Mud is Luxurious!

The Mud Bathroom is almost up and ready for use! Here´s a little pictorial of our interns, some returning interns, friends, and us putting up the adobe walls, roofing, and plastering:

Installing the water pipes for the wood-fired hot water heater.

Mud facials anyone?

You might recognize these returning mate addicts...

The wild women interns!

The roof goes on. The roofing is of the same recycled material that we used for the mud cottage-- tetra pak and plastic bottles. Excellent insulation and lovely to look at too.
On to plastering...
More pictures to come... the finishing touches are in the works!

In between building, we find time to make good things-- like soap!


Here we are prepping the paint for the inside of the other bathroom (the community shower house). The painting is the first picture on this blog entry. We mixed up lime putty with iron oxide and linseed oil, then frescoed on some color.
The garden is sprouting up too, and we are working on replanting. We've been waiting out the rain for the last couple of days to add some more seeds.

Bonus photo: There was a costume double-birthday party not too long ago. Needless to say, we got creative and colorful...

Tiny Flowers and Muddy Feet

Ah, sweet fall is here, and the tiny flowers around us are poking out in sighing relief from the summer heat.

Still in the Internship, and the adobe bathroom is coming along in between fall rain showers. Makes for good mud stomping!

Coming up...Perfect corners!
Annie, the baker and brick-layer extraordinaire!
The tub space is prepared and leveled-- the most detailed work of the whole building.

A butterfly testing out the new window. (Photos to come in next entry...)

The garden.... well, we got the earth super boosted with compost and love, planted loads of seeds, watered with river water every evening, then wouldn't you know it-- the storm clouds burst and rained forth liters and buckets and barrels and more! Many of our freshly planted seeds washed away, and some little few survived. And so we continue to be a center for learning and experimentation in an unforgiving and unpredictable climate. So, we will plant again...

This is the okra, still going strong. Some other survivors are the radishes, turnips, cilantro, garlic, elephant garlic, and chard. Not too bad, just a starting point to start again!

And of course, the kicthen is the center of life at Mama Roja. The bread and baking delights just keep getting better and better!

Our sweet butterfly friends, still kissing our sweaty foreheads and floating through the kitchen.

Digging In and Planting It Up

'Tis the season of fall here in Misiones, and we have been busy with our interns prepping the garden beds and planting all the winter goodies, including elephant garlic (above.)

We super jazzed our soil, adding Paloma's composted cow manure, decomposed sawdust, our own humanure compost (10 months of cooking!), plus some tea dust. Our bed were double-dug last year, so this time around we just used the spading fork to turn in all the goodies and loosen up the clay chunks.

Planting included carrots, fava beans, caulifower, broccoli, lettuces galore, arugula, rocket, parsley, and a whole lot more herbs and veggies. We received some seeds from afar to try out here, next to our regionally-adapted varieties. We are also experimenting with some winter-loving tomatoes (is there such a thing?) and some peppers.
The interns started a lovely garden of their own, with lots of seeds and plantlings.


The kitchen garden is getting love too. We hand-water with our river water when it doesn't rain for a few days (or weeks...)

Chicken update: We have 11 new chicks, 10 of which hatched in the forest under two mama hens hiding out from us and the predators. Now we have a lot of chirping going on!

Our new building, the bathroom for the log cabin is just getting started. Here is the first part, leveling the site.

...And getting it flat and prepped for its adobe walls.

The floor (red of course!) and the door.In the Kitchen: Peanut Butter making! It is local peanut harvest time and we are taking advantage and grinding up some jars of goodness. (Our peanuts did fairly well, but we are saving our peanuts as seed for next season. Our neighbors had a good harvest, so we traded some peanuts from them for our grinding.)

And apples too... lots of applesauce for the palate. Mmmmm... Good way to make use of rainy days.

Fare Thee Well, Paloma

Paloma, the great horned beast of Mama Roja, the black beauty of the farm, has alas gone onto greener fields and a brighter future.

She came to us nearly a year and half ago, pregnant and hungry. She grew fat in the forest fields of Mama Roja, and taught us innumerable lessons. She gave us milk a-plenty, which we used to make everything we could-- cheeses, butter, flan, dulce de leche, yoghurt, hot cocoas. We had never had a cow before, much less milked one everyday. She was a good teacher, albeit ornery and headstrong.

For those of you who don’t know, each cow has their own special temperament. They suffer emotions, hormonal changes, inner turmoil, good days and bad. Paloma is no exception—moody, inconsistent and sensitive. Milking her was always an adventure. Some days, she thwacked my head every 30 seconds with her disgusting tail (which dripped with fresh poop and urine). Other days, she danced, hoof to hoof, side-stepping her way out of getting milked, sending me into fits of frustration. Then, there were mornings of breathless delight, in which she stood there, angelically chewing her cud, pleasant as could be, even spreading her legs a little as if offering her milk to me. Ah, sweet mornings of woman and beast, united in the ancient practice of milking! She let me caress her belly and sing praise songs while she patiently stood there and batted her loving eyes at me. Of course, sometimes that was her moment to–-wham!—give the bucket a swift kick and cover me with warm milk! Yes, she taught me many lessons…

Paloma birthed her calf here on the farm, magically and unassisted, next to her milk shed before the dawn light lit up the January sky. Suki, the sweet brown cow, is now tall and strong, gentle and playful. She’ll be a good milk cow one day. And if dogs feel longing, I know Lulu’s gonna miss her dearly.
In the end though, this jungle valley was not a suitable place for her, or for us with her. Without a proper fenced pasture(our land is sporadic jungle with lush spurts of green grasses) she lived tied to trees. A tethered life is a disappointing one for a creature meant to roam and graze, to freely wander and make her fill of her 4 stomachs. Plus, it turned us into her servants, escorting her out to eat everyday, making sure she had shade and water and a variety of grasses. They will both be better off with our dear friends and neighbors, who have a large pasture and other milk cows to keep them company. Plus, we can go visit them whenever we want. And maybe I’ll even drop by and milk Paloma come next September when her next calf is born, that is, if Paloma lets me…

We are grateful for everything Paloma gave our lives, the lessons her presence taught us, the feeling of deep connection and responsibility of caring for such a great creature. Thank you, Paloma, and Suki too. Fare thee well.

February Finishes

Oh, the buildings are lovely! The bathhouse is mostly done, with 3 plaster coats and an indoor lime paint on the dry composting toilet side. Left side shower, right side toilet.

First layer of lime paint going on...

Before the final plaster layers. You can see the cracks here, which we filled with our sandier 2nd and 3rd coats.

And the still wet but finished toilet room, under the green transparent roof.

The outside view...
We also finished the plasters on the cottage this last month.

The key... lots of water, lots of sand.

Smooth and dry on the adobe side...
Many other activities going on here too... Besides the cooking and the eating (!), basket weaving and musical afternoons.
And spider webs galore...

And the chickens hatching out chicks, and this stubborn mama hen who demanded to brood on top of our tool box on the front porch! She gives us the evil eye everytime we walk in and out of the cabin!

Oh, and Lulu, as usual, on her perch on the sand pile. She just wants to play and play and play...

The Bamboo Bathroom has been finished and is being put to good use!