Rancho El Chuzo, General Cepeda, Coahuila, México

Hola mi gente, I hope everyone is doing well. A summary of the past week...

We arrived at Rancho El Chuzo last Sunday afternoon, just after the other WWOOFer had arrived. I´ll get the negative part out of the way now: the other WWOOFer sucks, total lack of conciousness and work ethic, if you ask me (or Koki). It has been part of the learning experience, though, as it has prompted us to discuss what we would do if we received such a WWOOFer on our future farm. Okay, onto the good stuff... The family who lives and works on the farm is made up of Bernardo (father), Anne (mother, French), Numa (son, 3 1/2 years old), Limaya (daughter, 9 months old), and José Luis (Bernardo´s father). Bernardo and Anne are the same ages as Koki and me; we are at very different points on very similar journeys. Anne came to the farm as a volunteer; she calls herself a permanent volunteer. They are a wonderful, welcoming family and we have become friends.

The house at Rancho El Chuzo

Anne, Bernardo, and Limaya in the garden

Aragon (a.k.a Numa in a costume made by Anne)

Rancho El Chuzo is located behind the General Cepeda town cemetery, about a five minute walk to town. On the farm there are cows, pigs, chickens, there was a burro until yesterday (someone bought it who could use it more, if they don´t work they can be a pain in the ass, pun intended), two Scotty dogs, a windmill that was for the well but has been replaced with a solar pump since there often wasn´t enough wind, solar panels for electricity, a graywater system (under construction), a blackwater system, a composting toilet (more like a latrine), impressive gardens (especially for such an arid region), reforested areas, lots of magueys (a type of agave, a crop older than corn with many uses), and an orchard (mostly peaches). The house is technically José Luis´, Bernardo and Anne have the foundation in place for their house but haven´t been able to continue with construction for some time. The house is very cool, adobe, carrizo roof, nice and cool in the day and cozy warm at night, they have a dorm-type room for WWOOFers where we slept the first night but since then we´ve been sleeping in the tent, the breeze and the stars and the giant orange moon were too enticing. They are off the grid, I mentioned the water and electricity, they cook and refrigerate (dorm fridge) with gas. We´ve adapted well to using little water and electricity and to living with intermitent use of these luxuries when there isn´t enough sun, which has been the case the past couple of days. Its kind of like going back in time in many ways. We all eat lunch together in the main part of the house, cooking and sharing meals has been a fun part of getting to know the family and the farm.

Piggies

Milk, yogurt, and cheese thanks to this baby´s mama

Burro

We have been working hard on several projects... We have been cleaning (mowing? weeding? I think I´m losing some English) the orchard with hand tools: machete, sling blade, and the rosadera (small toothed hand sickle, awesome tool!) to clean carefully around the bases of the trees. The other really hard physical labor we´ve been doing is working on the new graywater system (the old one didn´t work out, we´ve already learned some things to do and some things to not do when it comes to graywater). The new system will take graywater (from sinks and showers) to a small canal behind the house. The canal will lead to five trees that will be planted in holes we dug surrounded by a canal which will be filled with organic material. The water will thus be used to water the trees and the mulch will help anything besides water be composted and turned into soil. Digging the holes was a tough job, lots of rock, but we´re ready to plant trees now. These two jobs (orchard and digging holes) have been our morning jobs, before it gets too hot.

Working in the orchard

In the afternoons we´ve been cleaning cascavel chile peppers that are used to make the chorizo that they sell. This inolves cutting the stem off of dried chile peppers, cutting it open, removing the seeds and veins, and tearing the pepper in half. Its not so bad as long as I have gloves (which I didn´t the first day we did it, ouch!). Unfortunately they won´t be making chorizo while we´re here so we won´t actually get to participate in the rest of the process, but we do have the recipe! We have learned how to make lots of other yummy things and almost have quite a collection of recipes after just a week... granola, yogurt, several different cheeses, nopales (prickly pear cactus pads), Irish cream, all of these from José Luis. One day we made bread with Anne, starting by washing, separating, and drying the winter wheat they grew on the farm, then grinding it, making the dough, starting the fire in the adobe oven, and finally baking the bread there. We made several flavors, all with ingredients from the farm: granola, garlic and oregano, rosemary, fennel. In the end it was kind of dry (we forgot to put cups of water in the oven with the bread) and is definitely WHOLE wheat bread (the first batch of flour that we ground was extremely coarse).

Cascavel chile peppers for chorizo

Bread, ready to go in the adobe oven

We have been eating almost entirely from the farm, we love it! They grow wonderful tomatoes, garlic, onions, peppers, herbs, greens (arugula grows wild here!), peaches, pomegranites, cucumbers, corn... plus the dairy products, chorizo, and a few eggs. Peaches, apples, and pecans are all grown locally; we´re definitely still in North America! It rained on Friday night and yesterday, not a typical desert downpour, but a nice gentle rain most of the night and day, just what the gardens need. They plan to build a rainwater catchment system at Rancho El Chuzo using the tank that was part of the old graywater system to take full advantage of the sparse rains. Things definitely look much more alive today and lots of plants are flowering.

Yummmmmmmm

Last night we were all invited to a lamb roast at Rancho La Gloria, owned by the same family (Sofía and Emilio and their children) that owns the restaurant Los Portales that I mentioned in the last post. It was a wonderful evening! The lamb was delicious, raised and butchered on the farm, cooked over maguey leaves in a metal box with the fire built on top for about 4 hours. We also had tequila drinks with fresh quince fruit juice and cajeta de membrillo for dessert, all very typical. We were going to go to a baile (dance) before heading back to El Chuzo but we ended up staying at La Gloria until late and we were tired. There was a wedding yesterday evening and the baile was the reception. The tradition here is that everyone in town is invited to the party after a wedding. It would have been nice to go to the party and learn some new dances, but at least we got to hear the music from where we were (right up the hill from the baile). The party was at el castillo (the castle), a house (really, it is more like a castle) that was in the family many years ago, then sold, then bought by the family again. We´re planning to go back to La Gloria on Tuesday to really see the farm, including a machine they have to treat milk with pressure instead of pasteurizing it with heat to prolong shelf life in order to market it outside of General Cepeda (where many folks have their own cows) without destroying its delicious flavor. It sounds like Bernardo and Anne will sell their milk this way, with the milk from La Gloria, which will save them the time they currently spend selling the raw milk door-to-door in town.

Lamb and Rito, the cook

We have become friends with the family, it will be sad to leave on Wednesday. My birthday was last Tuesday and the family (and Koki) sang me the traditional Mexican birthday song, Las Mañanitas. I felt very much at home and will definitely never forget my 29th birthday. Sweet little Limaya has gotten very comfortable with Koki and me, fun but also useful as we are able to take care of her sometimes if Bernardo and Anne need to do something with both hands. Numa is a wild child, but so intelligent, I really can´t believe he isn´t even four years old. After kindergarten he goes to La Casa de Jugar (the Playhouse), run by Bernardo´s mother Tobi, where there are several rooms with different activities that the kids take part in as they please. This is not only important for the development of the children who go there, but for their mothers, who otherwise are homebound in the afternoon. Anne pointed out that in France, school lasts all day, giving women much more freedom, compared to Mexico where short school days and many other things basically prevent women from having much freedom. They have talked about moving to France, life seems like it would be easier in some ways (more like-minded people, less corruption, etc.) but they have invested so much here that it would be very hard to leave just now, too. Bernardo and Anne have both traveled and WWOOFed in many countries and are very knowledgeable, creative, hardworking people. We really hope they´ll be able to come visit us in Costa Rica one day and we definitely hope to come back to General Cepeda.

Koki learning to make queso chiuhuahua from José Luis

José Luis is a national treasure, a curator of the living museum that is northern Mexico. We have had many wonderful discussion with him on a wide variety of subjects and we have learned a lot about life in Mexico, a completely different reality than that of the USA or Costa Rica. He used to publish a newspaper as a way to educate people about the history of this country... true stories were taken from the national archive and published in a newspaper, just like present day but with the historical information and dates, including classified advertisements for selling slaves and such. José Luis is a trained and passionate historian, most interested in stories of everyday life and not of heroes. He worked in political campaigns for some time as well and shared with us some of his views on the political environment in Mexico. One party, PRI, was in control of Mexico for around 80 years (not the party he worked with). In those days there was one cartel that had a relationship with the government, was basically paid to do the government´s dirty work, and as a result dominated the other cartels. When things changed and PRI was no longer in control, this relationship changed, supposedly an end to the corruption, but in the end it just meant that the smaller cartels gained power and there is still tons of corruption in the government at many levels, and look where we are in terms of the narcos. To me, as an ecologist, it somewhat resembles the removal of a top-level predator from a system, the balance that existed, even though it might not have been ideal for everyone, was upset. Even this small town doesn´t escape the tight grasp of corruption. On September 15 Mexico will celebrate 200 years of independence, 100 years ago the Mexican revolution began, and in 2010 Mexico is again at a crucial point in its history.

Buenas noches...

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