I bought the farm in 2011 with some ideas in my mind, but the truth is that I hadn’t drafted exactly the project that I would carry with it. I had a double intention; on the one hand I wanted the farm to be a family gathering place and on the other I wanted it to be productive; but I did not know how to develop it.

There was a crucial moment when all the pieces fitted together. One day I was leaving the farm and I suffered a serious car accident when I collided with a train. Somehow, I was miraculously unscathed. That made me decide to put in order all those ideas that I had in my head.

Back then sustainability in business activity was far from being a fashionable concept. Environmental care was less central in the social agenda, but nevertheless I felt it as a very close concept, since it has been the inspiring basic principle in my life and in Acciona, our family business.

I had lived in France for many years, where organic production had been largely developed and it was quite demanded by many consumers. So, at that moment of miraculous rebirth, I decided to assume this path as my life project. That’s when Dehesa El Milagro was born.

I owe a lot in this project to Arturo Grinda, an architect and a friend who accompanied me from the beginning. We knew little about agriculture and I looked for a third person to advise us on both agriculture and livestock: Antonio Ávila. Together with my son Borja, we attended a course in Ronda (Malaga, Spain) taught by Darren Doherty, an authority in agroecology. That course was a turning point. We were told about a new way of understanding agriculture and livestock farming. Concepts such as holistic model, farm, rotational grazing, the basic idea of the importance of the soil, etc. These ideas had a strong impact on us and after finishing our training we started the Master Plan to gradually implement all the areas.

We chose to work with local breeds, which are the most adapted to the climate and orography of our area. Black Iberian Avilanian cows crossed with Limousin, laying hens, slow-growth chickens, of the so-called “bare neck” variety and Talavera sheep. We focused on a comprehensive project as our lands were not fertile lowland. We started setting an area for a vegetable garden and later, due to the needs of variety, safety and temporality, we associated with other organic growers.

Antonio was in charge of the implementation stage, but the growth of the farm required a highly multidisciplinary but very specialized external team. Arturo continued with his professional career after helping me to create and consolidate the project.

Inspirational ideas remain from the start. We started our commercial activity selling online. We were very excited with the idea of taking the products directly from the farm to the final consumer. After a lot of hard work, we had a great opportunity to reach more people with the Dehesa El Milagro corners in El Corte Inglés. Later we opened our first shop in El Mercado de Ayala.

Bringing the farm closer to the client’s house, delivering healthy products of a very high quality, was one of our very first objectives that we completed with the activity of the ecological bakery. In fact, the workshop is an innuendo we use to refer to the headquarters of various activities of this new, more complex approach. The workshop is the place in which we organise our logistics and assembly operations, where we cut the meat and the place in which our products are cooked. All these activities share the same space and are certified as ecological by the authorities.

Sometimes I remember with nostalgia those early days, when I lived most of the time at the farm because everything had to be set up from scratch and I was in charge of the organization at first hand. The logistics center was there, the same place where we baked bread, where boxes were assembled, I got up early to add roses to vegetable baskets.

We delegated the cutting of the meat to the slaughterhouse, but there was a moment when it was necessary to assume all the steps of the process ourselves. We have been growing and although I still take care of every detail and supervise the activities, I am fortunate to have an incredible team of people who do it with the same love and dedication.

The kitchen area has a key role for El Milagro. We have always been inspired by the idea of our customers cooking our products and that is why we have been publishing recipes on our website, giving them ideas on how to prepare our vegetables and meats. We know that our fans appreciate them very much, because it is always great to have new ideas in the kitchen.

The following step has been to cook our own raw material and offer it ready-made to our customers. That is the culmination of our holistic approach. Our best seller is the Christmas capon, the only one which has an organic certificate, but we also offer our stuffed chicken, hummus, fried tomato (made with tomatoes at their best, so it is sweet without the need of adding any sugar), artichokes and many other dishes yet to come that are already on our stoves expanding our recipe-book little by little.

Marta Alcalá is our chef de cuisine. Marta and her team, together with Maritza Merino and myself bring to life the Cocina de El Milagro, that last link in the production chain that perhaps excites us more than any other as it means reaching directly the palate of our clients.

You will find detailed information about our farm concept on our website, a pioneering model in Spain since we produce in a closed natural cycle allowing us to be more efficient, sustainable and rational with the environment.

We hope that you will introduce some of the products of our farm as part of your diet and we invite you to enjoy and bring yourself to cook with our healthy recipes.