Práctico en el campo

Highlights of the schoolweek continued.


Wednesday:

After tracking down my Organic Agriculture professor, I learned that the automayores were going on their first fieldtrip the next day. We visited Heredia to make natural bug repellant, and did so at the house of a friend or family member of one of the students. I felt awkward, as if I were invading, and ended up falling asleep on the bus and not meeting anyone. I was hoping that no one had noticed, but that was the first topic of conversation when I did start meeting people…whoops. They all turned out to be extremely nice, and kept including me in whatever was going on when I was hanging back. By the end of the day I felt awful for ever being annoyed with them, as their class really is more social than academic. The professor had a slideshow of pictures from last year’s class, which was mainly comprised of the same people, and we had two breaks for cafecitos and snacks. At the end of the trip, we really hadn’t done much work, but everyone had a lot of fun. I helped to strip oregano and peel garlic, and others worked on chiles and aloe. The ingredients were mixed, molasses or water were added, and the buckets were sealed up to be opened two weeks later. Bugs really don’t like smelly or spicy things, so we were told pretty much any mix would do, and that using molasses instead of water just gives the plants more nutrients when they are bug-proofed. The aloe was just to make it thicker…or something. As everyone was getting off the bus, one of the students told me to tell my tica mom not to worry, because they took good care of me. I’m looking forward to the next trip :)

That night I went to a belly dancing class, liked it and then decided to up my weekly amount of classes to ‘unlimited’. Unfortunately, as I was doing so I found out that belly dancing is a separate enrollment fee, but no harm was done as the first class is free. I decided to go ahead and pay for unlimited yoga classes anyways, and plan to go five or six times a week (we’ll see how long it takes for my body to adjust to the new level of exercise). The teacher that night was incredibly nice, and the class was both an easier level and smaller, so I enjoyed myself.

Bonus: Starting after that night, I had energy! I could tell my muscles were sore and tired, but I could walk and breathe and think again.


Thursday:

I went back to the farm to keep working, and found out that now the entire class will be working together instead of splitting off into smaller groups. Luckily for me, the girl with whom I’d spoken the most in the previous work trip, and who was both extremely nice and willing to help (she spoke English to me and the other student to introduce herself after hearing us speaking English, and keeps making sure I understand what is going on) has the most experience with our type of project and has become the project head. Although I feel like I know nothing about our work, I know I’m still helping and I make sure to keep busy, and I don’t feel as badly after learning that most students in the class haven’t done practical work yet either.

Our task was to set up the compost piles. The problem with this was that there is a certain proportion of carbon and nitrogen needed for the piles to decompose quickly/well, and that requires a certain proportion of green material to dry material. Two weeks ago, we chopped down everything in our patch, and so this week we were left with a ton of dry material and no green material. Most of the time working was spent chopping down more plants to get some green material, which was unfortunate, and the remaining time was spent building the compost heap. We used a layered technique in which green material, dry material, dirt and water were used, and then a little roof was built over the pile.

The best part of my day by far was when I felt a strange sensation on my hand, had the instant fear reaction to shake it off, then stopped myself and looked, saw a huge, green bug, almost shook it off just from surprise, and then realized it was a stick bug! I had NEVER seen one in the wild before, it was awesome! Somehow, it managed not to be machete-d while we were chopping green material, and ended up crawling on me when I was either chopping (my first time using a machete, and I don’t think it’s my tool of choice…I was pretty awful at it) or carrying the plants. It had these crazy, hooked feet that were sticky almost like Velcro, and was a little longer than the length of my palm. Everyone passed him around to take a look, and then I went with someone to put the bug faaaar away from where we were working, to make sure he was safe. Once I put him on the tree and looked away, I couldn’t find him again. Those are really neat bugs.

The rest of the day was spent on paperwork, so I didn’t get to go to yoga (probably a good thing, four hours of farmwork is hard) or change (well, I changed out of my dirt-filled farm clothes into my sweaty yoga clothes…). Later, I made it intact to choir, and then home. I am so glad I have Fridays off, I can’t imagine having days like these every day.