Gallegita in Training: Planting Potatoes, Bottling Wine, and Picking out a Pig!!

One of the things that Jonathan and I love about living in Galicia is the connection that people here, particularly our family, have to what they eat.  I love how none of them have grass or flowers, and that they use all of their yard space to plant food or house animals (to eat, not to cuddle with).  To Jonathan and I, this is really romantic.  To eat mostly food that you grow yourself, the fruits of your labor.  But in all actuality, it's hard work. Who knew? haha.  The family here always laugh at us when we show interest in helping to do stuff like this, because to them, it's not fun.  They are activities based upon necessity, born from a recent history of literally starving.  

Before we went to Argentina I helped Chelo and Gonzalo plant potatoes in their backyard.  I'm not sure what I was expecting to actually plant, whether they'd be potato seeds, or some sort of bulb, or something.  But I was shocked to find out that they planted quartered potatoes that they had just let grow until they had eyes.  Who knew?!.  Anyways, here's a few pictures:

When we came back to Spain from Argentina, we were able to bottle the wine we made with Gonzalo this past fall!!  If you're curious, here's a link to my blogpost from when we made the wine, here.  How exciting!!  We bottled the albarino, the local white wine.  The red wine wont be bottled for a few more weeks still.  Jonathan and I took turns filling the bottles and putting the corks in.  Gonzalo watched to ensure quality :). The cork presser thing was pretty awesome, though it took a lot of force.  Upon watching me push the lever down, Gonzalo told me that I needed to drink more Cola Cao (popular, fortified Yoohoo/Nestle Hot Chocolate like drink).

So first, we soaked the corks:

Here are a few photos of Jon and I filling the bottles:

And here are a few photos of us corking those bad boys!

And then just recently, I went out with Chelo to pick out a new pig! They slaughter one every year, which they eat throughout the course of the year.  You can see my previous blog post re: the slaughter if you're interested, here.  So Chelo and I went to this pig farm place.  They had 5 different rooms full of pigs, each room was for pigs of different ages.  The piglet room with the littlest pigges was the best.  The pig farm kind of freaked me out though.  When you walked into a room, the pigs just started going crazy, like jumping all over each other and stuff.  The pig farmer man said they weren't used to people, which I guess I believe, but even still.  Later, I asked Chelo if they actually breed the pigs at this place, or if they are bred somewhere else and just housed here for purchase.  More literally, I asked her in Spanish, "do they make the babies at this farm, or do the pigs have sex at a different farm".  Chelo laughed at me and told me that they do it all here. After asking Chelo this, Jonathan then began singing Spinal Tap's "Sex Farm", which if you're unfamiliar with you can view its brilliance here. 

Here are some pig farm photos: