Happy New Year from Mykanos. 

Well the cosecha is over for now, as is the festive season, and life is getting back to normal, or whatever passes for normal here.

Adriano and the team have been concentrating on doing the groundwork for the 2020 cosecha in October, pruning, fertilizing and weeding. We had some rain, which was good as it helps with the fertilizing, but it also slowed down the weeding, which is done by hand with machetes. Adriano was concerned about this, as in the midst of everything we had a surprise inspection by Nespresso, and he felt the lotes (the coffee fields) were looking particularly untidy and overgrown. The Nespresso expert, however, was delighted as the plethora of weeds showed her that we do not apply herbicides like Roundup, the use of which is very prevalent here.

She also approved our office management, health and safety and our environmental protection and preservation practices. We kept our Nespresso accreditation and our best beans continue to go to Switzerland to ensure Nespresso capsules live up to George Clooney’s endorsement.

However, even though that is all well and good, Adriano is far from satisfied and wants to produce ever better coffee, coffee that exceeds the cupping score of 80 that represents the entry level for Specialty Coffees. 

We have had a bit of turnover with the Venezuelans. They come looking for work, we give them an opportunity, but they tend to last only about a month. We need agricultural workers, which is not what many of them want to do. What they do need however is money, which is where we can be useful. The basic monthly salary in Venezuela is US$ 3.5 per month, which equates to CPO 12,500 (Colombian pesos). We pay them CPO 25,000 per day, giving them ample to send home to support parents, partners and offspring, which all of them do. 

A new law has further complicated the matter. It came in at the start of the year, and mandates that only Venezuelans with papers can be employed and therefore insured. Insurance is important, especially in our business. Someone cuts himself, accidentally, with a machete, for example, and then claims huge compensation. Friend Kenwrick in Sydney, who specialised in the legal side of such claims, called it ‘men falling off ladders’ syndrome, and it seems there have been a lot of Venezuelans ‘falling off ladders’, accidentally, recently.  

We insure all our workers so Adriano has decreed no more Venezuelans without papers. We currently have just one, who is a good worker and whom we like, and we are sponsoring him to help him get his status normalised so he can continue to work with us.

He was even included in our Three Kings dinner, which we held on Epiphany Eve / Twelfth Night, Sunday the 5^th. It was more pork, more freshly made ‘natilla’ (the much loved Christmas dessert), and more ‘anchettas’ (Christmas goodie bags) for family and our closest employees.

The New Year saw two colourful debuts.

One was the re-introduction of our 45-year-old Jeep in its sparkling new livery. It used to be golden and was the only golden Jeep in town, but now there are several so Adriano decided a change was called for. It now sports a one-off metallic pink finish, one-off because the colour is not available commercially having been created personally by Adriano and the paint professional.  The glamorous exterior is matched by a complete internal refit, and a specially designed canopy, the centre of which opens up to provide a standing viewing platform for visitors so that they can take in the amazing panoramas that surround us every time we go anywhere. Previously they would either be ‘parrilleros’ (literally … grille hangers) standing on the grille at the back, or sit rather uncomfortably on the roof rack.  

The other was the arrival of two new family members, Joaquo (an abbreviation of Joaquin … pronounced Whahko) and Emily. They are tiny, furry and orange to a certain degree, and could easily be mistaken for relatives of Crispin. They are not, and Crispin is the first to say so. For those in any doubt, they are kittens and they came to us via previous owners who abandoned them on the edge of two of our farms. Our workers found them and brought them to Rancho Grande, and instead of dying of exposure or hunger they found themselves living a life of luxury here at Mykanos.

Crispin was not impressed to start with, as the entire place was his sole territory, and he now spends a lot more time upstairs which is definitely off limits for the kittens. As is on my lap. Adriano said that Crispin seemed to be trying to avoid them. I said that it was pretty much what Adriano and I do with very young children. They are very cute, and are leaping and exploring and wrestling everywhere, but also getting in the way and constantly bleating for food even though they are two of the best fed felines on Earth. I am sure I could have a huge You Tube hit by posting a video of them at play. 

The other big news here, and everywhere of course, was the Australian bushfires. It was competing for top news billing with Brexit, Impeachment and Iran, providing more news coverage of Australia than all I had seen in the 35 years I have been away, combined.

We have always had fires, but never this bad. We have always had droughts, but never this protracted. We have always had hot weather, but never this hot. It is an extreme version of Australia I have never experienced.

It brought to mind ‘My Country’, a poem written by Dorothea Mackellar in 1908, and which we all learned in primary school in the 50’s.

The filmy veil of greenness

That thickens as we gaze …

The BBC had a report this morning from Australia showing new growth already shooting in the fire-ravaged landscape, but everyone with any brains agrees that things have changed and we cannot continue to be complacent.

The aborigines, over 45,000 years, never invented the wheel or agriculture (apart from burning undergrowth to encourage new growth which attracted game) because they didn’t have to. It was the Garden of Eden, and back in the 50’s, when I learnt My Country, it was a bit similar for us … ‘The Lucky Country’. 

But as the recently departed Clive James pointed out, you can’t live in the Garden of Eden, and luck runs out if that is all you rely on.

The label, The Lucky Country, comes from Donald Horne’s 1964 book of the same name. Horne’s book however was not laudatory but critical. 

Wikipedia says: “Horne’s intent in writing the book was to portray Australia’s climb to power and wealth based almost entirely on luck rather than the strength of its political or economic system, which Horne believed was “second rate”. In addition to political and economic weaknesses, he also lamented on the lack of innovation and ambition, as well as a philistinism in the absence of art, among the Australian population, viewed by Horne as being complacent and indifferent to intellectual matters.”

Mindlessly evoking the term ‘Lucky Country’ is a bit like parroting the chorus of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’. The song is highly critical of the silly place, but is used as a nationalistic anthem by idiots who either don’t understand the lyrics or don’t listen to them

Australia is no longer the pristine continent home to a very small population who had ample natural resources and never introduced alien species, crops or practices. Australian soil was loose and productive before the introduction of hoofed animals that compacted it and trampled native plants. We never worried too much about where or how things went. I remember when Sydney’s sewage was excreted untreated into the Pacific not far from Sydney’s beaches, and we never recycled water.

I hope never again to see fires on the scale we witnessed recently and still might suffer before the end of the Australian summer, but I do hope that those who can make a difference: realise that “she won’t be right, mate”; stop talking and start acting; are prepared to take hard decisions if necessary to address the deterioration of our climate and the threat it poses for the future; and that we hold them to account. 

I am not young, and anyway don’t have kids, but many of those I love are, and do. To resurrect a slogan which was used for a completely different campaign in Australia in 2011, ‘It’s Time’.

I suppose that makes a bit of a change from cats and coffee.

Love from him and me

Barry