre}, it's not just about flowers, but about a little critter of vital importance for our work, and what can I say: for our lives!
Do you know who I'm talking about?
Between flower and flower, you hear the buzzing of bees. If you stop for a minute, you see the choreography. One gets covered in pollen, another lands, they pass the news along as if they were neighbors in a stairwell. That's when my teacher's streak comes out: without pollinators, there's no fruit or vegetable.
The trick is simple to understand, even though nature has perfected it over millions of years. Pollen travels from one flower to another on the little legs of these critters, and thanks to that journey, the flower sets and becomes fruit.
Without that visit, goodbye tomatoes, zucchini, melons, apples, almonds, and a list that won't fit on this page. In short, the true bosses of the harvest measure centimeters and buzz.
May is also their big month. The hive is bustling, the queen lays as if there were no tomorrow, and the worker bees fly in and out of the field in shifts that Madrid's metro system would envy.
Each bee contributes a tiny bit, and together they create a miracle. If I worked half as hard as a bee in May, I'd get the employee of the century award. And from all that flying and all those flowers comes something that has captivated me since I was a child: honey.
Here's one of those things I like to tell because it explains why we insist on doing things the old-fashioned way, thoughtfully and without rushing.
Our honey is wild mountain heather honey. It doesn't come from a field of a single flower kilometers away from identical hives. It originates where the mountain is diverse and generous, with heather dominating and a multitude of undergrowth flowers accompanying it.
That's why it has that dark color, that deep aroma that reminds you of the mountains, and that nuanced, less cloyingly sweet, more serious flavor. Nature, when left to its own devices, gets creative. Where there is variety, there is life, there is balance, and there are products that have soul.
I see this clearly every time I go up to the mountains to visit Raquel, the beekeeper we work with. You open a honeycomb and it smells of heather, rockrose, thyme, compressed spring in one bite.
And meanwhile, down here, in the garden, we continue with our daily routine. We work side-by-side with more farmers throughout Spain, defending what is ours at a fair price.
Every morning we check the list, go to the tree or plant, harvest what's ready, and it goes straight to your home. Artisanal, like our grandparents did it, with the great little help of those invisible architects, the pollinators 🐝
I invite you this week to let yourself be infected by the colors. Look up when you pass under a jacaranda, peek at that wall covered in bougainvillea, breathe deeply if you come across a flowering rosemary bush.
Nature in its purest state is diverse and generous. And that joy is contagious. If you feel like taking a little piece of it to your table, you know where to find us.
The fruit and vegetables leave the tree when you order them, and if you have a sweet tooth, try the heather honey. It tastes like May, even if you eat it in November 🍯
Thank you for being on the other side. See you next week, with hands stained with pollen and a smile, because May suits us so well.
A big hug from the garden of Valencia 🌸
