Looking at the Gozitan field landscapes throughout the year, but most especially in the summer months, one cannot fail to be impressed and astonished by the ingenuity and inventive genius of the typical local farmer who – irrespective of any formal schooling or education – employs practices and skills of the highest order.
It is more than amply clear from the marvellous and abundant crops of vegetables and fruits he harvests throughout the year that, in addition to employing age-old traditions, he has also adopted nature as his university to eke out an existence through studies of mental and physical exertions.
Undoubtedly, as a result of repeated experimentations, with its trials and errors over the centuries, he has managed, no matter how poor and dry the soil, to make the most of its potential with outstanding results.
How striking and mind-boggling it is in summer to set eyes on surfaces of parched, dry, clayey white fields apparently lifeless and barren, yielding, thanks to the farmer’s accumulated know-how, delightful and abundant crops of deliciously sweet watermelons and marrows without feeding them a single drop of water in the dry season.
In fact, it is the dryness and the farmer’s hard work and intelligence that yield such miraculous harvests. He has learned to utilise water buried underground to the fullest advantage. Similarly, the bountiful summer crop of tomatoes, planted in probably drier redder soil, carefully laid out in rows and tied to vertical stakes produce an equally abundant and delicious harvest.
Their taste is generally accepted as deliciously unique, with no equal in the agricultural world.
Both crops mentioned above are planted and grown in arid soils without watering, hence the vernacular name Tas-Sikkan, which describes exactly a completely dry soil condition, ascribed to the crops,.
When it comes to other crops throughout the year, particularly the winter potato crop harvested in early spring, the economic aspect of the farmer’s intellect is once again revealed.
Relatively expensive imported seed potatoes that have a number of sprouting nodes that, rather than being planted as a single whole, are cut up into a number of pieces – each with one sprout, thus increasing greatly the number of plants. This of course results in superior seed exploitation and increased weight production.
Before the advent of plastic sheets, delicate, small, early tomato plants used to be diligently protected from the devastating cold winds by covering them with a prickly pear leaf on each plant – a cheap and effective windshield.
All in all it is evident that it is thanks to the genius of farmers that Gozo has greatly benefited, economically and eco-wise, over the centuries in this oldest and foremost field of human activity, without the necessity of any direct professional help from advanced and better educated practitioners.
Everything cultivated in the soil until a few decades ago was produced using healthy organic practices, thus also preserving the natural equilibrium of the soil environment. It is only supposed scientific progress and keen competition that has tempted the farmer to stray from some of his highly valued, and valuable, ways.
The product itself is the best proof of whether this has proved to be a qualitative step forward, or otherwise.
Edwin Calleja
BALZAN