This glimpse of rural Spain will make you hungry and thirsty.

I'm doing just enough to keep my tomato plants alive. It's easy to over-glamorize a lifestyle that few of us would choose. It's also good to know that someone remembers how to raise sheep in the hills.

A long way from Benidorm: rural regeneration in south-east Spain, by Kevin Rushby (The Guardian)

Evaristo is teaching me to make paella. You might, like I did, think you know already, but Evaristo lives and breathes the stuff – he has made it every day for over 30 years. We’re doing it in his barn, which adds challenges.

“Can you wash the tomatoes?” he asks and I wander off looking for a tap. There are sacks of walnuts, buckets of olives soaking in brine, a newly laid egg lying discreetly in a nest of hay under a workbench, but no tap.

I’m in deepest rural Spain, in the Vall de Gallinera, Alicante, the kind of Spain where you expect to bump into Laurie Lee’s ghost on every footpath. There are the ruins of an old convent on the next hill, and a ruined Arab fort beyond that. It’s a tranquil land weathered by mystery and tragedy, but only a day’s walk from Benidorm, with its 200 nightclubs and 1,000 bars. It does not seem possible.

(The trip was provided by Village Ways, villageways.com)

"The bleak future facing many parts of rural America is enough to make you weep – or get to work."

I confess to thinking little about the rural side of the story, primarily because I harbor no desire to be rural. But one can't help thinking about the other side of the coin, especially while out in the country.

Speak Your Piece: Dry Your Eyes, Revitalize, by Timothy Collins (Daily Yonder)

... So, let’s turn the idea of subsistence on its head and consider an alternative for rural communities. Can we envision a basic, but clear public and private commitment to provide everyone with tools for a comfortable life? Can we assure that basic human needs will be filled: food, shelter, clothing, health care, education and fulfilling life’s work with adequate wages?

Subsistence — defined here as treading lightly on the earth while living a good life — can be a positive alternative and a lifestyle choice supported by rural communities and state and federal policymakers.

Let’s banish the notion of global competitiveness as the primary goal for rural areas and communities. Let’s focus on capacity building and improving the quality of life. We need to create jobs with adequate pay for bountiful, but sustainable subsistence. We need to consider the crucial importance of reversing environmental damage and building small, manageable, and sustainable communities.