Posts from 2023

11 Nov: I feel something strange in my right foot. It becomes an inflamation, not on the skin but inside.

12 Nov: I walk with crutches, because if I walk without crutches I have pain in the foot.

14 Nov: I have also pain in my leg if I use it for walking. I don't have permanent pain. I eat a raw food diet with little furits, and I fast sometimes a bit.

21 Nov: Our friend Pascale visits us and brings a natural medicine: DSMO, produced by friends in the Alpujarras, and magnesium water. I don't like taking medicine, not even natural medicine. I would like to give my body the time to heal itself without using any means to speed up the healing process. But this time I make an exception. I put the magnesium water on the skin of my leg a mixture of DSMO and magnesium water on the skin of my foot. After a few hours, the inflammation in the foot becomes more severe, the foot becomes warm and hurts a little even when resting. I can't sleep for several hours at night and have to move constantly to endure the pain. I get up and work on the laptop, now it's easier to bear. After a while the pain subsides and I fall asleep.

22 Nov: I try again without any more medicine. The symptoms become a little less.

1 Dec: The leg feels better. I start to use the leg a bit, but I walk with crutches still.

17 Dec: Since some days I walk sometimes without crutches. Yesterday I cycled 14km to the church service and back. Now I notice: it was a bit much, the foot feels a bit worse..

24 Dec: Today and yesterday I cycled to the chruch again. Now it feels ok to do that, although there is still a rest of inflammation in the foot.

26 Mar 2024: In the meantime, I have had my foot checked by a doctor. It seems that I have a small fracture in my foot. It could be from a fall after the paddle tour in Oct 2023. After the examination, I was sent to a hospital in Málaga to have a minimally invasive operation to widen the vein. However, the doctor at the hospital said that the operation was not necessary and that the foot could still heal on its own. I can still feel a difference between my two feet. However, I am cycling to El Morche again. From 14 March, I will try to hike carefully.

I had a similar disease already two times before: In April 2013, during the gathering over Órgiva, I jumped from a 1m high wall and couldn't walk suddenly anymore. I used crutches for about a month. And in October 2021, during the paddling tour, I couldn't walk for a few days.

Does this picture look familiar? This message can currently be found on several pages of this website - all the videos I uploaded to blogger have disappeared for more than a week! I have a copy of most of the videos on my laptop, and I've read that it's better to upload videos elsewhere (I do it on youtube) and embed or link them here. But it's a strange process, I can't explain the cause. So I asked in the blogger forum about the cause - but got no answer. Apparently the experts there are just as baffled as I am! I'll keep trying to find out what the problem is so I don't have to worry about more strange things happening to my blog... I will report here if I find out the cause.

← Image: Message "Video is unavailable" on my blog

In the last two nights we got about 30mm and 10mm of rain. This is wonderful news for us! We haven't had any significant rain for four months. That was normal a few years ago, now it is a pleasantly short dry season. In summer, we had little water for irrigation because the spring that supplies us with water had less water than before. I have heard that the water flows underground from the Sierra Nevada to the spring. And in the Sierra Nevada it rained much less than normal last season. The same with us: there was heavy rain only in December and in June. Now we hope for more water from the clouds in the coming season.

← Image: I measure the rain with a bucket.

In the meantime, the two large wounds no longer form pus. They have grown big, but now they are clearly healing. A few small pus blisters have appeared, but they didn't get so big because I treated them earlier. The photo is from yesterday, you can see a new pus blister before I opened it. It looks better now, the pus is gone, the wound is just a bit red. Every day I dip a needle into neem oil and open the pus blisters with it - carefully, I don't want to press on the pus blisters too much. And several times a day I put some neem oil on the wound. This is my personal way though, as I had already bought the neem oil, didn't want to buy anything else, didn't want to go to the doctor and felt it would be fine. Normally it is recommended to put a traction pointment on the pus blisters earlier. If that doesn't help, you should have the blister cut open by a doctor.

Update: since 27 Sept I don't use the neem oil anymore, because the wounds are looking better. After the paddling tour in October 2023, I got another infection with pus on my index finger, which I also treated successfully with neem oil.

Until this morning, I have lost four out of five chicks. I wanted to keep the last chick. So, I started to prepare a cage that would be secured on all sides. While I was working on it this morning, I heard a beeping noise in the stable. I looked and saw the chick sitting on the perch and beeping. I thought it would come. The mother was already outside and seemed calm and wasn't worried. So I went back to the cage and continued working on it. After a while I heard another beeping sound, now it sounded desperate. I looked again - the chick was gone! I couldn't find it outside either. My explanation: The cat had sneaked into the stable in the morning. The other chickens were either already outside or they ran away out of fear of the cat. The mother probably also had less of a protective instinct and saw already the chick as independent. And finally the cat snapped... Now all the chicks are dead. I'm experiencing this for the first time. In the past I have lost a few chicks to a fox, but never to a cat. I take it as a warning for next year.

Watch video on youtube:

Beauti and Dödi

Beauti and Dödi, now without chicks. I had figs in my hand and Beauty saw it...

Beauti is higher in the chicken rank than Dödi. As long as Dödi had chicks, Beauti often chased Dödi away at feeding time. After all the chicks were dead, Dödi and Beauti stood silently head to head for about a minute. The scene touched me, it reminded me of human grief after losing a family member.

I've had these two festering sores for a few days now, and they're getting bigger every day. I have the feeling that I will open the blisters with a needle by tomorrow at the latest. The wounds were probably caused by the small spines of prickly pears (cactus figs). I prefer to hold these fruits in my hand instead of handling them with a knife and fork. I've been doing this for many years, but this time two spots became infected. I think it has something to do with my diet, although this assumption is not scientifically based. Since reducing my fruit intake, I've been eating more cooked veggies, whole grain crackers, and oatmeal. All organic, but it's heated food. A few days ago a bar of organic chocolate was added, with 100% cocoa content, i.e. no added sugar, but the cocoa beans were of cause roasted. In the past, however, I sometimes ate 10 to 20 prickly pears and picked them up directly, apart from many other small injuries that I got on the finca without them becoming infected.
P.S. I opened them, it was necessary. But still the wounds become bigger from day to day. I wonder if it's the contagious form of Staphylococcus.  Therefore I use neemoil for the wounds and avoid touching other people.

2 days ago I made this last video of Dödi's 4 chicks. Meanwhile, we have given them names: Stephy, Sparky, Aimjie and Meeni. This morning, however, I heard a frantic peep from a chick in the same place as shown at the beginning of the video. I ran and looked and saw a black cat running away with a black chick in its mouth. I ran after it - but the cat was faster.
P.S. 3 days later 2 more chicks disappeared! Now there are only one chick from Dödi and one chick from Beauty. Fortunately they cannot go through the fence anymore, because they are too big for that. And if they are closer to the other chickens, the cat will not catch them, I hope.

Watch video on youtube:

4 chicks of Dödi

So sweet...

My partner Murielle considers the headstand a particularly good yoga exercise. And as you can see, she practices it regularly! It's one of her favourite posture. She learned it 2011 in Belgium from an 80 years old yoga teacher, who practised the headstand everey day at home. She still appreciate his teaching. When she does the handstand, she often thinks of him. "The practice is claimed by the Dattatreya Yoga Shastra to destroy all diseases. to increase the digestive fire, and to banish signs of ageing" (Wikipedia)

Watch video on youtube:

Murielle's headstand

For many years I've been cutting my hair only once a year, for some years only every two years, because my partner prefers long hair. But I still want to cut it sometimes, because I don't like it quite so long. Today was one of those days. A neighbour lent me her hair clippers. I was sceptical at first because it was quite small. But it worked like a charm! In a short time everything that was hanging around up there was gone. And my partner and friends had to look twice when they saw me.... I keep the hair, I still have the hair from the last haircut. Someday I'll make a long tear-proof string out of them. Of course I'll show you how to do it then!

Watch video on youtube:

After haircut

Don't worry, Meenhard!

We harvested beetroot today. It had been in the garden for a long time and didn't want to grow bigger, probably because of lack of water. Now we have tasted it, it tasted too bitter for us. We found out on the internet that beetroot should always grow quickly so that it doesn't become bitter. What to do? We put them in jars for lactofermentation and hope that the fermentation process will transform the bitterness into - something tasty....

We have been cultivating a few watermelons in summer for 3 years, this summer only 3 plants that self-seeded with the mulch because of the lack of water. But there are 4 fruits on the plants - and they are very tasty! In the photo you can see the second watermelon. The seeds are unusually large because it is an old variety. It comes from an old farmer, is well adapted to our climate and always produces very tasty fruit.

Since September 2022 I haven't had any illnesses except for 3 days of coughing in January and occasionally slight symptoms such as a cold for a day or some slight pain. For more than a week now I have had slight abdominal pain with certain movements and my stomach then feels a little heavy. I researched something on the internet: it could be gastritis. I only ate a green smoothie today and am beginning to fast or eat very little.

P.S. A few days later it felt more like a problem with the liver, a squeeze right below the ribs. During august the symptom disappeared.

Dödi, our smallest hen hatched 4 chicks 4 days ago. In Germany we call someone "Dödi" who is slow to understand and move. For example, Dödi is often the last to arrive at feeding time. "She waddles on her stomach," Murielle once said, also because Dödi has such short legs. Nevertheless, she is doing well and taking good care of her 4 chicks now!

Watch video on youtube:

4 chicks at feeding

A guest brought us lots of courgettes that he got as a gift from a farmer - so many that not even the chickens could eat them all. We mulched a young Longan tree with them. New plants grew from the seeds and gave us the fruits in the photo. (And on the left the moon is shining...) The plants then got a fungal disease, with horsetail tea they would probably have lived longer.

Blackberries grow quickly when there is water and die quickly when it is dry... We have cut a lot of blackberry vines. They have to go, I don't like them as mulch because I walk barefoot. Burning is also out of the question, it is forbidden here from the beginning of May. So I bury them. Here I dig a big hole into which I stomp them later, cut into small pieces. A lot of work, but it is also an excellent preparation for planting a fast-growing tree later...