Agrohuerto TV visits Orchard classroom Cantarranas

Very good to all Agrohuerters! Following the theme of the previous article on the Campo de la Cebada, I am going to tell you about the sensations I experienced in the Cantarranas classroom garden. As I said last time, this story has a lot to do with reality and it can help you a bit to know where to start if you want to visit this cool space.

Friday 05.23.2014: First visit to the Cantarranas orchard

Clouds, many clouds, perhaps too many for the weather during the week… Lucía Muñoz and myself had agreed to visit the Cantarranas classroom garden, we were lucky that it was a few steps from our university, crossing the rugby field of the same name since the Cantarranas stream used to circulate there (a bit of history doesn’t hurt either).

Upon reaching the entrance fence, we were surprised by a driver from the UCM who was very sorry for the lack of university means, his old Mercedes no longer pulled the same, it was election time and the scene was a mess with student strikes, milkmaids in the door of the rectory etc… We were really thinking about our journalistic work and we headed inside, we saw a few children in the picnic area at the entrance, the garden is also used as a nursery and the truth is that it is very good that children learn from where things come from… (I remember when I went to a school farm when I was 10, the astonished faces of my classmates when they saw that the milk came out of the cows, etc…).

We went through the greenhouse looking for a friendly face to explain a little about what was going on there, there were a lot of people, work groups preparing a tool shed, psychopediatric centers working on the terraces, etc. The panorama made me cut myself a bit with the camera, I didn’t know if I had the necessary permission to record some groups and in a certain sense I felt a little lost in case I was doing something «bad» by recording these people in their daily work.

The general surprise came when a huge waterspout unloaded on us and we had to take refuge in the greenhouse. Almost 30 people lived under the metal and plastic structure, including garden workers and UCM staff for about 20 minutes. The atmosphere was incredible, almost magical, listening to the drops pattering on a plastic that revealed all the fury of the storm. Hence, in the intro of the section visiting canal orchards, I had to include a fragment of that gale, in which I doubted a bit about the integrity of our shelter.

After the storm, we went outside to keep an eye on the crops, dodging the drops of water with a hood over the camera so as not to spoil my friend’s precious loan. We informed the group leaders about our journalistic work, we took a walk around the area to see everything that is there and we left after about 2 hours of visiting.

Friday 05.30.2014: Second visit to the Cantarranas orchard

Another Friday, cloudy, this time we were more prepared for a possible atmospheric collapse and we stocked up on snacks and soft drinks for another possible more pleasant wait under the plastic. Our colleague Daniel Horcajo accompanied us to learn the sophisticated journalistic techniques of the team, since in a few weeks he would relieve Lucía of his position.

In the orchard, the same people working as the previous week, but this time we had two experts from the UCM to act as guides in that sea of ​​terraces. The group leaders of the psychopediatric and psychosocial rehabilitation centers gave me the necessary permission to record their activities, which was a great personal relief not only for my moral well-being but also because the recordings of the previous week had not been released. to lose (Just in case he had cut out a multitude of fruits to make improvised masks so that you could see everything that was being done in that classroom garden, luckily they were not necessary because the video would have been disastrous with that fudge).

The truth is that meeting these people was a great experience for us, the boys did everything and with great enthusiasm, they did not stop making jokes and entertaining us, they were happy that we were there recording their work and so were we when we saw the tenacity with the one who carried them out and the desire they had to take care of the garden and the environment. In short, they left us legless.

With all this, we took a very illustrative walk with the experts on the orchard, they explained to us that each terrace is carried in a different way since they use a multitude of ecological techniques such as the biointensive method, the crestall walls, the manufacture of vermicompost and some less orthodox how to use urine to irrigate compost and thus enrich its nitrogen content. It is a very interesting and effective method not suitable for the most scrupulous.

And after another 3 hours of visiting, here you have my summary of 03:41 (I also leave you the articles by Lucía and Dani, which are of course much more illustrative than mine):

Ecological management in Huertaaula Cantarranas

A community garden in Madrid: Huertaula Cantarranas

Little more, personally this has been the orchard that I have liked the most of all those visited because of the atmosphere it has, the number of people who are working with such enthusiasm and enthusiasm, the tremendous range of training activities and workshops that they offer given by authentic professionals such as professors and technicians from the UCM.

For all this you have to go on a Friday to visit him, let’s hope it doesn’t rain on you

All the best!