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Early expatriate settlers in Spain could eat well from local produce. Now in many areas agricultural land has been built on or abandoned, and where foodstuffs are still grown there is evidence of forced growth for speed and size using a wide range of chemicals. Now sprays are used to combat the insects attracted by the chemicals! Unfortunately, many expats don’t seem to search out healthy alternatives if the supermarket trolleys – packed with fast-foods - are anything to go by. Since ***’s cancer operations 18 years ago, we have aimed to develop a Mediterranean garden in Spain that allows us to live a life that is healthy and holistic in four regards: · Spiritual and mental wellness through a therapeutic garden environment that is inspiring, restful and a daily escape from the potential stress of 21st century living. · Sustained physical health through the physical and mental effort involved in designing, developing and maintaining a garden and the consumption of the ecological and chemical-free food it produces. This includes fruit, edible flowers and leaves, herbs, vegetables, meat and eggs, especially those with high vitamin and mineral contents. · Gastronomic satisfaction from a garden that is growing a wide diversity of foods that are harvested and consumed when at their best and avoiding fast-food gluttony. · Economic well-being from the reduced cost of living. In achieving this, we collected information about the benefits of vitamins and minerals on the healthy growth and survival of both plants and people – and we discovered some surprising similarities. We also discovered that the healthiest produce we could grow was broccoli, garlic, red lettuces and peas. For fun, we developed a self-assessment audit to determine the extent of a person’s gluttony and true healthy gastronomy. Since such concepts and ideas went down well at talks, *** has summarised our adventures in a new book ‘Living Well from Our Mediterranean Garden’. Discussions about the relevance of the book to participants from other Mediterranean-climate countries around the world at a recent conference suggest to us that its message is international. Indeed, one 80-year-old Australian medical doctor thought all doctors should read it! The compact 40-page book is packed with interesting, and we are told, inspiring information including: · What constitutes overall wellness. · Guidelines for developing colourful productive and therapeutic gardens. · What constitutes a Mediterranean diet and good and bad eating. · The wellness benefits of some 180 vegetables, fruits and herbs that can be grown in the garden. · Healthy ways to prepare food. · A novel self-assessment of your gastronomic or gluttonous status. As we explain at the beginning of the book, the practices described were ***’s way of recovering naturally from cancer. The book can be obtained via the website www.gardeninginspain.com . (c) Clodagh and *** Handscombe. Holistic gardeners and authors living in Spain for twenty five years.
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The August issue of What Doctors Don’t Tell You just arrived at our home in the wilds of Spain – and I wanted to add some further thoughts to the main story about chemicals in pesticides and the damage they can do to our health (http://www.wddty.com/scary-scary-how-does-your-garden-grow.html).
First off, sensible garden design and plantings can eliminate the need to use any type of spray. Any spraying we’ve had to do has been on pests that have been introduced into our garden. The geranium moth arrived in the mid 1990s with imported geraniums, the airborne honey fungus spores came from nearby abandoned and now rotting fruit trees, and the tomato Tuti fly came from Majorca in a batch of tomatoes about four years ago.
Luckily, garlic infusions and Neem oil deal with the insects, and propolis - a by-product of bee hives - tackles the honey dew fungus. Each of these is a natural pesticide that have been used for thousands of years.
We don’t have a lawn as grass is not a natural feature of the Mediterranean region. Having a lawn is a chore, as it needs to be constantly watered, and you’ll be forever removing weeds and moss.
If you do use pesticides, you can carry the chemicals into your home on your choe and clothes, as the WDDTY article suggests. For us, we are more likely to bring them in on our bare feet – and into the swimming pool, too.
In our latest book, out next month, Living Well from Our Mediterranean Garden, we listed ’Fresh air - full of oxygen and the aroma of nearby native herbs, without chemical pollutants, especially from agricultural sprays’ as an often forgotten but essential ingredient of the original Mediterranean Diet. Also we emphasise that if one becomes aware of the vitamin and mineral contents of fruit and vegetables and the wellness benefits of herbs and edible flowers there is no need , or at least less in crisis situations, for having more pills than peas with your lunch. Do email us if you would like information about the book.
Incidentally the pest control chapters in our previous quartet of books Gardening in Spain, Apartment Gardening Mediterranean Style, Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain and Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain all give ecological solutions to pests.
© Clodagh and Richard Handscombe Holistic gardeners and authors living in Spain for 25 years. www.gardeninginspain.com , gardeninginspain@hotmail.com.
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Earlier this month, What Doctors Don’t Tell You reported on the importance of selenium and vitamin K to healthy ageing. It prompted us to check on what we ate with useful amounts of these two substances. Naturally, we started with the first meal of the day: breakfast. First we found that a useful source of vitamin K is fresh leafy green vegetables. Second, we found that selenium is found in eggs. So we saw no need to change from our most regularly-eaten breakfast of: 1. Omelet filled with steamed freshly-harvested Swiss chard. 2. An accompanying freshly harvested leafy salad. Today it comprised of leaves of red lettuce , parsley, golden oregano, purslane, rocket, mint, nasturtium, garlic onion, chives, red perella, pineapple sage, kalanchoe plus chopped onion. Our home-produced cold pressed extra virgin olive oil was poured over the top. Beverages were a glass of diluted home-produced kombucha and a Moroccan-style mint infusion with the mug filled with leaves of mint and a leaf of stevia ,as the sweetener, before pouring in the hot water. Naturally all the items were produced ecologically in our garden just a few meters from the kitchen door. If any reader thinks we could improve on this, please let us know. Clodagh and *** Handscombe. Practical holistic gardeners and authors living in Spain. See their website www.gardeninginspain for more information and details of their books.
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A recent WDDTY e-news bulletin reported on research into the potential benefits of tangerines and the possibility that they will be marketed as a new power fruit. It reminded us that the first two plantings in our then rather bare and embryonic garden in Spain were a lemon and tangerine tree. A Lunar lemon tree was sought out, which was not that easy in the 1980s as there were few garden centres. It flowers and fruits all year round, and so we always have ripening lemons to harvest for cooling drinks in the summer and warming ones for the winter. The tangerine tree was selected from the various early, mid-season and late season types of mandarin crosses because it would be ready to harvest for Christmas, it was not as acidic as many other varieties and, having thin skins, the tangerines are easy to peel or eat whole from November to January when frosts can damage them. We dry slices to add to other home dried fruit snacks we eat when walking the Spanish mountain ranges. Some were in the mix *** took on a 150 km walk last week to give energy to his 74-year-old body. We also juice some to freeze. One thing we notice about juice frozen in small plastic beakers is that the surface of the ice is always covered with a layer of tangerine oil, which has an especially delicious taste if spooned off before the juice melts – we suspect that this is high in some of the more beneficial constituents of the fruit. Long ago, we were told that the pith of tangerines and other citrus fruits have cancer-fighting properties. Now that the tangerine may soon be seen as a power fruit, we hope we will start seeing more tangerine trees for sale. Clodagh and Richard Handscombe. Holistic gardeners in Spain for 25years. Authors of a number of books on gardening in Spain. www.gardeninginspain.com.
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I’m old enough to remember a time when the pharmaceutical industry was concerned about social responsibility. During the 1970s and early 80s, middle managers and executives were attending regular workshops on the subject. While market domination was the underlying goal, the managers were supposedly being taught to achieve it through quality products that would benefit the individual, and presumably society as a whole. Judging by the recent news in WDDTY and elsewhere, it would appear that social responsibility has become a dirty word. In its place is a constant assault on natural products and, through powerful lobby groups in the European Parliament, the complete destruction of herbal and natural remedies that have been with us for many generations. I fear for all our grandchildren and the health choices they will be offered. For myself, now 74 and a survivor of several cancer operations, these attacks just trigger a desire to learn as much as possible about what our forebears used to do, especially in rural areas when many could not afford to pay for a doctor in the days before the advent of the National Health Service. To give one example of good natural cures and preventatives, for some years we have grown and eaten globe artichokes and steamed them for dinner and drunk some of the juices. These and horse tail (a useful weed in many gardens) infusions are useful ways of giving the liver a cleanup. Likewise, spring nettle soups and infusions from dried leaves, mixed with wild and cultivated dandelion leaves for salads, are part of our own efforts to keep our kidneys healthy. Last Sunday night, the day before we received the latest WDDTY magazine with the report on the draconian attack on health supplements, we read in our gardening lunar calendar that the best days for treating the liver are those before a Virgo sign, and the kidneys benefit most if treated a few days before Libra. These occur in the week before full moons. We have no proof this works – other than the knowledge that they have been tried and tested by our ancestors for thousands of years before us. And that’s good enough for us. Just off to water our cultivated plot of nettles transplanted from the countryside before modern man has the chance to kill off the patch with a chemical herbicide! © Clodagh and Richard Handscombe, www.gardeninginspain.com, authors of fourteen books including ‘Strategic Leadership – The missing links’, ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’ and ‘Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain’.
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Twice in previous blogs we have referred to the plant Stevia rebaudiana. It is among the sweetest plants in the world and is widely used in some countries as a substitute for sugar, honey and artificial sweeteners in both home cooking and manufactured food products, and by diabetics to reduce their dependence on medications. Interestingly, the president of Dolca Revolucio, the charity that has spearheaded the distribution of stevia plants in Spain, commented on return from a recent visit to Japan that he had never before visited a country where one saw only slim people and no obesity - except amongst tourists. Cakes and ice creams were not as sugary sweet as in Europe and he noted that stevia was widely used by food and drink manufacturers. We immediately thought: ‘Why not in Europe? Then, surprise surprise, the next day we received by email Suttons Seeds’s special offer of Stevia Seeds and plants and a special stevia mug for making daily infusions. We hope that this is the start of a revolution in the way we cook and drink in our homes, and one that will eventually lead to a change in European food formulations. © Clodagh and *** Handscombe www.gardeninginspain.com February 2011. Authors of Your Garden in Spain, Apartment Gardening Mediterranean Style, Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain’ and ‘Growing Healthy Vegetable in Spain’.
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I have just finished hand-harvesting our olives and those of our friends - some 800 kilos in all were gathered up. It was four long days of satisfying exercise on sunny wintery days for four 60- and 70-year-olds. There were no motorized tree shakers to reduce our labours, and no help from the sons of our Spanish friends.
Lunch was cooked over a wood fire with an exchange of views about what has been lost in traditional ways and farming in the past ten years. We were surrounded by abandoned olive, almond, and orange groves. Ten years ago we would have been surrounded by large family groups, with grandparents, parents and children enjoying and benefiting from the exercise, the sense of community and the health-giving qualities of the extra virgin, cold-pressed olive oil produced on the village or family olive mill and press. Most presses have now disappeared and those villagers that do still harvest olives have to travel to large factory mills up to 50 kilometres away where their olives are mixed with those of others. Luckily, our friends have invested in a small home mill and press so our own olives are producing olive oil as pure as you can get.
Our olive trees have been fertilized only with sheep manure and sprayed against insects and fungi with natural ecological sprays. We don’t use chemical products as do most commercial olive farms.
Perhaps we spend a full day a week growing and processing our ecological products, but we don’t need to visit supermarkets and we spend less money. One thing not on our shopping list is the typical medications for the over-50s.
© Clodagh and Richard Handscombe
Holistic gardeners and authors living in Spain for 25 years. Details of their books etc will be found on
www.gardeninginspain.com. December 2010.
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This month we just have to follow up Bryan Hubbard’s blog ‘What is natural’.
In recent years we have included a section in our talks around Spain about the absence of a medicine cupboard in our house. Instead, we have a good selection of herbs in the garden with reputed health benefits and a cupboard of dried ones for the winter when they are annuals.
We hear that more and more Spaniards and expatriates on the Med are relearning the benefits of Mediterranean plants in gardens on the mountainsides just a kilometre or two from the crowded tourist beaches. Amazingly we had 40 emails asking how certain plants could be obtained and grown and two invites to give talks at charity events organised by British-run health charities. Hopefully the next invite will be from a Mediterranean cruise ship company!
In our latest book Apartment Gardening Mediterranean Style we included in the chapter about growing herbs on apartment terraces and balconies a list of the ten which we would grow for beneficial infusions as a substitute for tea or coffee if we down-sized from our villa.
Here’s our list:
1. Mint – a useful digestive and hangover relief.
2. Lemon verbena – a refreshing and calming drink especially cooled in the summer.
3. Rosemary – gives an energy and memory boost especially when out walking the local mountains and typing articles on the computer.
4. Sage – an antiseptic for rinsing teeth and gums.
5. Parsley – a useful relief for cystitis, and a diuretic.
6. Rue – for speedy recovery from sprains and strains from mountain walking, tennis and the winter cut-back in the garden.
7. Garlic – we eat chopped garlic daily in salads and cooked dishes for its incredible health benefits. An infusion is used as a natural insect deterrent on terrace plants – you don’t smell it but many insects do.
8. Thyme – a useful decongestant and antiseptic.
9. Basil – mixed with slices of lemon, grated or sliced ginger and black pepper, it helps shake off early symptoms of colds.
10. Stevia – originally a South American plant available from www.dolcarevolucio.cat in Cataluña – a natural sweetener for infusions and cooked dishes, and used by friends who have diabetes. A pot of each on a terrace or outside the kitchen door would fit into a single square metre! We would love to hear of readers’ favourites. © Clodagh and *** Handscombe www.gardeninginspain.com November 2010.
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Each issue of What Doctors Don’t Tell You reminds us of the dangers of pharmaceuticals, which are invariably prescribed simply because we are growing older rather than for a specific condition. It also saddens us because we know that, in the main, medical intervention indicates that we are not living properly. For many years now, we’ve lived in true Mediterranean style in Spain, and as prescribed by the Ancient Romans and the Moors. We grow and eat our own vegetables, fruits, herbs, and we are careful not to over-water or over-feed them. We don’t need to use insecticides or pesticides. We eat them soon after harvesting, either raw or by cooking them on a low heat. Recently we’ve been cooking on a parabolic solar cooker, which we made from an Alsol kit. We’re also respecters of the sun, and our life follows the patterns of the animals and birds – even though it’s one that is rarely adopted by our fellow humans. We do our gardening and other outdoors work from first light until around 10am when the sun starts to get too hot; from then until midday we work in the shaded areas or under the trees. Then we retreat to the coolest part of the terrace where we have a read and eat our lunch. The afternoon is spent indoors and we have the typical Spanish siesta. We re-emerge after 4pm when we get our daily vitamin D top-up and a swim, and we’re back at work at 7pm, when we dead-head the plants and carry out other gardening duties. Finally, we settle down to an evening meal at around 9pm. On three days of the week, we leave the gardening and instead go for an early morning walk. Compare that to the lives of the tourists who come to the Spanish peninsula for their two weeks in the sun, and in air-conditioned nightclubs and bars!
© Clodagh and *** Handscombe www.gardeninginspain.com have lived in Spain for 25 years and they are the authors of 14 books including the Santana Books quartet ‘Your Garden in Spain’, ‘Apartment Gardening Mediterranean Style’, Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’ and ‘ Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain. August 2010.
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A recent WDDTY weekly e-news bulletin included two interesting articles regarding the heath benefits of broccoli and carrots. The first reported some research findings that fresh broccoli could help treat cancer patients and the second indicating that natural carotene could be better for us than manufactured carotene supplements.
More than by chance we had included them both in a baker’s dozen list of the essential vegetables to be grown in containers and growing tables on apartment terraces, balconies and windowsills in our recently-published book ‘Apartment Gardening Mediterranean Style’. The list was drawn up on the basis of their relatively high beneficial vitamin, mineral, antioxidant and fibre contents. The rest of the list is artichokes, beetroot, garlic, parsley, peas, onions, red lettuces, Swiss chard, shitake mushrooms, squash and tomatoes. Actual contents are collated in a table in the book. With the use of miniature varieties and close planting, all could be grown on four square metres of a terrace or balcony and adjacent windowsills. The trick is to fit window boxes to walls and the door onto the terrace to make the very best use of all available space. We also gave a list of the next 13 to include if you have more space.
Our trial 3.5 square metre terrace illustrated in the book is off our bedroom so we can harvest the vegetables for a breakfast salad at the time of getting up and for later in the day just before needing them. Interestingly, we were able to plant tomatoes the first week of February as the retained solar radiant heat from the day allowed them to survive six very cold nights that prevented us planting tomatoes in our allotment until May by which time we were eating terrace tomatoes! Major advantages of allotments in the sky is that you do not get muddy feet, they can be worked on at any time day or night and, with a diverse range of vegetables, insect attacks are unlikely, thus reducing to a minimum even the use of natural ecological pest controls.
© July 2010 Clodagh and *** Handscombe. Holistic gardeners and authors living in Spain for 25 years. Latest quartet of books Apartment Gardening Mediterranean Style, Your Garden in Spain, Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain, Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain. Website www.gardeninginspain.com.
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We read an article the other that walking through herb-covered mountainsides and forests is rejuvenating for four reasons. In nature one can just take things in without thinking too hard, the trees absorb pollutants and put out beneficial oils and aromas and if we do look at the long distant scenery and the soil beneath our feet we are enriched by the natural creations of the old world we see everywhere.
On the other hand, with a jog or walk around the streets of a city, one is constantly having to think about others on the pavements, uneven surfaces, missing manhole covers, dogs, cars etc, we absorb pollutants with every heavy breath, cursing about the harsh-looking architecture and, as a result, we rarely go back motivated by the new world that we have created.
So if you don’t walk or live in an area of natural beauty, the development of a densely-planted garden, the planting of an apartment terrace, the keeping of a bonsai collection, or placing plants in the office are all beneficial things to do.
In the literature, claims are made that citrus trees, garlic and geraniums have disinfecting properties, pine and oak trees in pots absorb pollutants, rosemary and thyme have insecticidal and stimulant properties, and cacti and spider plants absorb electromagnetic radiations. You can place the latter plants in front of computers and on top of televisions. You can’t hang a plant on your mobile but you could sit in an area surrounded by plants before you use it! Clodagh and Richard Handscombe. Holistic gardeners and authors living in Spain. Books include ‘Your Garden in Spain’ and others. www.gardeninginspain.com. © January 2010.
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One thing is sure in this world: only you can establish total wellness and health. Unless you want it, and are sufficiently motivated to gain it and keep it, no amount of outside support will succeed. Taking responsibility for your own health should be a prime personal objective. Succeed and you will achieve a more enjoyable and successful social and working life, irrespective of your age. Best of all, you will be reducing your dependence on medications and other medical services, whether ‘free’ or private. Many countries are struggling to fund an expanding medical service. There is a growing mentality that ‘if the service is free, I should use it to the full and demand the latest drug or treatment that I have read or heard about’. In parallel, public and private medical professionals are increasingly rewarded in relation to the number of specific tests, treatments and prescriptions they provide, prescribe and refer to specialists. Will anyone ever dare suggest that the most successful doctors are those with a practice that has a rapidly-reducing need for their services? As WDDTY and this website often remind us: ‘There are no free lunches to good health’, and it’s interesting that the following notice is included on vitamin bottle labels:
• These are no substitute for a balanced diet.
• Don’t exceed the recommended consumption.
• Discuss their use with your medical practitioner. Yet there is no label on commercial non-ecological fruit and vegetables that says: ‘It is recommended that you wash and peel before consumption’, and few medical professionals have comprehensive training in nutrition, which surely has to be a fundamental basis of our wellbeing.
Last November we attended a session at the Slow Food Terra Madre conference in Turin on the topic of ‘What medications do we have to combat poor diets?’ presented by a panel of six Italian doctors. Replies to two questions from the audience were enlightening. They were along the following lines:
Q1. ‘Why has the panel not focussed on what we should eat to prevent the need for the new high-tech medications’?
R1. ‘None of us had any education on nutrition and good eating during our medical training and, like most, we have probably eaten badly during our careers. Fortunately a few hours of education are now provided to doctors in training but it is insufficient and squeezed into an overfull curriculum’. Q2. ‘Why is a holistic health specialist not included in the panel’?
R2. ‘The organiser cannot be seen to be openly supporting alternative medicine’. But luckily most of the conference was focussed on expanding the production and consumption of healthy foodstuffs by traditional ecological methods, and for local consumption and with the producers getting a fair reward. Unfortunately it is a struggle in many countries; in Spain, farmers are abandoning the land because the price they are paid is less than the production costs. Virtually no produce is sold locally, but instead is transported to warehouses and packing stations where they are treated in order to improve their appearance and to preserve them while they are shipped to retail outlets, often in packs labelled ‘Fresh – eat by the end of the week’. At least if you grow your own, you have the chance to eat truly fresh food – ‘picked at their best just before consumption’. © Clodagh and *** Handscombe Authors of ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’ and ‘ Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain’. Read their October article ‘ Living Very Well from our Spanish Garden’ on their website ‘www.gardeninginspain.com.
October 2009.
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Recently a Michelin-starred restaurant, that uses some of our ecological vegetables, presented us with a copy of a recipe book called ‘Menus for Cardiovascular Health’. It was published jointly by the Californian Walnut Association and Spanish Heart Foundation to promote the use of walnuts in leading Spanish restaurants. We were surprised, however, that more than half the recipes used sugar or corn syrup, and not stevia. When we raised this with one of the contributing chefs, he said that ‘clients respond well to sweet-tasting dishes. and the use of sugar is not that unhealthy’. We were surprised by his reply for two reasons. In the past few years he has lost over fifty kilos in weight, and he has a supply of stevia. But he is right about one thing: we have always been given sugared things as a treat from an early age and often prefer them to things that are spicy or tart. This prompted a look at the shelf of British products in a local store stocked to attract expatriate customers, which included a popular brand of horse radish sauce.
Horse radish is easy to grow in Spain and we regularly grate a root to mix and dilute it with nothing other than extra virgin olive oil if we are to eat it with meat, and cider vinegar or fresh lemon juice to accompany a fish dish. But back to the bottle on the shelf. Its contents read ‘Horse radish 30%, water, spirit vinegar, vegetable oil, turnip, glucose syrup, sugar, pasteurised egg yolk powder, salt, stabiliser gum, mustard flour, flavouring, sodium meta-bisulphite as a preservative’. If you have a terrace, patio or garden, why replace the natural healthy benefits of an easy-to-grow inexpensive healthy plant for a product that contains flavourings, sweeteners and other ‘enhancers’? The plant has a unique flavour of its own, and it contains useful levels of vitamin C, potassium calcium and sulphur; it has anti-inflammatory, and diuretic, properties, and it also helps our metabolic rate. © By Clodagh and Richard Handscombe, holistic gardeners living in Spain. Their website is www.gardeninginspain.com and their latest books relevant to all Mediterranean climate situations are ‘Your Garden in Spain’, ‘Growing Healthby Fruit in Spain’ and ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’. August 2009.
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Although our garden is packed with plants, we can always find room for special things that look attractive and have benefits for our health. Friends in the Leida Aragon branch of Terra Madre in Spain had set up an association called Dulce Revolucion – ‘Sweet revolution’. It was created to make people aware of plants that members had found beneficial, and to make them available in return for a small donation to the Association. Inspired by this, we arranged a rural tour to collect some plants for ourselves or friends and others. Two weeks later we have the following three types of plants being trialled under different microclimatic conditions as the plants are not native to Spain Stevia: The variety Stevia rebaudiana has the balance of Rubiocicide and Steviocide of the original plant from Paraquay and has not had the sweetener content increased by genetic breeding as has apparently happened in countries such as Japan. We can now use fresh or dried leaves instead of honey in infusions and cooking. They may be able to help reduce the amount of medications that diabetic type 1 and 11 sufferers need to take, and help reduce fat build up, blood pressure and anxiety. It’s usually consumed as an infusion. Perilla: Perilla frutescens is an attractive purple-leaved plant that has useful culinary and health benefits. It is used in the preparation of Japanese Shiso dishes. Healthwise, it is used in Asia for relieving allergic, respiratory and food poisoning conditions etc. It’s generally consumed as an infusion or leaf but it can also be included in salads. Kalanchoe: The exotic-looking succulent plants we have are planted in a dedicated raised bed. The varieties are pinnata, dalgremontianum and gastionis-bonnieri. The benefits claimed include helping reduce cell damage and cancerous conditions, rheumatism, psychological crisis and hypertension. Like the other two, it’s taken as infusions or in salads. Although we’re healthy (or believe we are), we are using a different leaf each day in our health-sustaining diet. © Clodagh and *** Handscombe July 2009. Their website is www.gardeninginspain.com and their best-selling books are Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain, Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain and Your garden in Spain .
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In 1991, I visited my GP to ask for advice about a large lump on top of my neck. I was told that everyone in their fifties starts to get lumps like these, and there was nothing to worry about. I was then 54.
Two year later, I asked the same GP to check out the lump as it was throbbing, and my mouth was full of blood each morning. At first told I was told I had gum problems, and I should see my dentist. I insisted that this was not so, and an appointment to have an ultrasound examination at the local NHS hospital was arranged. When I got there, the operator could not work the machine properly, and only a vague shadow about 4 by 2 centimetres showed up. He suggested that I come back the following month when he would obtain a special dye that, if injected into blood stream, would improve the quality of the image.
Not happy with that experience, I demanded that the GP refer me to a head and throat specialist at the local private hospital as I had medical insurance for 20 years, and which I’d never used. I saw a specialist within a week, who said that I should have visited him two years before. I was operated on within two weeks and a salivary gland, with a large tumour within, and some lymph glands were removed.
The tumour was diagnosed as being slow growing and was resistant to radio- and chemotherapy, and as I had been swallowing blood, it was likely to spread to the lungs rather than reoccur in the upper neck. The doctor suggested that it would be better if I had a second operation two weeks later to remove another lymph gland and flesh around the gland - and then retire early to my Spanish holiday home full time for a less stressful, Mediterranean diet and physically active lifestyle - but to come back for annual check-ups.
So, in 1994, I did as the doctor ordered and moved full time and solo to Spain and did four things: I researched what the real Mediterranean diet had been in our then self-sufficient valley and started to follow it; I started to mountain walk; I worked on the Executive Overseas project at high altitude in Bolivia for a month and then walked in Peru to build up strength in my lungs; and I developed a mountainside garden that included areas for healthy ecological herbs and vegetables, and which involved collecting tons of rocks in a wheelbarrow, and eating ecological local meats and I caught my own fish in sea.
In 1996 I met Clodagh, now my wife, on top of mountain. Clodagh then was known as ‘the Green Witch’ for her amateur knowledge of beneficial uses of herbs. She had stopped drinking coffee and tea and was instead drinking infusions of mint, rosemary, lemon verbena, lemons, ginger, rue etc.
In 1998, and by then 61, I walked across Spain via the Pyrenees from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean in 52 days – that’s 950 kilometres and up and down 33,000 metres - with Clodagh, and with heavy rucksacks and tent. As a result of seeing small communities still self sufficient in organic/ecological vegetables, and as traditional agriculture in our valley was being abandoned at a fast rate and was changing from natural to chemical methods, we took on an allotment to have the space to become self sufficient in ecologically grown vegetables, herbs, edible flowers and soft fruits. Although I’ve grown a hundred different vegetables, we focussed especially on those with high antibiotic, vitamin and mineral content.
I expanded the number of beneficial herbs in the garden, and I made both the garden and house chemical-free. I stopped going for check-ups as regular x-rays are a risk in themselves ( I suspect that dental x-rays were one of the possible causes of the cancer, and I refused the dentist’s money spinning x-rays since 1993).
In 1999, we started to write our six books on gardening in Spain, giving radio talks and talks to gardening and dinner groups plus writing articles for many newspapers and magazines..
In 2001 we walked around Cuba to see the food growing revolution for ourselves. This helped us improve some of our practices, and we started to breed chickens and quail for eggs and meat, and rabbits for a healthy meat for an AB blood group.
Last year we took over the stewardship and regeneration of an abandoned olive grove – and we started the ‘Living well from your garden’ blog for WDDTY.
This year I’m 72, and still enjoying mountain walking, physical work in the garden allotment and olive grove. I talk every week about ‘Living well from your garden’ to local gardening and embryo allotment groups which are new to Spain.
We continue to eat well, and we are looking forward to our own first cold pressings of hand-picked extra virgin olive oil in 2011.
Interestingly, the surgeon has never enquired if his advice worked or if I am still in good health!
Luckily the increase in the popularity of our latest trilogy of books ‘Growing Healthy Vegetables in Spain’, ‘Growing Healthy Fruit in Spain’ and ‘Your Garden in Spain’ funds our purchase of eco wines cheeses and lamb, which we don’t home produce. © Clodagh and *** Handscombe June 2009. www.gardeninginspain.com
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