Autumn is usually the busiest time of the year for us here at Son Alegre.

You might think of us as a wine maker but that is only half the story. We do cultivate grapes for our organic Son Alegre wines and we finished harvesting the red grapes a week or ten days ago, that is the Cabernet Sauvignon, the Merlot, the Syrah and the Petit Verdot grapes. But we also grow olives for our SILEO Extra Virgin Olive Oil and the harvest of this year’s crop is about to take place within the next week or ten days.

We also grow almonds. We grow carob fruits. And now is the time for their harvest. And we grow Xeixa, an ancient, indigenous Mallorcan wheat, as well as Blat Mort, which we use for animal feed. Our cereals, we harvest twice a year, so autumn is not the only busy time we have. Everything we grow is grown organically and under biodynamic conditions. We do not yet have the certificate of DEMETER (International Demeter Processing Standards) but we are aiming for it in the long run. All our crop is, however, controlled by CBPAE (Consell Balear Regulador de l’Agricltura Ecològica, the Balearic Council of Organic Agricultural Production).

We also keep bees. We raise sheep. We rear pigs. And we breed goats. We don’t sell our livestock, so there is no control necessary by the official authorities. We don’t eat our animals either, just in case you wondered. We simply enjoy having critters on our land. We do get them to do their bit by helping us fertilize the soil and make them earn their upkeep by making them work our land. To be honest, they almost work harder than we do ourselves.

We try to nurture wildlife on our land as much as possible and encourage insects, beetles, spiders, ants, snails, butterflies and birds, plus millions of unnamed tiny creatures and creepy-crawlies, some of them unrecognized, undiscovered and unnamed as yet, to come and settle on our land to help us with our agricultural efforts. They too, and that is all of them, have their busiest time of year just now, getting ready to prepare the land, the soil and the underworld for the winter season when everything and everybody gets ready for the new cycle of life that our land, and nature in general, is about to start soon. Year after year after year.

Time to say thank you to all our little helpers. Or gràcies, as it were. Without our unpaid helpers, there would be no wine, no oil and no Son Alegre, nothing. That’s a fact.

And thank you to John Hinde for taking all the photos on our land, shown here and in many other of our blog entries. Cheers.