Its All About the Poop - 8/10/09

My first week at Rio Muchacho has been incredible. The actual farm itself is so beautiful. There´s lots of thatched roofs, bamboo constructions, incredible gardens with so many flowers and food, a meditation garden, and even the animal section isn´t too bad. On the farm they row a million kinds of fruits and veggies, basically whatever the climate will allow. They have cows, donkeys, chickens, ducks, pigs, horses, guinea pigs, and lots of cats and dogs running around. Our days begin at 6 AM with either preparing breakfast, watering the gardens, or taking care of the animals. My monring chore for the first week was taking care of the cuyes (guinea pigs). On the coast they don´t eat them so on the farm there just a source of organic material (aka poo). The cuye cages are situated on top of the worm composting beds, the cuyes eat lots of grass and other grains, then poop it all out into the worm beds, which the worms then eat and poop out to create nutrient rich humus which is then used to fertilize the plants. So what I actually do is dump the poo from the litle cuye hiding places in the cage into the worm beds and give them food and grass. Then I water the worm beds and the compost. Breakfast is around 730 which is always fruit, muesli, bread and tea. This is probably my favorite meal. Then at 830 am we start the real work. This can be a whole variety of jobs such as weeding, planting, harvesting crops, or, today I shoveled out the contents of one of the composting toilets for about 2 1/2 hours. At 12 we have lunch which is usualy suop with yucca or beans or carrots or peantus or a million different things from the garden. After we have a heap of white rice which is always excessive and then some sort of hot dish, salad, and sometimes more bread and juice. We start working again at 130 where we work on a whole variety of projects from preparing bamboo with machetes for construction to clearing out a plot of land to start a new garden or making chocolate from the coca plant to make a delicious chocolatey spread. We finish at 4, I usually shower unless the electricity is out and we have no water, and then we have dinner between 6 and 7 which is usually similar to lunch without soup. On Wednesday afternoons we have a cultural activity instead of work. So last Wednesday we went to go see an enormous palm that has been taken over by a parasite and has grown these crazy roots and vines so you can no longer see the actual palm. Later we made rings out of seeds. The other part of my time here is psent in my permaculture and organic farming course. I love this course! THus far we´ve learned the theory and pricniples of organic farming and a little about composting. We have class instead of after breakfast work, 3 times a week. We also watch movies the nights we have classes and some of them have been so interesting. THe firs one we saw was called"Peak Oil" and it was about how Cuba had to basicallly change everything to become completely self suficient and more sustainable after the USSR fell. THey changed everything to organic farming, solar power, huge public transport, bikes, an urban farming. It´s really impressive and of course appeals to my mild obsession for Cuba. THe second movie was called "The Future of Food" which was mildly frightening about GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Basically, Monsanto created these GMO sees and patened the gene in the seed, the seed is only showing its good attributes for one season and then they have to rebuy the seed. They started asking o test farmers crops and found that certain crobs were exhibiting the genes of their seed, sue them, an won with the judges saying that the farmers were responsible for making sure these seeds did not get into their fields, even if these seeds were blown in by the wind or pooped in by a bird. It alo talked about the agro and food industry. So frightening and interesting. Al the volunteers are great and I´ve been able to practice my spanish a lot.