Lisa^s View

Our second week at Rio Muchaco was much more interesting. We had a speaker come in from the Andes and talk about permaculture. Permaculture is basically creating a system of living that is sustainable and organic. He taught us the origin of domesticated fruits, vegetables and animals. Most came from SE Asia and the tropical Andes region. He also spoke a lot about seed saving and how important it is we start to save natural seeds ( seeds not genetically engineered by seed producers). When seeds naturally evolve and adapt over time they retain their nutritional value. When corporate US engineers seeds they focus on mass production and resistance to pest and diseases, Not to nutritional value. Therefor many of our plants have lost up to 5o% of their nutritional value. Combine that with how we feed them, and cross pollination and it becomes a scary picture for our future. So research those seeds and plants you are buying. We also watched a great movie by Bill Morrison about permaculture The Global Gardener and how they have transformed desert areas in Botswana and other places to be actively producing food for the local people. Another great Movie is The Future of Food, Both Definitely worth watching.
Hillary and I and the girls have been teaching English through art and ecology at the school. The kids are enthusiastic and eager to learn. We have been working on trees and who lives there and why they are important to us. Next week we are start 2 projects one on the food chain where they will have to be our teachers as I am not sure of who eats who here. The other project is about how long it takes various things to decompose. While I always enjoy the kids, I wish I were only working on the farm as the daily grunt labor we do is very educational. I loved watching the girls plant corn and I was fertilizing corn and sugar cane that was already growing. I used cow manure tea, not hard labor just time consuming as all is done by hand. I watered with a little plastic container and a big bucket of water that I had to walk 1/8 a mile to the river to refill. To water an area 30 feet by 100 feet it took me 2 hours. All went well till Treava dropped my plastic container full of cow manure tea and I was soaked in cow Dung. Yuk. The girls planted corn by using a stick and poking a hole in the ground, dropping in corn and refilling the hole. Again it took them 2 hours to do a similar size. I was amazed with how calm they remained when they discovered they were covered in Ticks. They are nasty varmites some so tiny you can barely see them until they have sucked your blood. What an amazing grip they have once they are sucking.
All the food we eat at Rio Muchacho cames from the farm and all animals are only for fertilizing. I think for the most part it is absolutely delicous. We are though all tiring of rice and the lack of diversity. Their teas are awesome, just natural fennel in a pot or other herbs one was rosemary and yum. Next week I hope to help more in the kitchen to make a cookbook.
We have all adapted well to the creepy crawlers and bugs at night. A few days we even had sun shine. I guess in Dec, Jan and feb their rainy season it rains at night but gets blazing hot during the day.
Love to you all. Lisa