We've just spent our first week on the Rio Muchacho Organic Farm! As an organic farm, there are no chemical pesticides or fertilizers used. So they use compost as a means to naturally enrich the soil. And where do you get compost from? Poop. Lots and lots of poop. And where do get poop from? Well there are compost toilets to collect the human poop from tourists and farm workers, and there are farm animals (horses, cows, pigs and guinea pigs) used solely for their poop – never eaten! It’s a 90% vegetarian farm (occasionally there is some canned tuna).
Our daily routine is as follows:
This week Marsh’s morning routine was tending to the pigs and Shaina’s was tending to the horses and cows. That really means shovelling their poop into a bucket and dumping it in the compost pile. Then feeding the animals – carrying cut grass from a field and grinding it for the cows and horses, or feed mix for the pigs. It’s not a glorious job but the whole farm depends on it! Other morning routines include watering the garden, tending to the guinea pigs, and helping making breakfast.
Our work in the garden this week included lots of hoeing and prepping garden beds for Marsh, and weeding for Shaina, and we both did some planting (beans, corn, yucca, onions, lettuce) and harvesting (onions, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, turmeric, ginger, chillies, oranges).
This week our afternoon activity was ‘transformations’ which is making items in the kitchen to be sold in town. We roasted and ground coffee, made pineapple and cardamom jam, and passion fruit and ginger jam, and dried spices for a curry (ginger, turmeric, caraway). It was fun and nice to have an easier afternoon together. The kitchen ladies are quite entertaining to work with!
Right now there are about a dozen people taking a permaculture course at the farm, as well as about 4 other volunteers. Tourists come for 1-3 day tours and there is a family living there, and the farm staff. Typically there are around 25 people at the farm but this can go up to 50 depending on the day. More dishes to do, but also more hands to help do them! We have enough volunteers that we don’t have to do the morning routine everyday, which is nice. They’re a great bunch of people and it’s been super fun hanging out on the evenings and weekends together. We had a couple heated games of football/soccer with the whole crew. Unfortunately, English is spoken more often than Spanish but our Spanish vocabulary is improving.
Once a week, we have a cultural day. This week we went into Bahia de Caraquez to have a tour of EcoPapel, a handmade paper recycling business. It was started by the owners of Rio Muchacho Organic Farm and employs local women, providing an alternate industry to the environmentally destructive shrimp farming. Check out www.ecopapel.org – they make beautiful paper products decorated with wildflowers. We got to decorate our own bookmarks J
This weekend we all came into Canoa to do laundry, surf, eat pizza, and drink cervesas and fruity cocktails on the beach! We’ll be heading back to the farm this evening and back to the grind tomorrow! All in all, life on the farm is hard work but so rewarding. Eating the food you’ve worked hard to grow is so cool! Happy soil is a happy plant.
Ciao amigos!
M&S
P.S. Marsh’s Spanish farm name is Marcelito so feel free to use it! J
A typical lunch. The cups and spoons are made from gourds and the bowls from clay.
Marsh on the football pitch (at the Rio Muchacho school)
Marcelito es el nombre espanol de Marsh. Que es el nombre espanol de Shaina?
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