Beans, Aloe, and A Salamander

Holy beans! We planted a handful of these gorgeous red beans (seeds given to us by a local farmer at last year's seed exchange fair here in Misiones) and waited and waited and waited. The vines grew green and lush and strong... but no flowers, no beans, no nothing for months. Then, lo and behold, after a long hot, dry season, the beans beaned! And boy did they bean! We have been harvesting and eating and saving up for next season's planting and the upcoming seed exchange fair.

The winter garden is coming along lovey too-- carrots, beets, arugula, lettuce, peas, and other such delights. The double-dug bio-intensive beds (plus all that soil love we gave) are really working well.

We also have been planting oats and spelt in our big field that was formerly overgrown with pesky elephant grass (not so pesky to Paloma, of course, but we have plenty more for her elsewhere). The plans are to keep working out the elephant grass in this field, replacing it with food crops and grains.
Now we have an Aloe Vera garden too, thanks to someone tossing tons of aloe plants out into the road in town, which we happily scooped up and took home. The start of a medicine plant bed?

Other pictures of the quincho (community kitchen):
The leftover floor boards from our cabin became little tables for our cross-legged dining experience-- inspiration from or friends inThailand.
And of course there are lots of delicious things coming out of our kitchen, like crepes and empanadas, all homemeade of course!
Update on the animals: Lulu and Amanita are happy and in love with Rambo, who is perking up after his summer depression, and even wags his stub of a tail in the early morning. Paloma is still giving us plenty of milk, and Suki the calf is big and strong and showing little nubby horns. The chickens, well they give us an egg or two every so often (even though we gave them that luxury coop not too long ago-- stingy little critters.)
Just for the curious: this is how we are keeping ourselves warm in our cabin this winter. Here, this stove is called a salamander, which blends perfectly into our rustic little house.

And this is Kim's new favorite item... an old pedal sewing machine that works like a charm to make curtains (out of recycled fabric.)

Flor de Mayo... the beautiful blooming May flower was given to us by a lovely little old lady with an inspiring garden and orchard, in which she produces all of her own food and then some on a 1 hectare plot of land. And she even has room for flowers!

(This blog entry was written with assistance from Gigi, an 8 year old American card shark passing through Misiones with her family.)

The Kitchen!, Some Musical Delights, and A Chicken House

Finally! We have created a glorious expanded kitchen space, complete with a non-dirt floor (cement), some cabinets and sinks, drainpipes, patio roof, and plenty of sitting space for watching the rainstorms and animals! This has been a long time coming, and we are so happy to have it up and comfortably in use.
(The photos are not so good, as our camera has decided to add a solarized flare to the images, and we can´t find anyone in town to help us fix it. So for now, you have to squint a little...)
This is with the roof extension just as we were working on the patio floor. Trying to keep the dogs, chickens, and cat off the newly smoothed surface was next to impossible! We had to trade off doing Floor Guard Duty, and even that didn´t work out completely. So, we have some paw marks and scrathes for a little added personality. Here´s Lulu lounging dangerously close to the fresh kitchen floor.

And us lounging in the sun on our new patio floor. Ahhhh...
The floor turned out to be in 3 levels --kitchen up high, patio in the middle, and storage/seed saving space lowest. We built a small brick retaining wall (materials from a neighbor brick-maker), then filled in the space with the dirt from our well hole, packed it down, and topped it off with a thin bit of cement and added iron oxide paint-- red, of course! Have I mentioned how glorious it is?? After 10 months of dirty powdery muddy slopey slanty sloppy frustrating un-fabulous floor, we will never take this luxury for granted!

Let´s see, the kitchen has been our main focus for a while now, but in our "free time" we managed to get up a chicken coop too (a little late for the kitchen floor). We had to round up all the chickens and roosters from the jungle trees and entice them with corn into their delux coop. The volunteers built a really cool simulated jungle branch entanglement for their perching delight, and they seem to really be at home now... even giving us an egg or two now and again.

While we worked on the floor, we had to move out our Big Bertha cook stove, but that didn´t stop our dulce de leche making (from Paloma´s milk). Here´s a delcious vat on its way.

The Yoga Shala has also been receiving extra love. We have added some exterior details and will keep working bit by bit to fancy it up too.

Also, we have been expanding our learning sphere into the musical realm. We have some great musician folks who are patient enough to teach us to play some songs on the instruments of our choice. Kim is learning the Quena (a traditional flute from northern Argentina) and Marcelo is reuniting with the guitar, plus we invite percussion, voices, and anything else others want to add to our musical menagerie.



And the long drought seems to be over-- our spring is full again, the plants are greening up, and our garden is ready to hold more veggies. The recent wonderful rainstorms make us all rejoice!

Plowing, Snakes, and Dirty Feet

This is a quick note.... more photos to come, and the real updates on our hard work and growing progress too. For the curious and the desperate for long-overdue Mama Roja news, here's the skinny.

Well, the well is still being tick-tick-ticked and knock-knock-knocked. It is coming, so says Marcelo, and one day we will be thankful for the generous spring beneath us... Right now, it is a project we do on the side, when we aren't doing ten thousand other things...And we've plowed one field with Claudio's bueyes (oxen) and are prepping it for a nice planting of oats, amaranth, and other grains.

In order to clear the field of Elephant Grass (the blessed and pesky weed), there was some serious handfuls of burnt leftovers to get out of the plow's way. Dirty legs and bodies, and soon to be beautiful earth growing grains.And the milk is still a-flowin'. Thanks to Paloma and her super teets, we are full bellied on dulce de leche, flan, and other sweet milky treats.
And there was that one snake (a pit viper) that crossed us in the jungle, that Claudio killed, and the Slovac kid ate... A rare event, but true... and well, I guess okay with Mama Roja. Circle of life, and first experiences?
Photo bonus... more mantis love!

Where Is Mama Roja?

 Mama Roja is in Misiones, Argentina, situated in a rural sub-tropical valley 20 km from the town of Obera.

For specific directions, send an email to mama.roja@yahoo.com. 

Mini Eggs, Hairy Men, and Fall Garden

The fall equinox just past, and our summer is officially over, although the warm temps and sunny days have far from ceded. We are long overdue for some rain, but are taking advantage of the nice days to do some labor of love.

We just put in our fall garden-- hand-plowed (double-dug) beds enriched with our first batch of homemade compost, Paloma poop, and some fermented leafy anti-bug juices. Before planting, we built a fence around the beds with "costaneras" (leftovers from the sawmill up the road) to keep the chickens and dogs and cows out!

And our old friends Minera and Fazera (the giant white oxen) were back (with our neighbor Claudio) doing some work in the yerba mate.Over the elephant grass and through the woods, in the cart we go!

We collected tons of elephant grass to use as fodder, and to dry out for use as matter for the compost bins and to experiment with in our adobe brick mix. And of course, there has been the usual goings on... egg collecting from our chickens (we get lots of different sizes) and we are building them a new larger coop right now. And milking Paloma... who has tamed down enough to get about a gallon (4 liters) of milk every morning. She behaves herself so long as we give her a heap of elephant grass to distract her. Meanwhile, Suki is growing so big and strong, and so tame that she nuzzles up to just about anyone--even Amanita the cat! We have just about finished the last details of the cabin (I know I keep saying that). Most recently, we built an inside staircase out of a fallen hardwood tree--- it is ten thousand times better than that pokey pointy ladder we were using for the past few months! Now we can get up to our look-out tower bedroom with style (and ease.) Other news... the mystery jungle plant is here again, this time with an inside view of fruit and seeds. Not the Kiwano, as some folks suggested. What could it be??
And Marcelo has shed a layer of long curly hair and is back to his clean-cut disguise... he can now meditate in hair peace.

This photo is actually from way before, but it has good, goofy memories in it. Us and our beloved volunteers, who help make this project and homestead possible, and fun! Thanks everyone!

Yoga, Stick Bugs, and Chickens

The last of our summer garden has been harvested (mmm... pumpkins and squashes!) and we are just about to start digging our fall beds. We are getting to know the land better now, and have a good idea of where the plants will be happiest with plenty of sunshine this winter. Hopefully, we can put in a little greenhouse over the beds too.

Anybody know this mystery plant (the photo below)? The seeds were given to us at the annual provincial seed exchange, and the plant and fruit are wonderful vining delicious delights, but I have no idea what they are called! Any help out there??

The Yoga Platform is in use! We have a roof, a floor, an entryway, some stairs up, and a few half-walls showing the gorgeous jungle all around! There is still some fine-tuning to do, like shelving, a door, painting, and sanding, but so far so "AUM-y".

The stone-adobe bathroom is still in process, with the stone foundation walls almost finished. Next we will put up a temporary roof (to protect the structure from afternoon rainstorms) and start on the earthen and recycled bottle part of the walls. !!

Chicken update... 5 new little hens and 3 big ones were donated to the farm recently, which brings our total chicken population up to 14 (not including the 2 newly hatched chicks which "disappeared", either at the paws of a curious kitty or in the jowls of a lurking jungle lizard. . ) Since the little white chickens are tree-dwellers, it´s hard for us to find their eggs. Occasionally we hear the "BAK-BAK-BGAWK!" egging call and can track down their nests. Hopefully the 3 new big chickens will be more faithful to their coop and make our egg-harvesting easier!

The well hole is also coming along. We hit a layer of hard rock, and then stared at it scratching our heads for a few days. In the meantime, while reading one of our books, we came acroos the ingenious idea of lighting a fire in the well, then once it was really really hot, throwing cold water over it to break the rock (poor man´s dynamite?). So, we tried it... and it worked! It´s not magic and poof! easy now, but we can chip away and get big chunks, and have even hit a porous layer and water started to seep in from the sides! So, we´ll keep digging and maybe light another fire... slow going, but it´s coming.

The rain of late has brought hot, humid days, refreshing evenings, and tantalizing rainbows. Look closely at this one--- it´s a double!