Almond trees. What Mallorca says in May

By May the blossom is two months gone. The trees carry leaves, the small green almonds slowly fatten, the light between the rows grows warmer and the ground drier. Walk through an old grove in May and you hear bees, see the first poppies between the trunks, smell dry earth with a hint of wild herbs. It is not spectacular. It is the honest mood of the island before the heat arrives. May to mid-June is, for many of us, the most beautiful time of the year.

Almond trees arrived in the tenth century with Moorish farmers. They suited the dry climate, asked for little water, returned a lot of substance. The real boom came later: at the end of the nineteenth century phylloxera wiped out the island's vineyards, and many farmers switched to almond instead. By the middle of the twentieth century Mallorca was one of the largest almond-growing regions in the world. Seven million trees, say the records of the time. Then from the sixties onwards California took over the global market, prices fell, many island farmers gave up. About four million trees remain today. And for the past ten years or so the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa has been working through the groves. Hundreds of thousands of trees infected, the disease present in roughly every second tree. Drive through the interior today and you see both side by side: tended groves with evenly pruned trees, and right next to them fields where the trees lean and quietly age on their own.

There is a small generation of farmers who did not give up. Premium estates that market almond as a product with a story. The protected designation 'Almendra de Mallorca' (PGI since 2014), marzipan from their own workshop, almond liqueur as a more honest souvenir than the big hierbas brands. Some combine almond with wine. The small bodegas around Porreres, Felanitx and Manacor show that the two go hand in hand. If you are out in May or June, stop at a roadside stand. The person who sells you their own harvest with pride will tell you more about the island in ten minutes than any glossy brochure.

Buyers often ask: "So what does it actually mean, this almond grove on the finca?" Short answer: a little responsibility. Almond trees ask for little. No irrigation system, little fertilizer, they handle drought. But they want a prune once a year, in January or February, before the bloom. And a harvest in August, traditionally with sticks against a tarp on the ground, today often with small shaking machines. If you do not want to do it yourself, you hand the care to a local farmer from the village. He looks after the trees, keeps the harvest, you have a tended grove without a duty weekend. A pragmatic arrangement that has been part of the interior for generations. We know a handful of these farmers personally, and this is one of the things we like to help arrange after you have moved in.

If you grew up in the island's interior, almond trees are not a symbol. They are the backdrop to everything. Older Mallorcans still tell of summers when harvest helpers came for a few weeks from the north of Spain, the whole village smelled of green husks, courtyards filled with buckets of fresh almonds. That version no longer exists. But walk through an old grove in May and you still feel the echo. It is a different kind of beauty from the postcard Mallorca. Quieter, more patient, less spectacular. The Mallorca we place is exactly this one.