Good morning!
Today I'm writing to you with my hands still purple.
I was packing boxes and Antonio's blackberries are flying off the shelves.
They already have a reputation among many of you, and it's no wonder. The blackberry is a very wild plant, and when you nurture it, it repays you many times over.
The countryside is a vast world, and every plant or tree has its own particular needs.
When I speak of the blackberry this way, it doesn't mean it doesn't need its care like all our little plants, but it's the kind of crop that won't keep you up at night unless something unexpected happens, like an unforeseen rain.
Generally, it goes along its path very calmly.
However, one observation, because Antonio always says it: wild, yes, but greedy as can be.
Let me tell you what my fellow farmer means...
It needs good food and good soil, which is why these are planted on a bed of cow and horse manure. Down there is a mattress that nourishes and lightens the soil.
The cow manure provides constant food, and the horse manure helps the soil breathe and prevents it from compacting. This way, the roots, which tend to grow near the surface, always find soft and nutritious ground.
Beneath all that refinement is a good, real country bed, and you can tell when you put a blackberry in your mouth.
I call it a wild plant because it is wild in character and habits. When the harvest is over, it's cut to the ground, entirely, like starting from scratch. And nothing happens. The same plant produces daughters in summer and autumn that slowly prepare themselves and will bear fruit the following season.
To the eye, it seems like magic. In winter, you'd say there's nothing there, and in two sunny mornings, it creates a green wall laden with blackberries.
That's why we say it needs guidance and a bit of order, so it doesn't turn into a jungle and so the sun reaches it properly. If it's aired just right, the leaves produce energy happily, and the berries plump up with sweetness and that touch of acidity that awakens the senses.
Blackberries, moreover, dictate the calendar. They don't wait. They are delicate and don't forgive carelessness, which is why they fit so well with what we do at Campos del Abuelo.
Here, every morning we review orders and go out to harvest what you've requested that day, and this is noticeable in such fragile fruits. They don't need to travel half the country or multiple warehouses. They travel little and arrive with the same vitality they had on the plant.
I know many of you cherish memories of wild blackberries from when we were kids. I used to go to the riverbank with my grandfather and come back with purple fingers and a stained shirt.
Those roadside blackberries had their charm, and I can confidently tell you that Antonio's retain that wild bramble soul, but they also come clean, hand-picked one by one at their perfect ripeness.
They are juicier and sweeter without losing their freshness. That's not done by a cold room; it's done by the farmer's eye.
Behind every box we pack, there's a lot of old-fashioned craftsmanship. We are farmers from Valencia and work with colleagues from all over Spain who cultivate as their grandparents did.
The plants we care for eat well, drink when they need to, and work at their own pace. And every fruit and vegetable is harvested for you, not for a shelf.
Thank you for supporting our local produce. Thank you for trusting this way of working at the foot of the field, with well-nourished soil, well-treated plants, and shipments that start every morning at dawn.
With you, every harvested fruit is shared joy.
A big hug 🌱
