Photos: Harvesting Spain’s ‘white gold’ asparagus under moonlight
Caparroso in Navarra, is a northern Spanish region with cold nights in winter and spring. It is here that the top-quality asparagus known locally as “white gold” is grown and cherished. Planted every fall and picked each year between April and June, the delicate process of harvesting them is performed quickly and in silence during the night to shield the vegetables from direct sunlight, which could turn the tip of the shoots from white to a purple-like color and dry their much-appreciated moisture.
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With head-mounted flashlights and boots deep in the mud, a firefly-like party of laborers in northern Spain harvest precious asparagus shoots once night falls. Dubbed “white gold” because of their colour and the high price they fetch in markets and restaurants around the world, the stringy delicacies are planted every fall and picked each year between April and June. (Alvaro Barrientos / AP)
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A seasonal worker using a lantern, collects asparagus from a field in Caparroso, Spain. The delicate process is performed during the night to shield the vegetables from direct sunlight, which could turn the tip of the shoots from white to a purple-like color and dry their much-appreciated moisture. (Alvaro Barrientos / AP)
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Blas, 53, collects asparagus from the field using a lantern in Uterga. Maintaining the asparagus’ high concentration of water is, according to experts, key to their balanced and slightly bitter flavour. That’s why the harvest is speedy and followed, within a few hours, with the boiling and canning of the asparagus that aren’t sold fresh in the markets. (Alvaro Barrientos / AP)
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Pickers move fast, in silence, making their way through small mountain-shaped rows of soil that bury the vegetables, lifting the black plastic that covers them and cutting the elongated shoots from their base by stabbing the dunes of mud. (Alvaro Barrientos / AP)
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