This journal started as an observation of the abundance of fruit and vegetables grown in a small valley outside the town of Leonidion in the Peloponnese in Greece.

As a horticulturalist and regular visitor to this town for 18 years or so, I have observed the market gardens and small farms with interest and admiration. I often get asked, “How is Greece fairing in these difficult economic times?” This relatively remote town certainly appears to fair well. What is it that makes it tick?

The strong family unity plays an important role as do, I suspect, links to their ancient Tzakonic roots. The Greeks in this area have ties to an ancient world in tradition, dialects and dances, dating back to 6th-8th Century BC. Is it too, I wonder, simply their close link to nature? Their primarily vegetable Mediterranean diet comes from their own labours and from within several miles of home. They are in touch with it.

So, I started to take pictures of the truly abundant horticulture around the town. I didn’t have to go further than my own garden for golden figs, olives silhouetted against an azure sky, lemons (grafted onto an orange tree), grapes dripping from the neighbour’s arched entrance. Then I ventured further to the fertile valley which lies between ochre orange cliffs, which sour thousands of metres heavenward, and spreads like a delta to the Mirtoon Sea.

Grassroots Greece
Grassroots Greece

Below this dramatic geographical backdrop, there lives a verdant carpet of orange, lemon and olives groves, a tapestry of industrious and intensive growing. Tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, cucumber and lettuce grow on a myriad of small plots, lined with pomegranate trees. The stripy aubergine is a local speciality, protected under EU law and celebrated annually at the Melazane Festival. Garlic, red onions and watermelon also fill the local green grocer stalls.

Increasing numbers of poly-tunnels obscure the valley’s beauty as it rolls towards the Mediterranean either side of the dried up river-bed of the Dafnon. But the water lies beneath, irrigating this landscape from below.

As I explored along the raised roads around the intensively farmed fields, I had an insight into these people. Dotted among the orchards, fields and poly-tunnels were the people of this ancient land. Young adults in baseball caps lounged on balconies, old yaya’s (grandmothers) in black dresses gabbled over coffee with friends, a farmer in his huge van rumbled towards warehouses full of crates and the next delivery of tomatoes for Athens, old farm-hands on bikes finishing a day’s work, hot farmers in utility trucks sweating out the day’s labour in 40 degree heat.

Because here it is on a small scale, you can virtually touch the chillies and red peppers from your car seat. And perhaps it is because it is on a small scale, with its inner reserves, you can see the plight of Greece, old ways meet the new, the donkey and the satellite dish in the same picture. Because of this, I feel such admiration for this resilient town and its people. In Britain, we like the romantic image of an ancient Greece but the reality is a country grappling with itself in difficult economic times. I am an outsider in Leonidion and can only observe from afar.

Grassroots Greece
Grassroots Greece

However, it seems that when the younger generation flooded back home after losing their high powered jobs in Astros, Corinth, Pireaus and Athens, a rejuvenation has happened in this sleepy place. The families, it seems have embraced the younger generation and found jobs for them here. The land has provided a support structure.

Christina and Nikos Kyrios used to run a small eatery in the back streets of the town and have a farm, growing grapes and making and selling their own wine. An altercation, I believe, with the restaurant landlord, saw them take the opportunity to rent a much larger premises, from 20 covers to 60, on the main drag out of town. They work so hard, 9 am to 5 pm, then 6 pm to 2 am, every day feeding the hungry locals and passing tourists. Nikos cooks, Dimitri helps his mother serve and delivers take-away souvaki, a thriving side-line to their restaurant trade. The wine-making started as a hobby. Now they sell the wine they make, previously in plastic bottles and more recently in proper green glass bottles with attractive labels.

“I haven’t swum in the sea for three years,” says Christina. But what she has done is work very hard for a living. She and her husband set an admirable example.

John Halaris owns several orchards and sends nearly 50 tons of oranges, mandarins, grapefruit and lemons to wholesalers at Athens equivalent of New Covent Garden. His son, a trained electrician previously based in Pireaus, works in the olive factory for four months a year and helps on the farm.

Dimitri Stois is a young farmer and runs one of the biggest tomato farms in the valley. He, his father and brother, use hydroponics to grow huge numbers of tomatoes. Sophisticated computerised system administers water, fertiliser and pesticides to tomato plants grown in many poly–tunnels. They have three harvests a year, employ 20 harvesters and supply the Athens market on a weekly basis.

Pericles Golegos who owns the local haulage company opened a plumbing hardware store in an empty shop corner for his son. Pericles guards the entrance while his son meets the busy plumbing needs of the community.

Dimitri, the boatman, runs the local boat yard and uses his olive grove to store the yachts and motor boats. “It’s been a terrible winter,” he says. But to supplement his boat yard, he rents cars. They are not fancy but his son is busy delivering them and it is this resourceful nature of the Greeks that I believe is helping them through these tough times.

Grassroots Greece
Grassroots Greece

Gregoris Nsakis has pushed on with his maisonette development programme. He has moved his estate agents office from the main square and now has a sales office for his 10-15 maisonettes he has built on the road to Plaka, the small port two or three miles down the road. Greek property prices have been the hardest hit in Europe.

The Xaoplasterion (Greek patisserie) owner, George Kyrios, dark rings under his eyes from years of early rises to satiate the town’s infinite desire for sweet pastries, raises four sons with his wife. The eldest studies electrical engineering in Athens and runs the shop in the holidays.

Saranto Dolianitis has diversified from his furniture store in town and set up a pop-up section in his shop: “Walk 4 Fun”. Offering guided two hour walks in the mountains visiting churches and monasteries on old donkey tracks. “This is my fourth child,” he says and something to keep the former basketball player fit and healthy, as well as encourage his community to do the same. http://walk4fun.gr/

Another family have renovated their old family home into a boutique hotel and spa and run it from Athens and Leonidio. Archontiko Chioti has been tastefully done and has a swimming pool. http://www.archontikochioti.gr/en

So when people ask what’s happening in Greece, I look at this charming town and its people and in many ways, nothing has changed. It remains the same but a steelier, wiser community whose return to family values has benefited and rejuvenated this town.

I suspect politicians and punters would like to capture the entrepreneurial spirit of these people. They do appear to have made their luck by sticking together and being a cohesive, supportive family unit. Their fortune has been built on the fertile land they own and farm to grow and sell their produce.

And this is where I started my journal, observing this Greek horticultural feast at close quarters. It is the simple rustic nature, strong sense of family and community based in spectacular geographical settings that is their strength. If it works on a small scale in town’s like Leonidion, I hope it can work on a larger scale.