Heigh, Ho
Heigh, ho! Heigh, ho! It's off to work we go! *whistling noises*
We look like the 14 dwarves. Every day at 8 we're met by a handful of farmers from San Juan. They divide us into groups and we follow them to our various farms all the while carrying shovels, hoes, and pick-axes over our shoulders or machetes in our belt loops.
I said in one of my most recent posts that I feel fairly confident in my Spanish skills and I can say that the majority of the TBB group does too. In fact we've all gotten used to speaking in a English-Spanish hybrid where a number of common words in our vernacular are verbs in Spanish with an -ing ending attached. They include, but are not limited to: subiring, bajaring, descansaring, and limpiaring.
The verb limpiar in Spanish, for those who don't know, means to clean. For two weeks we have been limpiaring. For the first week I was in a group of four with my friends Sam, Madison, and Charlotte. Every day we walked up a super steep hill for maybe 20 minutes, through a patch of avocado trees, and into our coffee field. Over the course of five days we were able to clear the coffee field of all its weeds with just four hoes, some determination, one break per day, and a rotating snack schedule.
Week Two: after some reshuffling we were put into bigger groups and sent to different fields. Every day a group of about 8 of us finds our way through a jungle and up on to a cliff side where we again use machetes to limpiar around the crops. We finished yesterday and were given a day off this morning.
Just some things I wanted to say on farming: yes, it's hard work. My back aches, I have blisters on my hands, and I have dirt on my butt but I don't need a break. We come here and work for just four hours each day. It makes me happy to say that we're actually doing something productive on these fields, as opposed to in Ecuador where we were useless and did nothing at all, but that's also in part for the failing education system (check out my blog post on education, "Artemis I've A Feeling We're Not At Castilleja Anymore" to read my rant).
We get to help and I'm grateful for that, but we have no right to complain. There will come a day when I return home to the United States and never have to do hard farm work again, but here in San Juan where it's a livlihood and source of income and one of the few industries avaliable to this town, the men working in these fields will be unable to leave it. I have to work in the fields for 20 more hours total. I can't imagine doing it for the rest of my life. So, for the next two weeks I can take looking like one of the seven dwarves because I want to thank all farmers everywhere in the world for their hard work and dedication so that I have the fortunate ability to eat a full and diverse set of foods on my plate.
But that brings me to another blog post about the next step in my food-and-eating-habits journey.
We look like the 14 dwarves. Every day at 8 we're met by a handful of farmers from San Juan. They divide us into groups and we follow them to our various farms all the while carrying shovels, hoes, and pick-axes over our shoulders or machetes in our belt loops.
I said in one of my most recent posts that I feel fairly confident in my Spanish skills and I can say that the majority of the TBB group does too. In fact we've all gotten used to speaking in a English-Spanish hybrid where a number of common words in our vernacular are verbs in Spanish with an -ing ending attached. They include, but are not limited to: subiring, bajaring, descansaring, and limpiaring.
The verb limpiar in Spanish, for those who don't know, means to clean. For two weeks we have been limpiaring. For the first week I was in a group of four with my friends Sam, Madison, and Charlotte. Every day we walked up a super steep hill for maybe 20 minutes, through a patch of avocado trees, and into our coffee field. Over the course of five days we were able to clear the coffee field of all its weeds with just four hoes, some determination, one break per day, and a rotating snack schedule.
Week Two: after some reshuffling we were put into bigger groups and sent to different fields. Every day a group of about 8 of us finds our way through a jungle and up on to a cliff side where we again use machetes to limpiar around the crops. We finished yesterday and were given a day off this morning.
Just some things I wanted to say on farming: yes, it's hard work. My back aches, I have blisters on my hands, and I have dirt on my butt but I don't need a break. We come here and work for just four hours each day. It makes me happy to say that we're actually doing something productive on these fields, as opposed to in Ecuador where we were useless and did nothing at all, but that's also in part for the failing education system (check out my blog post on education, "Artemis I've A Feeling We're Not At Castilleja Anymore" to read my rant).
We get to help and I'm grateful for that, but we have no right to complain. There will come a day when I return home to the United States and never have to do hard farm work again, but here in San Juan where it's a livlihood and source of income and one of the few industries avaliable to this town, the men working in these fields will be unable to leave it. I have to work in the fields for 20 more hours total. I can't imagine doing it for the rest of my life. So, for the next two weeks I can take looking like one of the seven dwarves because I want to thank all farmers everywhere in the world for their hard work and dedication so that I have the fortunate ability to eat a full and diverse set of foods on my plate.
But that brings me to another blog post about the next step in my food-and-eating-habits journey.
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