An horreo, pronounced 'orrrrrayo' with that lovely Spanish trill of the double r .... well, what is it? It´s a granary traditionally used for storing (hanging) corn for use over the winter. We are very lucky to be custodians of one, and it's a beauty. It is around 3 metres tall, 6 metres long, and about a metre wide. Yep, its long and skinny and has a cross on top. I guess to bless the corn. When we first bought our property here it came with one half of a long horreo. We have since bought the other half but it has a dividing wall in the miiddle. So if you open a door at one end, you see a long space with a brick wall, and the same if you open the door at the other end. The storage section is around a metre off the ground and is built on a framework of stone. In fact the whole thing is built on a stone plinth, witb shaped "rat-turners", yes rat-turners.
imagine you are a rat, and you are sitting where Bette Davis is on the right. You are sure there is delicious corn drying inside the horreo and you are desperate to get in there and have a bit of a nibble, or perhaps move in for the winter and have a family, happy to be living witha veritable feast. Well, you have a problem, because the only way to get up to level of the corn is to go upside down, along the rat-turners, designed to force you to do so. An impossibility apparently.
We love our horreo. It has lots of uses and it has 1929 written on the top of it under the cross. 1929 was the year of the Wall Street Crash and its effects were certainly felt in Spain. The economic crisis that followed this led to the downfall of General Miguel Primo de Rivera's dictatorial government on January 29, 1930, and the second Spanish Republic was proclaimed the following year. Read more here. Perhaps whoever lived here in this house built the horreo then to ensure there was food as times got tough.
We use it for storage of course. It has all sorts of useful stuff in it, none of which I can name right now, but it is a fabulous dry space for that. It runs east/west which I guess means it gets the southern sun on its side all day and avoids the wet weather, which tends to come from the north-west.
It is great as a feral cat feeding station! I wonder what the original owner would think of that. Probably not a lot! I have been trying out strategies to keep the males from fighting each other over food, and one such strategy is to place bowls on either end (on top of the rat-turner) so that any diner, particularly male and not NIgel, can see Nigel coming. He is a brute and I have tried to catch him to get him neutered but to no avail. He keeps looking at me like below, as if he knows I want his cojones.
We love our horreo. It has lots of uses and it has 1929 written on the top of it under the cross. 1929 was the year of the Wall Street Crash and its effects were certainly felt in Spain. The economic crisis that followed this led to the downfall of General Miguel Primo de Rivera's dictatorial government on January 29, 1930, and the second Spanish Republic was proclaimed the following year. Read more here. Perhaps whoever lived here in this house built the horreo then to ensure there was food as times got tough.
We use it for storage of course. It has all sorts of useful stuff in it, none of which I can name right now, but it is a fabulous dry space for that. It runs east/west which I guess means it gets the southern sun on its side all day and avoids the wet weather, which tends to come from the north-west.
It is great as a feral cat feeding station! I wonder what the original owner would think of that. Probably not a lot! I have been trying out strategies to keep the males from fighting each other over food, and one such strategy is to place bowls on either end (on top of the rat-turner) so that any diner, particularly male and not NIgel, can see Nigel coming. He is a brute and I have tried to catch him to get him neutered but to no avail. He keeps looking at me like below, as if he knows I want his cojones.
Not that I do of course, literally. We need to neuter them all, and would given time and money. A bonus would be Nigel being a bit less alpha and forgoing violence. He is horrible to the gingers. Vincent, newly named and below, looking at the camera, seems to be struggling with a kind of snuffling and great hunger. He doesn't look too bad physically but is grunting out a miaow that does not sound good and is finding it hard to eat dry food. Nigel chases him unceremoniously off, as he does with Ron (middle below looking understandably nervous), and one who looks like his much smaller brother, as yet nameless. It's important to neuter the males as well as the females as the males spread the serious viruses by flighting and biting each other.
All will have to wait however, as I am going back to BrexitLand tomorrow. My friend Lisa and I plan an all-out campaign in a month's time though. We will try to TNR 5 or 6. Nigel, we will be bringing roast chicken! You don't have chance. I hope we can also catch Vincent and see if his teeth need intervention. I will leave you with two very happy photos. One is Frank Sinatra relaxing in his new locale (on top of Josefa's wall) and the other is Xena, who always looks so incredibly healthy she is almost, ahem, fat. In this photo she could be about to draw her weapon in the OK Corral. Both neutered and both thriving.
RSS Feed