Blessed is the Fruit

MrsM's grandparents were astute business people. Anticipating war and, with it, aerial bombardment, they moved their gentleman's tailoring business out of Birmingham to Stratford-upon-Avon in 1939. Family legend has it that they opened for business there on the day war broke out. Chamberlain made his famous broadcast on a Sunday (3 Sept), so we must assume it was the following day. The premises was still a traditional men's outfitters (but nothing to do with the family) until quite recently. When MrsM's brother got married 10 years ago, we bought our wedding shirts there

The marmalade oranges included one with this wrapper - such a traditional thing, to wrap maybe 5% of a citrus crop with an identifying tissue. It evokes an era of gentlemen's outfitters and 'steam radio'. I got intrigued. The producers have a lovely web site where they identify themselves merely as "three women" who are the fourth generation producing bitter oranges in the "Hail Mary Orchard", 20 km from Seville, southern Spain. If you explore the site, there is also a picture any of us would be proud of, which I take to be the fifth generation

https://www.huertaavemaria.com/

The orchard was established, they say, in 1867 - a turbulent time in Spain, just before a revolution deposed Queen Isabella the following year, provoking a constitutional crisis. The current family (the Gahona of the label) took it on in 1935, just before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, precursor to WWII and the bombs on Birmingham. Again, a risky time to start a business. I wonder when it got the 'Hail Mary' label. In American football, a 'Hail Mary' pass is a last-ditch, hope-against-hope, eyes-closed throw, begging the fates to put someone in position to receive it and save the game. I don't suppose the orchard was named in the same spirit, but you can see why it might have been

The only significant market for bitter, Seville oranges is, and always has been, the UK and its fondness for orange "jam", as they call it. All through the years of Franco's fascist leadership, the transition to democracy, the 'pact of forgetting', membership of the European Union, Brexit, and now the resurgence of the radical right, they have been shipping their fruit to the crazy Brits for their breakfast jam. I wonder what discussions have taken place around the farm breakfast table in the heat of southern Spain, and how often they have evoked the name of the Madonna to carry them through hard times