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south-west of our farm, significantly hotter today than where we were – little was known about Ibn al-Awam himself. He was mentioned only by two other authors of his period, Ibn Khaldun and the geographer Al-Qalqashandi. Yet his book, sometimes described as a ‘mosaic’ made up from works by previous agriculturalists, was one of the best-known and best-loved works on farming to have been passed down from the golden age of Spanish gardens – the Moorish period, which lasted from the early 700s to the end of the fifteenth century. The standards of agriculture were so high during this time they were not surpassed until the nineteenth century, with the development of modern chemistry. During the Enlightenment, the Spanish authorities became so worried about the decline of agricultural standards that they commissioned a translation of Ibn al-Awam’s work. So in 1802 José Banqueri brought out the first edition in a European language. A copy of this, bought on a whim years before, had been gathering dust on my bookshelves, waiting patiently, it now appeared, for me finally to notice it, take it down and delve into the rich, detailed natural world it set out, page after page. Ibn al-Awam was a wonderful observer – in many ways a man before his time. Or was it simply that our view of his time was misjudged? Certain words and phrases dated him – I didn’t have a team of labourers – or slaves – to hand, as he obviously had, to carry out the operations he described, nor would his observations on how to use a lance and shield on horseback prove particularly useful, despite making fascinating reading. Yet I often had the sense of dealing with a near contemporary, a fact highlighted by the absence of reminders of the ‘modern’ world around us on the mountain. It would be wrong to describe him as a friend – there is a formality and distance in his writing which prevents such a degree of intimacy, despite his very personal musings on topics such as the curative powers of rue for epilepsy or the use of squills for warding off lions and wolves – but as time passed and I dipped into him more and more, his presence grew. He became almost like a kindly guardian to whom I might turn in times of need for quiet, gently guiding advice drawn from hard-won personal experience.
    The farmer’s year, I was delighted to learn from him, began in September. I was virtually clueless about what I was doing, but had managed to get something right, even if unawares. I decided to follow his advice where I could: fate, it seemed, had already done much to bring us together at the opportune moment.
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    If I was going to plant trees up on the mountainside, I would have to start preparing the land. Regardless of the question of which particular trees might thrive in which particular area, there were huge swathes of weeds which had to be dealt with first. And unfortunately they weren’t the usual kind of plants for which the word ‘weed’ seems adequate or even appropriate: ‘toughs’ might have been a better name for them, given that I was dealing almost exclusively with brambles and gorse bushes. There were several hectares of the stuff to be got rid of – and given the difficulty of the terrain I was going to have to do it by hand: no tractors or large weed-destroying machines could make it up to the terraces, and we were against the idea of using herbicides or any weedkillers.
    ‘Probably wouldn’t do much to them anyway,’ Salud’s father had said when the subject came up once. ‘Too well established. Either that or you spray a sulphide which’ll make all the goats miscarry.’
    So hand-weeding it had to be – on a massive scale. The brambles were the easier to deal with: I’d found a big scythe-like tool with a sharp cutting edge which I set about them with. It was exhausting work, but you could slice through quite a large amount in a fairly short time. The problem was with the gorse: the bushes were growing about eight feet