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| Women working in the fields (Caión) |
It's not common practice today, but in a not-so-long-ago past, my family, like other inhabitants of Caión still used this marine resource to fertilize their farmland. My dad would go into the water and haul the seaweed towards the beach, while his sisters gathered it into piles on the sand. They always said that this organic fertilizer was what made the potatoes and famous sweet onions of Caión so tasty! Now this tradition is being studied as a natural alternative to other types of fertilizer (news article in Spanish).
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| Fisherman and daughter gathering seaweed |
When the seaweed—called golfe in Caión and other parts of the Death Coast—appeared on the seashore, each person would haul it inland and set it into piles on a part of Salseiras beach called "auga redondo" (round water) or the "ribeira", near the port. The piles of golfe were marked to make sure other late-comers would not take them; then the "owners" of the piles would stuff the seaweed into a square piece of hand-made sack-cloth and carry it on their backs to the farmland, where they would spread the seaweed on the soil. There was no machinery to help with this tough job that both men and women of the village had been doing from time immemorial.
From the property for sale there are wonderful views of "auga redondo" where seaweed still gathers. The villagers used to walk on these mounds of seaweed because they believed it was very healthy and good for their bones. I've done it myself. The smell is bad but not unbearable, so if it's really as good for you as they say it is, then it's worth putting up with! Today some people harvest seaweed from Caión for use as fertilizer, while others gather and sell it to pharmaceutical companies, who value it for its medicinal properties. Follow this link to see a short 3 minute video about seaweed gathering and uses on the Galician coast (in Spanish & Galician).
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