Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Fiesta of The Potato Harvest
Don't you love the way the manage to turn everything into a fiesta in this country? Even the simple act of digging up your spuds. And, you have to admit that getting the family and the neighbours round to share the work and pay them with a good lunch is an excellent way to make it seem a lot less like hard work, without the cheap labour feeling they've been had.
This is exactly what happened on Sunday in Las Portelas in the El Palmar valley, when 20 or so farmers got together to harvest the potatoes and then had a knees up in the village square, with a lunch consisting of some of the potatoes they had just collected, gofio, fresh fish and local wine.
The report says that they worked a kind of human factory conveyor system to get done "under the threat of rain".
The media are darlings of the understatement, aren't they?
While I was watching the parade of the Puerto de la Cruz Carnaval on TV - they had sunshine and blue skies - this valley was in thick fog and it was persisting it down, yet again!
More reason for the Tenerife Scribbler to gloat. We'll also have to rely on him to provide us with some proper carnaval pics, just as soon as he sorts out his effing techbloodynology.
Not to go all romantic and nostalgic on you, but the potato fiesta (one of several similar events in the valley) reminds me of days of old, when people actually used to help each other.
Even if it has to be given artificial respiration by the town hall these days, I am glad they are keeping such things alive.
Una veintena de agricultores de El Palmar en Buenavista reedita la tradicional ’recogida de la papa’
4 Comments:
Pamela wrote (on
March 08, 2006)
Regrettably, I don't think they will be threatened by your protest. A more creative solution may be required.
The flash thingy can be posted in the template, but I would not have expected it to work in a post either.
Try this one: Flickr Album Maker
You can select the photos from a certain date or perhaps by certain tag. Then you can choose the square or rectangular thumbnails, or the small or meduim pics.
Click the button and it will create the HTML to display the set you've chosen. Manually change the width of the container (standard is 625px) to whatever is suitable for your blog.
Go to blogger and edit the post where you wanted the photos and slap in the code. You'll also need to remove line breaks in the code, in fact, it will probably work better if you remove all the styling, but I see nothing in there that Blogger is likely to reject.
That gives you something, quick, non-flash and that will show visitors a sampling of the set.
Tenerife Scribbler wrote (on
March 08, 2006)
I suspected that if I squeeked at you that you might gallop to the rescue with a solution... thanks v. much. The other day I was so set on animation though, and nothing else would do! I even tried fiddling with macromedia (which effed me off even more). It's at times like those when you really appreciate the benefit of a well stocked drinks cabinet!
I'll have a go at posting them after the next carnival excursion to Cristianos... in a non flashy way, as you suggest.
Thanks again for the advice.
Pamela wrote (on
March 08, 2006)
Yes, I realize it is not exactly the solution you wanted, but it does give the visitor what they want to see.
And I was counting on you to come up with photos of carnaval at Los Cristianos too. :)
So, are we going to get even a link to your set of the, I presume, Santa Cruz parade? I would like to see them and, I have readers across the globe hovvering at the edge of their seats.
BTW, make sure and send them to the carnaval group on Flickr.
Are you a Tenerife resident or visitor?
Am still sulking.
All I wanted to do was post one of those pretty Flickr grids of changing pics in my post, but the fascist blogger template won't let me post flash... I'm sure I've seen it somewhere else, so I am taking it personally and I'm not talking to Flickr and barely on speaking terms with blogger.
That'll show 'em.