The 86-year-old Granada woman who has been farming since she was eight

Adelaida Murcia Teller was born in Mecina Bombarón in Granada province's Alpujarra 86 years ago. By the age of eight she was helping out in the house and on the farm under the watchful eye of her mother Dolores. This family and others in the village washed clothes by hand in the fountains and other places where water from the melting snows of the Sierra Nevada flowed.

The clothes were carried by Adelaida in a cane basket and a bucket. The soap she used was homemade from used cooking oil, soda and fish. In those days there were three municipal washing places in Mecina Bombarón: the one in 'La Plaza Vieja', the one in 'Barrio Alto' and the one in 'Fuente de San Miguel'.

In Mecina Bombarón, clothes were hung out in the sun around the washing places. The washing places were meeting points where women shared news and complaints and sang while they worked. The task included carrying the laundry, soaping, scrubbing, rinsing, wringing out by hand and hanging out to bring the clean, dry clothes home. In the cold winters, the ice had to be broken to get to the water and in the summer it the women had to get up early to avoid the extreme heat.

This tradition continued until the arrival of the washing machine and running water in homes. In the farmhouses of Mecina Bombarón, washing was still done by hand. The wealthy did not wash their own clothes, they were washed by professional laundresses or maids, who worked hard and earned little, some only working for their food.

When not helping her mother with the housework, Adelaida was up in the mountains tending to the cows and pigs that the family owned. This is a responsibility she also took on at the age of just eight.

Adelaida Murcia met Mariano Vidal Ferrer Rodríguez when she was 17 and he was 21. Her husband was left with fourteen hectares of land to live on what the fields gave him: beans, potatoes, barley, wheat, lentils... At that time this couple had two cows, a beast, two breeding sows, chickens...there was no time for a honeymoon after they got married.

Adelaida and Mariano Vidal have been married for 65 years. They have two sons and a daughter who have given them eight grandchildren, including triplets (two girls and a boy) by their daughter-in-law and son Enrique. They keep fit with a diet based on natural foods. They also like to walk. In Adelaida and Mariano Vidal's home, their shared love endures, having overcome decades of hard work and challenges together, with mutual respect always prevailing.