The countryside, the origin of everything | Minorca

Children running behind a dog, or who knows, a dog running behing the children.
Careless.
They look free, spontaneous, authentic.
In Minorca The place where they run, we name it a lloc, a place in minorcan, which would be named in another sites as a farmhouse or an agrobusiness. It is weird we call it a lloc, a “place”, isn´t it?
Who knows, this is perhaps the rationale, because those farms are the place where everything is born.
And everything means literally everything.
Lifetime is born in those llocs. The Minorcan culture is born in those llocs. Their idiosyncracy, their way of being, their lifestyle, their character, their identity are born in those llocs.
The Biosphere Reserve declaration, keeping in mind that this recognition should be developped more in practice, is born in those llocs. The Minorcan wisdom has also been given birth in those llocs.
The countryside does not end up in the dry stone walls which physically divide the farmhouses. Kilometres and kilometres of limestones on top of the other only useful as boundaries for the cattle.
The countryside should not end up in those dry stone walls. It must attain the villages, their houses and appartments. The countryside must get in the rooms, in the kitchen and in the dining room.
It must also get in the hotels, in the tourist appartments, in any hospitality, catering and restauration business.
The countryside is more than agriculture, more than primary activities, the cattle upbringing and the market gardens.
It is a way of understanding and feeling the way we exist, that marks us and that we cannot forget. We must campaign for it, we have even to show off about it. And above all, take care of it. Because doing it, we take care of each of us and all as a whole.
If we really believe in hospitality, we should show to the visitor or traveller what we are. And this also encompasses our products, our links with our land and our ability and capacity to harvest fruits. Natural products from the surroundings cannot be certainly be a fashion or a vogue, it should be a philosophy of life. Even more in an island where beyond the 45th km we only see the sea water.
We cannot pretend to reduce the countryside perception to only the farmers haversting the crop and collecting the fruits with their hard work and devoted passion and dedication.
The countryside is more than that. The countryside is culture and upper case CULTURE, culture is an array of knowledge, ideas, traditions and customs which distinguishes a collectivity, the people in a village.
The countryside is part of Minorca. Not only a longlife Minorca but also the modern one. The one from the traditions but also that which looks to the future knowning that the roots are the best fondations to build up a sustainable and longlasting fruitful existence.
Let’s come back to the picture. The children run joyfully. Happiness is, certainly, hidden in a lloc, in a place, between the dry stone wall and the cowshed. Do not fear to search for it.