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!

Plaster Bugs

The thrush of summer is upon us. Post-holiday heat and a new year of plans and wishes. We have a full group of apprentices here learning the hands-on of earthen building and gardening, and a bit on the homestead how-to.

Our first big project of the year is finishing up old projects left undone. Here we are mixing up a batch of clay-rich goodness to smear on our bathhouse walls. We are adding a good amount of sand and Paloma's manure to our earth to get a consistency of sticky-and-strong. (We also used a similiar mix to finish the adobe and bottle walls up to their curved edge air-venting top.)

After stomping well, the mud goes on with lots of love from our apprentices and curious passers-by who want to unlock the mysteries of earthen building.

(The post-and-beam roof was put up by Kimberly and our neighbor Claudio just before the holidays, which gives us a guarenteed dry work space and dry haven for the bathouse walls.)

Here's a good shot of our experimenting with the first layer of plaster on the bathhouse, which is cracking a bit but not flaking off. We will try adding more sand and some pine needle fiber next time around. This project, afterall, is all about experimentation and trying new things to get that gorgeous earthen shine.

Simultaneously, we are adding the finishing wall touches to the cabana. Here is a shot of the bottle-and-cob arch going up over the door. More plaster is also being applied to the adobe backwall, which was finished off with bottles and bricks just recently.

Other than building, our energies are also going toward salvaging what the bugs didn't eat and the jungle didn't take over from our gardens. Our tomatillos (or Peruvian cherries) did quite well, despite the invasion of hungry insects. We harvested and ate most, and even saved a few to experiment with making a liquer, which is looking quite delicious on our fermentation shelf.

Okay, so the humbing truth about starting your own homestead and wanting everything to go perfect on 80 acres in the first year and a half: uum, it doesn't. Take our corn, for example. We lovingly planted 3 varieties in 3 separate fields hoping to grow what we needed for us and our animals for the year. With all the sunshine and rain, we thought we were going to be picking arm-fulls of yellow-toothed delights soon enough. But... the bugs and the weeds beat us to them, or rather, I should say, we saw them coming, and didn't do a darn thing about them. We were so busy with the ten-thousand other projects going on at the same time that we just plain ran out of energy to save our corn. So, we learned a valuable lesson in working close to the "home zone" and keeping projects and planting to managable sizes. We did manage to save a few precious ears, and learn a good lesson in scale and the limits of our energy supplies.

Bonus Photo: What came first-- the leaf or the bug?

Year Endings and Keepings On...

Another wonderful sub-tropical month for us, with lots of rain and goings-on. The Internship finished up and we all learned so much from the great experience of coming together to do some gardening, mud-hutting, and sustainable sharing. We are all due a brief break, one for reflection and a re-gathering of energies.

How about the cottage...

Creative hands plastered and sculpted the outside of the cottage.
The roof... this is a view of the framed building and roof, so that you can get an idea of its luscous site.
The roofing material is recycled from tetra-briks and plastic soda bottles. This is a close up.

We used 3 different Earthen building techniques for the cottage. The foundation wall is Earth-bagged around a post-and-beam framing. Then we filled in wires and wood with "Chorizos" or wattle-and-cob sausages.
The south wall is adobe bricked with mud mortar, the third technique.

The bricks were then plastered over with our mud mix, and fancied up with bottles and a niche.
An inside view of the car windows and bottles with the first layer of plaster.
The outside view after a few days of drying.

The cottage is absolutely lovely. Not finished, due to loads of rain, but super close. Our project for January? You guessed it... Plaster and painting.And let's not forget the garden... an onion flower just about to put out seed.

Whoa, zapallitos! These little squash delights are growing happily in the Intern's keystone garden.
And the yoga platform was put to good use with our morning yoga sessions and meditations.And just what did we do with all that wine we made? One guess.... (The favorite was the dandelion delight, the yellow one in the middle!)


Amanita sends her love from the new (larger!) earthen refrigerator.

Mud Cabin and Other Delights

Yes, still a million butterflies fluttering around us as we continue to enjoy the joy of learning. It has been a rainy month (totally opposite of last year's drought at this time) and our rivers are at record highs (vs. record lows last year.) We have been able to do lots of experiments and work with our interns, despite the weather, or rather working with the weather and taking some rainy afternoons off.

Our Earthen cottage is coming along so wonderfully! Here are some photos of it going up.

The roof is made out of recycled Tetra-Brik and plastic bottles, smushed into long tiles. It is 8mm th¡ck which adds thermal protection, plus it is quiet in the rain, pretty to look at (lots of colors), and easy to install.

Three of the walls (above the Earthbagged base wall) are made in "chorizo" style, or sausages of straw and mud mix. Wattle-and-cob is another way of saying it too. We framed with scrap wood at first, then switched to wire between the posts to wrap our mud-straw around.

Here's the chorizo-making station inside the building. The straw is all harvested from our rye grass winter crop. We tried a wild growing straw but it was too coarse for the wrapping bit.

The chorizos go onto the wall and with a little hand-sculpting and love they can wrap and frame windows and bottles, etc.

Our windows are recycled from the scrap yard and junk stores.

We also used old car windows and loads of bottles...

And drank lots of yerba mate in the process!

Pesticide making: leaves from 3 different plants in the jungle, put in a bucket of rainwater and let sit for at least a week till it's nice and stinky, then spray onto the garden to fend off evil over-eating grasshoopers and the like.

We took the interns on a field trip to see Professor Eric Barney and his alternative power creations. We also visited the Chacra Suiza and saw their bio-gas and gardens.

So, we are hoping to finish up the building this week, put in an adobe wall, give some love to the gardens, and keep staying dry from our massive rains!

Bonus photos:
This fella was gigantic!
And these will be gorgeous butterflies soon enough...

This is a photo from our friends property where we took a little day trip when we were on break from the program.