It is not easy to run an agricultural business in Mallorca. For a start, this island is a relatively small piece of land and therefore, agricultural plots are smaller that they would be on the mainland. Small plots imply a reduced quantity of product which in turn implies a limited income.

How do you make a relatively small piece of land produce a maximum amount of produce? The answer is easy, relatively speaking: prostitution. In agricultural terms: disregard everything your fathers have told you, or rather your grandfathers, and spray your land and your soil and your plants and your birds and your insects and everything there is on your land with fertilisers and pesticides and herbicides and chemicals of unspeakable names and offensive properties. Bingo.

Your accountant will be happy. You bank manager will be happy. Your wholesale warehouse person will be happy. Your automotive salesman will be happy.

But wait. Will your children be happy, or perhaps more importantly, will your grandchildren be happy? Or does it all come at a price?

You walk on your land and you realise that your birds are not happy. They are not even there any more. Your plants don’t look happy. There are no flowers any longer. The butterflies have gone. There are no ladybirds. The ground looks unhappy. You begin to suspect that if what you can see does not seem happy, how about all that which you cannot see, below the soil? How about the mycorrhizae? How about the fungi? How about the ants and beetles and insects and creepy crawlers? 

And suddenly it dawns on you. If you can’t see birds or butterflies or ladybirds or flowers, how can you be happy? If nature does not seem happy, how can the produce you are trying to grow be happy or healthy or nutritious? How can I be happy if my grandchildren will be unhappy about what they inherit?

It is very easy to decide against all that. If Nature is not happy, the produce we grow will not be happy, and what’s the point of growing it then? 

We decided 20 years ago that we would grow our produce in harmony with Nature. We decided 15 years ago that we would not plough our land. We decided right from the start of our activities at Son Alegre that we valued our own happiness and that of our grandchildren more than we valued the happiness of our accountant or our bank manager or that of our car salesman. 

Since then, our birds have come back, our butterflies have returned, our flowers have blossomed, our ants are busy as ever, our bees are busy buzzing, our mycorrhizae are spreading and our grapes and carobs and olives are flourishing and thriving.

We somehow don’t like prostitution anyway.

As it turns out, our customers are happy as well, or so it would appear, and are coming back seemingly happy year after year.

Perhaps we are doing something right after all.

Thank you, Nature, for showing us what is best.

All photos of today’s blog entry were taken by John Hinde (R.I.P.).