Pancho became famous two years ago for an extraordinary harvest which led him to put thousands of kilos of pippin apples on sale «to ebro». People from other islands came to the Valdeflores farm to carry bags and pippin bags that Pancho himself chose by hand and weighed with the help of a very old scale, which he still conserves and uses. After the pandemic, Pancho coordinates the collection of a harvest that was good, but went wrong. «It was good, but it is gone. The sun burned many apples that were left on the ground. But there will be a few thousand kilos, similar to last year, “he explains.
From his childhood he remembers that his first toy was “a hoe to make furrows” and that when he was barely ten years old he began to “deal with lots of fruits.”
As every year, Pancho sells his apples directly: «People come here and take their apples. Wholesale we have never worked. The apples in 2021 are bigger than in 2020 and 2019: “I’ve been here for a couple of days and this year we have more even apples.” Despite the pandemic, Pancho’s life hardly changed. When asked about the Covid-19, this farmer responds with an expressive “that’s nothing!” and he adds: «I laugh at that, I continued the same, in the field, catching air and without any fear. Man, I got vaccinated, but I kept working like nothing, and with 91 years on my feet. I do agree that if you enter a savings bank or a market where there are many people, then you have to take care of yourself. Just like when visitors come from outside. With those crosses you do have to be careful. I mostly work alone and outdoors, so I have not had contact with many outsiders in this time».
A conversation with Pancho is a master’s degree in popular wisdom. He barely went to school, but he has a lot to teach. At the foot of the canyon past the 90s, this farmer from The Punta del Hidalgo He is concerned about “the little desire to work” that many people have now: “People say they don’t have it, but how can you have it if you don’t work? That’s how it is. You are children, but our parents and our grandparents and great-great-grandparents did leave us things. If you never sowed anything, if you never left anything for those who come after, what did you do? Now you go where you want and you see everything abandoned ».
“If you never sowed anything, if you never left anything for those who come after, what did you do?”
«As you walk, you study. At first we pruned the trees more and threw less fruit. So instead of them throwing me 8 kilos of apples, I could less and they threw me 16. And if the fruit is even, it is more profitable. There are some out there who stick to pruning and take out just a couple of apples, “he explains.
After 59 years on the same farm, he has been able to learn many secrets of the land and the climate: «They have been holding my hand for years, but it has cost me a lot of experience. The first thing is to know the terrain well and that requires suffering it. That costs a lot. When I came I had to uproot many trees because they dried up. I was sleepless nights thinking what was going on And I came one day to remember when I was 10 years old, when I was little and worked orange trees, pear trees, apricot trees, vineyards. I hit again with my art, the one that I did not learn from anyone. I removed the potatoes and the millet from the groves. I was leaving the farm free of all that nonsense. The grass grew a lot, but I began to plow the fields and where it could not be plowed, hoe. Azadita that in the Canary Islands is very much needed, now that they left her as if they did not know her ».
After 81 years of work, he affirms that “what the Canary Islands need is a little more hoe”
«Today’s people don’t even know how to take the step. I tell you that. What you have to do in Canarian agriculture is pick up a hoe and start sipping. You have to handle your hands and carry sacks of potatoes on your shoulder. When i lived in Anaga, all those little gardens were finished, sown with potatoes dug by hoe. Cows and tractors did not enter there. But not today. Today nothing, “he laments.
Pancho believes that to «lift this up a bit», we would have to follow the example from before: «Take a hoe and paste to work as did our great-great-grandparents and grandparents. Today’s people do not leave anything and the Government do not think they have the money to spend all day paying, paying and paying. We also have to work, the Government I don’t think has the money lying around. It is good that the Government lends a hand to everyone, but that cannot go on forever. You also have to produce».
“People say they don’t have it, but how are you going to have it if you don’t work?” Asks Pancho
He started early and still produces: «Since I was 10 or 11 years old, I would take 50 kilos of potatoes and carry them on my shoulder and lowered them to The Punta del Hidalgo from the midlands. Even the road and not one or two, but many bags. That’s what I did in those days. At 14 or 15 years old, a little older now, I laughed at the world. He carried up to 100 kilos of potatoes per the paths of Anaga and it came out like a quichere. You have to work, you have to have blood ».
In his opinion, his way of being and seeing the world runs in the family: «I was lucky that my parents were very hardworking and I inherited that from them.. I always saw them work and I was there. When my father left the hoe, there I was with it, digging for dirt. My first toy was a furrow hoe. I made little gardens, I made wooden plows and that was my book ».
He barely went to school, but he can read and do math. He does not miss a kilo. «I did not go to school, I was 35 days to avoid being illiterate. 35 days I had class. In the barracks they told me to go to class and I told them: you go. Then I was learning things with practice. I took the tables and studied them, did my math, took a pencil and a notebook and began to learn … but all that without going to school. I had a brother, Julian, who was the owner of the restaurant of The Cruz del Carmen and he studied with a backpack of books on his back taking care of 60 goats. And he learned. The boy knew. He wasn’t stupid. As an adult, Pancho has read a lot about agriculture and has attended many courses, “although I have not learned that much there either.”
When asked if he goes to work on the farm every day, Pancho responds mischievously: «It’s not that he comes, it’s that I live here. I am always here. Day by day I get up and I am always studying pruning, how to fix a tree that is going to dry up. Sometimes they tell me to tell a secret and I tell them that when an apple tree begins to lose strength at the root, I start to lower it, I prune it and when I have it small I already have the spare in it apple tree».
Look sadly at the eruption of The Palm and he thinks that “when the black one touches you, you cannot run away.” He encourages the palm trees to find a way to “re-plant what is possible, looking for new soil.” He imagines the impact of a volcano near his farm and confesses that if he saw the lava come out, «they would have to go look for me at Taganana».
“To get anywhere, you have to fail first”
Pancho Hernández is clear that “people, to get to something, have to fail first.” After more than 81 years of hard and daily work in the field, he emphasizes that “to get to the good, you must first go through the bad.” This has been his life and his experience. Pure trial and error, pure observation, pure constancy. “That always happened to me, when I arrived at the farm where I am in Ravelo, in 1962, I had to stumble upon the bad until I found the good. It took me a few years. There was a time when he hardly even slept, thinking about the little things that had to be done. I don’t even know the leg that I gave. Working, consulting engineers, observing around, I had to walk a lot … And I haven’t stopped until today. I don’t think there is another apple orchard like this in the Canary Islands ».
