Casa Rural Cortijo Roman

April in Jimena

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April is generally a beautiful month with the temperature increasing and the countryside becoming more and more brightly coloured with myriad wild flowers. This April the weather has been great, lots of hot sunny days mixed with a few short rain storms keeping the vegetation lush and growing at an enormous rate. It is said that 80% of the wild flower species of Europe grow in Spain and 80% of these grow in Andalucia. In fact, it sometimes feels as though most of them grow around Jimena! Each year we manage to identify more species but we always find others that we haven't yet identified. However one can, of course, just sit back and enjoy the range and profusion of flowers without getting too bothered about being able to name them all!

On Easter Sunday, in the neighbouring village of Gaucin, a bull is allowed to run round the streets and the young men (and perhaps girls too) generally try to show their daring by getting close to or even touching the bull. It is quite a spectacle and the bull is unharmed although probably frightened. The event takes place in both the morning and the afternoon with a different bull for each occasion.

Easter week, Semana Santa, was full of celebrations and activity. There were many processions during the weekend in San Roque, the nearest town, where statues of Jesus are taken out of the numerous churches and walked in a sombre procession around the streets accompanied by torchlight and muffled drums. The different brotherhoods marching in the processions wear different coloured robes and tall pointed hoods with just small slits for eyeholes. Occasionally an onlooker will be overtaken by emotion and sing a particular type of haunting flamenco dirge called a Saeta.The whole procession takes a number of hours and is quite moving, and even a little unnerving, to witness.

What's happening on the Farm?

On Easter Suday we organised our Easter Egg Hunt for all the children staying at the farm (and some adults!). A good time was had by everyone and all the eggs were found before they melted in the sun.

In the middle of this month Cortijo Roman was awarded the accreditation of the Marca Parque Natural de Andalucia and we had to go to Seviile for the award ceremony. The photograph shows Fiona (Cortijo Roman) on the left and Paula (Los Alcornocales Parque Natural) on the right. We are the first holiday accommodation to receive this award which is granted by the Junta de Andalusia and the Government Environmental Department. It is a recognition that very high standards have been met not only with regard to quality of accommodation, maintenance, health, safety and all other legal matters, but also with respect to all aspects of sustainable tourism within the Parque. Sustainable tourism takes into account not only ecological matters but must also be orientated towards helping to sustain the local population through work and trade. Before being considered for the Marca de Parque, a business must have already been awarded the category of Casa Rural Superior. The Casa Rural accreditation in Spain is similar to the French classification of Gites and the Superior classification denotes that particularly high standards have been achieved. Needless to say, we are very pleased and excited to have received this recognition of our efforts!

The meadows really have become a blaze of colour from the wild flowers and here is a small sample of the many species of Vetch and other members of the Pea family.

Disk Trefoil?

This month Craig Thomas, who was one of our guests, made the following list of the bird species that he saw on the farm:

White Stork	Sparrowhawk	Nightingale	Cetti's Warbler
Griffon Vulture	Kestrel	Garden Warbler	Melodious Warbler
Egyptian Vulture	Cuckoo	Blackcap	Woodchat Shrike
Booted Eagle	Bee-eater	Sardinian Warbler	Spotless Starling
Black Kite	Short-toed Eagle	Whitethroat	Serin
Common Buzzard	Red-rumped Swallow	Zitting Cisticola	Cirl Bunting

Most years we find a few Terrapins in the small stream on the farm and this year was no exception. They seem to come to the stream during the winter rains and then gradually return to the river as the stream dries out. We would be very pleased to hear from anyone who knows more about Terrapin behavour. Springtime is tremendous for butterflies and there seems to have been particularly large numbers of Spanish Festoon, Swallowtail and Scarce Swallowtail butterflies this year (curiously the Scarce Swallowtail is much more common than the ordinary Swallowtail, in spite of its name).


April saw the arrival of another baby goat; a brown one this time and, as yet, unnamed.
The last picture shows the new gate on the bridge to the swimming pool and we have really only included it because we thought it a rather nice picture!