Working landscapes

Crops are climate constraints made visible. Olives tolerate drought and poor soil but not hard frost. Citrus is frost-sensitive and thirsty, so growing it on terraces means the water is managed rather than merely received. Terracing this steep is an irrigation structure before it is a field: each level holds a few centimetres of standing water and passes the surplus down.

Boundaries and outbuildings carry the rest. Living hedges rather than fences mean long settlement and year-round rain; walls this dense mean the fields were cleared by hand and the stone had nowhere to go. A shelterbelt planted dead straight means relentless wind. A granary on stone mushrooms is keeping rats out, and a removable thatch cap is keeping rain off the grain.