Ajo for Paco

On Thursday of last week, I was asked if I was busy Friday as Paco - who has land in Montenegro - needed a hand planting out his garlic. His wife, Amelia has a back problem, something to do with 3 discs in her lower back, and can't do any work on the land. So instead of making bread and other baking that I had planned, I met him in Yator at 8am and we went off to his land outside the village. It was already dug over and leveled, and all we had to do was plant. Most of us plant enough garlic for ourselves, he grows and sells vegetables for a living so I was facing a patch 10m by 40m and more crates of garlic cloves than I have ever seen! The land nearby had frost on it (it's right next to the river) and I was in 4 layers of clothing - fleece, shirt, t-shirt and strappy top. The soil was cold and you can't plant garlic cloves in gloves, it's a hands-on thing. (By 10am I was down to my strappy top - lovely sunny day by then)

Anyway, we soon settled into a routine, he started to mattock out a row, I started putting in the cloves and worked towards him, while he worked back towards me. There is a technique for doing this.....stand legs apart, wider apart than body width, fill your hand with cloves and bend over, stretch out to your right and start putting in the garlic working from right to left until you have gone from full stretch right to full stretch left. Keep your hands as close to the soil as possible so all movement is really economical. Then move yourself left and start again!! Each clove goes in 4 fingers apart and each row about 15 to 20 cms apart. For those mathematicians out there, we did about 10,000 cloves altogether - all of which have at some point got to be dug up, dried, plaited about 20 to a string I think and then that's when he gets his reward as each plait sells for 10 euros. (minus of course enough to repeat this next year)

We stopped at 10am for food, chocolate for me and fruit and yoghurt for him, stopped again at 12, water for me and wine for him, then from 2 till 3 we went back to Yator for lunch, he went home and I took my sandwich and met John for a much needed beer. Amelia came back with us as we needed more garlic cloves to finish the last section. She took apart some strings of garlic and broke them down into cloves for us. We finished at just gone 5 o'clock. I must have the tightest thigh muscles in Montenegro now, but no back ache at all.