This Salasacan Life

It has been raining a lot, even in Salasaca. In the late afternoons, the clouds sometimes clear up and you are treated to a couple hours of sun and breathtaking views, and then an even more breathtaking sunset usually follows suit. Not so bad.

With all of the rain, our crop up at the school has really shot up. It is amazing to see what a little water can do, especially compared to our drip irrigation system. (In addition to that, we only get irrigation water in our sector of the community one day a week, on Tuesdays.) Anyhow, the corn seems to have grown literally overnight. This is as green as things get, around here. In the recent photo, (besides the obvious corn), if you look hard enough, you can see: onion, radish, cauliflower, broccoli, lettuce, beans, peas, quinoa, wild spinach, chamomile, carrots, swiss chard, baby stinging nettles, ají pepper, aloe, nopal cactus, and tree tomato.*

Also, just compare the recent photo (at left) with a photo from one year ago (below). It seems like we have grown some stuff, that is for certain.

The apple, avocado, and citrus seedlings (not pictured) have also appreciated the long cold drink of water that the rain has given them. Hopefully someday, they will actually bear some fruit.

In the far right of the (top) picture, you may notice a chicken coop and a small fence (which predictably, is made out of... you guessed it... chicken-wire). This is our new experiment. We have 6 chickens (which have grown even faster than the plants lately). Two of them, someone realized, are roosters, so one will have to be eaten (by us) before they mature completely and start fighting. Darn. The coop itself was built and donated by some lovely volunteers. They (the chickens, not the volunteers) spend most of the day roaming around in their enclosure doing what it is that they do best: peck at stuff that they think might be food and bobble around. Both the coop and the fence are also movable, which is key. We can rotate them around the rows, where they aerate the soil for a period of time and also provide fertilizer for it. Then we plant again. The soil here needs lots of amending, and while our compost helps greatly, the caca de pollo fertilizer does even more so. We could buy it, I suppose, but it is expensive (not to mention stinky to haul around in sacks). Plus, why buy it when we can make it right here for a fraction of the cost? And have fresh eggs, too?

Otherwise, the kids at the school are all preparing for the end-of-the-school-year program, where they get to showcase what they’ve learned in the last year.

Me, well, I am getting ready for that, too. Along with the whole lamb we are going to roast in the pachamanka oven for the day of the program.






*Side bar: Does anyone know what tree tomatoes are, exactly? They are called “tomate de arbol” in Spanish, but I have never seen or heard of them outside of South America. As their name suggests, they grow in rather large (nay, treelike) plants, and are shaped like Roma tomatoes. They don’t seem to be tomatoes at all, though; or at least, they don’t taste anything like tomatoes. Their most common application is in juices.