The Day I Discovered Nettles

• Agroe­col­o­gy is also about learn­ing to observe.
• Net­tles changed the way I look at the fin­ca.
• Today, we make soup and net­tle tea with our net­tles.

I was about thir­ty when, walk­ing through a moun­tain for­est in Africa where goril­las live — mist, humid­i­ty and end­less green — I first heard about a plant that irri­tat­ed the skin. “Be care­ful with the plant that irri­tates your skin,” my com­pan­ions told me.I had no idea what they were talk­ing about.

Many years lat­er, net­tles grow every­where at the fin­ca. I don’t know if there were few­er of them before. Per­haps we removed them when we worked the soil. Per­haps they were there and I sim­ply did­n’t see them. I grew up among vine­yards and plants, but I have no mem­o­ry of net­tles from when I was a child.

It makes me think about how much the way we look at things changes over the years.

The land­scape may be the same,

and yet we are no longer the same.

Learning to read the land

Since we began work­ing with agroe­co­log­i­cal prac­tices, the soil has changed, and so has the way I observe it.

We stopped assum­ing that every­thing grow­ing spon­ta­neous­ly need­ed to be removed. Instead, we began ask­ing why one plant appears here and anoth­er there, and what they might be telling us about the soil.

That’s when I start­ed notic­ing the net­tles.

Now they grow every­where. We also have mal­lows, plan­tain, dan­de­lions and many oth­er plants I prob­a­bly would once have sim­ply called “weeds”. Today, I know they can give us clues about what is hap­pen­ing in the soil.

From nettles to soup

The first time I real­ly got close to a net­tle was in the kitchen.

Look­ing for some­thing to do with them, I found this recipe for net­tle, pota­to and leek soup on Adamant Kitchen. I liked the idea, so we decid­ed to try it.

We gath­ered the net­tles and, with the help of my moth­er — because she is the one who real­ly knows how to cook — we made the soup. It was green and intense, a lit­tle like spinach with char­ac­ter.

And I loved it.

From the table to the garden

Then I dis­cov­ered that I could use those same net­tles to make net­tle tea for the plants. We made our first batch last year and began try­ing it in the gar­den. Today, we use it reg­u­lar­ly, always at night. And we observe.

The gar­den is green­er, full of flow­ers, insects and but­ter­flies. Guests at Fin­ca Adal­gisa notice it too and often tell us they have nev­er seen the gar­den look­ing so alive. Per­haps that is what inter­ests me most about agroe­col­o­gy: learn­ing to observe.

Under­stand­ing that a vine­yard is about much more than the vines. There is a whole world grow­ing spon­ta­neous­ly around us, and it is worth stop­ping to look at it.

Net­tles became one small part of that learn­ing. First, I dis­cov­ered I could eat them. Then I learned that I could trans­form them and return them to the soil to nour­ish oth­er plants.

I don’t know whether there are many more net­tles today than there used to be, or whether I have sim­ply learned to see them.

Prob­a­bly both.

The land changed.
And so did I.

Per­haps grow­ing old­er has some­thing to do with that: look­ing again at what has been in front of us for years and dis­cov­er­ing how much we still have to learn.

August. The first net­tles of the year are begin­ning to appear at the fin­ca.

And what wine do we drink with this soup?

Semi­l­lon. Its fresh­ness works beau­ti­ful­ly with the green char­ac­ter of the net­tles and the creamy tex­ture of the pota­toes and leeks.

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