Cerro Verde

One of the things I´ve enjoyed most about staying with farm people has been the opportunity to participate in farmer´s markets and meet the communities that surround them.  William and Angie participate in a small but close knit market on Saturdays that recently welcomed a newcomer - Cerro Verde.  This community of four farms (and growing!) invited us out to their farms to share their land with us. The day we spent there with other vendors from the same market turned out to be one of my favorite Costa Rican afternoons so far.

The journey to the farm was an adventure in and of itself.  We bounced and rolled through Costa Rican backcountry the whole way, gasping at the dramatic valleys and craning our necks at howler monkeys as they alternately whooped and lounged.

By the time we pulled up, I had already had a lot of beauty for one day,  but I was in for a lot more.  We began with a short talk (some professors from universities around the country were also visiting, since this group of farmers is something of a novelty), about the dreams and realities of the farmers of Cerro Verde.  The project has been going on for some ten years, slowly transforming dense cattle-trodden and overworked-by-coffee land into healthy, producing, organic farms.  It was absolutely inspiring to hear Ticos speak passionately about organic farming and the future of both our food and our planet. Hearing the farmers recount their transition from traditional farming practices to the ones they use now, and hearing all of the peer pressure stories, trial and error stories, and triumph stories was enlightening and helped me understand both the challenges and rewards of their livelihood. Each of them positively beamed as he talked about his parcel of land. After some questions and answers, we divided into groups and got to look around and see everything for ourselves.

Our guide, Maurin, and his precocious daughter, led us past coffee plants peeking out of the shade and onto the field that he farms with his family.

Rows upon rows of produce warmed in the sun, while seedlings poked out of the seed trays in the greenhouse.  We walked, picked, munched, and learned.

I was struck silent by the beauty of where we were.  The views were outrageous, the food beautiful and healthy, waiting for the right moment to be carried into town.  And all of it was happening in a way that would preserve, rather than endanger, this land and its owners.
   Later, we filled up on lunch produced with food from the farm, bought up some of the food we´d seen right there in the soil, and piled into the car to head back.  On our way out of the farm, Maurin burst out of the house and waved us down.  What was wrong? Then I saw: his arms were full of tiny sweet bananas, two for each of us. I left full, inspired, and happy.

Los Arboles

The view from the back porch of Los Arboles.

While WWOOFing was my original inspiration for moving down to Costa Rica, I have since discovered that the system here leaves a lot to be desired. I was lucky enough to get referred to a lovely non-WWOOFing farm in the Chinchillas, and was recently lucky again when I found Los Arboles through some volunteers I met while on the farm.

Los Arboles is a farm in transition run by a lovely American couple, William and Angie.  They bought their land six years ago and have since planted over 2500 trees there! Angie in particular is beautifully passionate about trees and plants - it's inspiring to hear her teach about each one and see her face light up as she finds new growth or a newly sprouted seed.  She is also inspiring in her own right.  Fifteen years ago, she survived a 900 foot fall while rock climbing and the ensuing coma and memory loss to become the strong willed tree-hugger she is today.

Angie feeds Lula some of her daily carrots.
(Lula is an absolute carrot junkie.)

Over my time at the farm, I mostly helped Angie move her new vegetable garden forward.  We moved around the plumbing and began the process for installing a drip irrigation system, and I went to work amending the soil: hand tilling, mixing in manure, leaves, and ash from the wood stove, and taking out stones.  I left behind eight small bean plants stretching their legs in newly rich soil.

I also got to work with Sonny (a volunteer I knew from Earth Rose Farm and a beautiful person) and William two days on some cabinas that William and Angie have begun carving out of a sandstone cliff.  Crazy, I know.  But a few hours with a crowbar shaving sand out of stone can be very cathartic. And, as a reward, we got to visit a little hidden waterfall and splash the dust and sand out of our hair.

Sonny keeps hard at work on the window
(while I take a water / photo break!)

The sweet reward.

At night, I had the priveledge of sleeping out underneath the outrageous sky, blessed by an absence of mosquitos.  Waking up during the night and remembering where I was and what I was doing was such a treat.

 My bed. :)

Guanacaste

As I mentioned before, I'm in the Guanacaste region of Costa Rica right now.  It's an area with a lot of history, and very distinct from the Zona Sur, where I've been with the Chinchillas.  The land is flatter and drier, the accents are different, and the roads are better.  It's amazing in such a small country that so much can change about the landscape and the people in just a few hours.

Learn more about Guanacaste and its history here.

On the Road Again

Having completed a hefty five and a half months on or around the Chinchilla farm, I recently cut the cord for some serious wandering.  I currently have a plane ticket back to the States for July 28th, so time is slowly ticking to a close for me here. (Barring my changing said ticket - always a possibility!)

First, I spent about a week at a friend's home in San Isidro, coming slowly out of the culture shock of not living on the farm anymore.  Things like a hot shower, a room I could close the door to and know that no one else was on their way in, and whole-grain based vegetarian meals were at once jarring and rejuvenating. My friend was generous with his time and his space, and I left there ready to travel and explore.

My first destination? Guanacaste, the northwestern zone of Costa Rica.  You'll hear more about it in the next post!

Happy Juan Santamaría Day!

History lesson!

Tapa Dulce

Warning: long post ahead! Kept realizing how long it was getting, but still wanting to share more! Sorry. :)

Since I arrived in October, I´ve been patiently waiting to be part of a big event on the farm: making tapa dulce. It´s something that the Chinchillas do every few months - as often as the sugar cane field returns to a dense, sweet, jungle of stalks.  Last Wednesday, I got the word.  Early in the morning, I pulled on long pants and long sleeves and headed out into the cañal. While neighborhood men carefully selected the sweetest (oldest) stalks, shaved them of leaves, and sliced them from their roots, I hauled armful after armful toward the trapiche. 

 Mom and Mike pose in the sugar cane field during their visit.

Basically a large rotating press which feeds the extracted juice into a pair of enormous pots, the trapiche mostly sits waiting, hidden in a corner of the farm away from everyday view.  But this day it became a hot, noisy factory.  Once we had a big enough pile to satisfy my host-dad Memo, we fired up the machine and got to work.  He fed cane after cane into the clanking machine and I grabbed the husks as they slithered out like fresh pasta.  The bundles of husks will be burnt as fuel the next time we make dulce, but find a second life in the mean time as bedding for the pigs (and later fertilizer!)

The press with its impressive gears, with piles of bagazo behind.

Dark, swampy green cane juice quickly filled the gigantic pots below us as we worked, and soon it was time to start cooking.  After all the dirty work of harvesting and crushing sugar cane comes the fun and delicious work of cooking it.  Each stage of the five hour process has a name and a treat to taste, and all of us dutifully ate ourselves sick.

A few of many of the delicious stages of sugar:

Dirty and cut up by the sugar cane - ready to start eating.  

This is the simplest treat - sugar cane with the husk cut away.  Sweet, gushing, and refreshing.

Atolillo.

The first byproduct of cooking - a superfine foam that is just barely sweet but very velvety.

 

 Espumas.

As the mixture comes to a boil, a huge spoon with lots of holes in it is used to mix and fluff the juice. The millions of bubbles are also scooped off and eaten with a spoon - it has a texture like the head of a beer.

 

Rondas.

This pic is of the very rim of the cooking pot.  As the pot is stirred, foam laps onto the edges and begins to cook there.  As the foam is scraped off, it turns just a tiny bit sticky.  This was my favorite stage.

Pruebas.

Look how far the juice has cooked down at this point!  Wooden paddles are scooped into the pot and then swished in buckets of water.  The stained-glass sugar that comes off is tested for how fast it breaks - this indicates if the sugar is ready for the trough.  But it also tastes absolutely delicious.  Toasty, chewy, and warm. Important to be careful about fillings with this stuff.

After a mysterious point of perfection is reached in the large cooking pot, the sugar is poured into this large trough and stirred constantly for around 10 minutes.  Here, the consistency moves from glassy and smooth to more granular.

A small portion of the sugar mixture is scooped out to make sobado, a delicious candy that will be shared with friends and neighbors.

And then, finally, it´s time.  The sugar gets poured into mold after mold, sets for a surprisingly few minutes, and then gets flipped with a THUNK onto the table to turn out the molds.  What you´re left with, after an entire day of crushing, cooking and stirring (and just the beginning of the stomachache that is to come), is:

Tapa Dulce.

Food, Food, and more Food.

One of my favorite things that I have inherited from my mom is a curiousity and excitement over new foods.  From my dad´s side, I was impressed with the idea that food should be a celebration, and not an obligation.  Both ideas continue to inspire me.  When people look at my photos from my travels here so far, they often comment that I have a lot of pictures of food.  What can I say? On the farm, the food we grow inspires awe in me because I have the priveledge of living alongside it.  Out and about, food inspires me as a window into the people I am visiting.  Following are some recent shots I took while travelling in Granada and on my last days at Finca Chinchilla.

Donut! Bought from an ancient lady slowly waving a horse tail over her wares to keep the flies off. Unfortunately, it tasted like rush hour.  I suspect the fumes of busy Granada had been working on it for a while.

 Jocotes.  A little sweet, a little sour. The perfect breakfast.

The city of Granada is obsessed with hot dogs.  Seriously.  I counted at least one hot dog cart for each block in the busy parts of the city.  How could I leave without eating one?

Did you know that cashews grew like this? I had to buy some cashews for the family to convince them that the bottom part was just as good as the fruit.

Rose apples.  Perfect for pulling off the tree as you pass underneath on horseback.

The Chinchillas absolutely war over these, which are called guavas here (very confusing at first.) To eat them, you simply suck off the white furry part and leave the seed behind.

Starfruit, pulled off the tree just behind the kitchen.  These are tiny but sweet enough to eat just as they are.