I don’t always get the story I set out to write. A couple of years ago, while working as a farm inspector for the Consell Insular, I visited a citrus tree farm. The ageing owner barely had time for me as he flew up the lane on his motorbike with buckets full of oranges. I remember checking pheromone sticks and insect traps set out on small green tangerine trees. These were his “mandarines de Nadal”, or Christmas mandarins. They would obligingly be ready by December, and so I made a note to come back one winter.
All citrus fruits originated in the southeast of the Himalayas. Around about the 16th century, “mandarins” left China and travelled along trade routes to Southern Europe through Tangier in Morocco, thus becoming “tangerines”. My generation (millennials according to Google) doesn’t think twice about tangerine ancestry or origins, but my parents’ generation back in Blighty (Boomers 1 and 2 according to Google) remember them as an exotic delicacy stuffed in the bottom of an Xmas stocking for the well-behaved.
Here in Menorca, we have oranges, clementines, satsumas, mandarins – you name it, all grown as winter fruits. The Christmas mandarins in particular had been hard to find. Real farms are disappearing almost as fast as new agrotourisms are being built and fruit farms, confined to the ravines of the southern coast, were few and far between to start with. I could only find one farmer that still had them.
One early morning this November I set forth on my vintage bike. I make my way back down the lane in the Barranc de Cala’n Porter hoping to find the fizzing farmer, hoping he’ll have time to tell me his story. Instead, I find a seemingly derelict mess. Some hens peck about amongst upended crates, bits of string and a rusty bath. Nobody’s here. Maybe he’s forgotten all about the meeting.
And then he arrives, quietly freewheeling his scooter down the mossy track, no hustle no bustle. He’s giving it all up. Retiring. Notepad in hand, camera at the ready, I’m flummoxed. Deflated. Saddened. His children, (Gen Z), would rather keep their office jobs than work on the farm. I stare at the 12,000 trees, laden with produce, branches heaving with tonnes and tonnes of fruit. The fruit of a life’s work. Suspended in wait.
“The buyers don’t want me to retire”, he says, “but what am I to do? I’m tired of toiling for 10 hours a day, I want time for myself now too.” He hopes somebody who is genuinely interested in caring for the trees will take over. He says his lemons are 80 years old, his plums at least 30.
Well pruned and watered, he reckons the trees can live over 100 years. However, if left unattended, it can be very hard to get them back up to healthy production.
With his newfound time, we chat amicably as he leads me through the dense, shady understory. We’re bent double as the branches are so low to the ground. He explains that the best way to grow citrus is in a sheltered spot, and by keeping the trees and leaves densely packed, so that not a ray of sunlight can filter through to the ground. This helps maintain the moist microclimate. In his orchard’s heyday, he had 5 employees picking the fruit, always by hand because his trees are so dense no machines could get between the trunks anyway. The men wore bags on their fronts and would gather up to 12 kilos at a time. He did all the pruning himself after the harvest.
The mood lightens. “Do I want a dog?”– he’s got two -. “No, not really.” “Am I married?” – he’s got two sons -. “Certainly not”. No longer in business, this farmer didn’t want to be named nor his property photographed. Were these the last of the Xmas mandarins? I collect 5 kilos just in case, arrange them in my basket and get back on my bike to try to find another citrus farm I can write about.
I soon find hope: in the form of Pere Àngel at S’Hort des Barrancó. In the Barranc de Trebaluger ravine, this citrus tree farm was left unattended for a few years. When Pere Àngel arrived 4 years ago the brambles reached across the fields as far as the house. Canes stuffed the torrent to the gunnels, posing a big fire risk.
Having previously worked with dairy cows, fruit farming was a new challenge for him. He knew from growing food crops for the cows and ploughing the land just how much soil was lost from the ravine to the sea every year. Therefore, he was clear from the start that he wanted to practise regenerative farming where possible. He stopped ploughing and let vegetation take root to anchor the precious soil in place. He aims to become certified organic in the future. Agricultural assessors were brought in to test the soil and choose the best tree strains to plant. The phoenix rises from the ashes.
Together they decided to uproot the old navelate oranges so that they stood in lines rather than being dotted all over. This will help with the maintenance, and harvesting with the tractor. A heavy pruning and a lot of water encourage new rooting. They plant new Hernandina and Murina clementines as these are best suited to the heavy soil. I can see neat rows of them extending the length of the alluvial plain. Their trunks are encased in plastic bags to stop lateral shoots from forming. They are treated only with organic, oil-based treatments to prevent fruit fly damage. These are now one year old, and the drip hose is laid close to their trunks. Once the trees become established the hose will be moved a metre away and buried, this is to draw the roots sideways and encourage growth. Burying the hose also helps to reduce moisture loss and keep the hose out of the way when they strim. Boira the border collie models the stone walls and wild olive gates for us as we walk. This peaceful ravine is the perfect, sheltered sunny spot for the young trees.
But not when the floods or “riades” come. Recursos Hidrics is the government body in charge of keeping the torrents clean so that water flows through each ravine. Previously, each farmer cleared the canes and brambles from the part crossing his land, but now they aren’t allowed to touch them. The wait for officials to come and do the work is notoriously long and causes huge frustration among farmers, especially those wanting to plant new saplings. In this case, it delayed the project by a year. “We cannot afford to plant trees for the floods to take them, we’d have to go and find them at Trebaluger beach”– he said.
There is already a “fortí”, or very wide stout wall, running at a right angle to the torrent that acts as flood defence, plus a couple of smaller walls that he rebuilt. Pere Àngel observes that when they built smaller fields in the past, surrounded by many stone walls, they knew what they were doing. Alas the bigger tractors these days, even in Menorca, seem to require larger fields.
While we wait three years for the new clementines to grow, the navelate oranges are on sale at Ca na Clara and the Cooperativa in Ferreries. Ca na Clara’s family were actually the first ones to plant oranges here, decades ago. Though it takes a while, trees can be revived, orchards brought back to life. New learning opportunities are all around us.
Rachael Adams is a freelance environmental journalist. https://rachaeladamsblog.live/
Ca na Clara, Carrer Ciutadella, 14, 07750 Ferreries, Illes Balears
https://emblematicsbalears.es/comercios/ca-na-clara/
Cooperativa in Ferreries, Poligon industrial, Carrer dels Araders, 11, 07750 Ferreries, Balearic Islands
https://agroxerxa.menorca.es
