Updates from Granja Valle Pintado

Lack of access to internet and non-stop action on the farm have kept me away from the keyboard for quite some time, but I am going to attempt a brief update on all the highlights of the last two months.  I have some pictures up on Picasa at http://picasaweb.google.com/JSant27/GranjaVallePintadoMarch2010Update?feat=directlink

First off, for those of you wondering, the earthquake did no damage here, although some people outside of town reported feeling small tremors.  A couple years ago the volcano in Chaiten, further North of us in Argentina, erupted and covered Bolson in a layer of ash.  That volcano reportedly had a small eruption a couple days ago but no ash fell here.  Just goes to remind people that we are in a geologically active area.

The farm has been a full house since the new year began, with an average of over ten people living together.  Smooth community living requires lots of patience and careful planning, especially when there is no electricity, limited indoor space, and limited access to food and materials, but it always seems to work out and the atmosphere is one of sharing and learning and caring.  It is also an atmosphere of fiesta, so there are constant bonfires at night with everyone playing various instruments and drinking out of 5 L bottles of wine referred to as "Dama Juanas."  The people that come are a fairly diverse bunch--Americans, Canadians, Argentines, Colombians, from 18 to 43 in age, some hippies, and ex-banker, some college students, a beekeeper, girls, boys.

In January we had a special asado.  Some vegetarians wanted to experience this traditional Argentine barbecue, but they decided they would feel better going through the entire process, so we bought a live goat and butchered it ourselves.  We had a small ceremony prior to the slaughter in which we said thanks.  We sensed that the animal sensed what was happening as it relaxed under our tensed hands.  It bled from the jugular for several minutes. The gurgling and gasping and small seizures were unsettling but I was left feeling that we killed it in a conscientious way, far more humane than industrial slaughterhouse methods.  We skinned it and butchered it and tried to use all that we could, saving the skin to dry, eating the liver, brain, and heart, making blood sausage.  The meat was delicious and the experience was powerful.  For me its healthy to know and understand what happens before the food hits the plate.

We also caught a hare in a trap set to prevent it from eating the vegetables in the garden.  It was skinned, marinated, and cooked in a delicious stew.  Alex's cousins made a hat out of the skin.

I have gone on a couple overnight hikes.  One was to the summit of Mount Piltriquitron (mapuche for "hanging from the clouds), which affords 360 views of The Andes in Argentina and Chile, as well as the vast Argentine steppe.  We camped at a refugio the first night and summitted in the morning.  The other was to a refugio near a glacier called Hielo Azul, a 17 km hike from the farm.  Both refugios are stocked entirely by supplies carried on long, hard, steep trails, either by people or horses.  A crew of people live up there all summer to maintain it and receive guests, who pay to stay inside the refugio or camp outside.  There are bathrooms and food for purchase.

We poured a concrete floor in the community kitchen over the course of four days and finished it with natural paints and plant imprints.  The job involved carting at least 20 wheelbarrows of sand and the same of gravel up from the river.  Cement is a tough material to work with and I'm glad to have had this learning experience.  Pending jobs for the community kitchen include finishing the roof with a cement/earth mixture and finishing the walls with clay plasters and natural paints.

Every Wednesday we do harvests for the associates of the farm.  We get up early to get the vegetables before the sun hits, as sunlight sends sugars and nutrients into the roots and out of the leaves.  We separate, weigh, and rinse the vegetables and put together some killer baskets.  Recently we have been sending out things like kale, chard, rutabaga, carrots, onions, lettuce, parsley, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, basil, dried mint, homemade beer, elderberry wine, etc.  We have about 6 or 7 varieties of tomatoes and they are incredibly beautiful, by far the most impressive product of the garden.  We have harvested garlic and it is drying.

The summer has been peculiar in the sense that it has been rainy and cold more than it should be rainy and cold.  There are hot and sunny days but not as many as the locals expect.  This weather has led to reduced or tardy harvests for fruits, a big income producer for the region.  We did have a few weeks of beautiful raspberries from our bushes and are now enjoying the fruit of a gorgeous plum tree outside the kitchen.  I am time and again shocked at how cold it gets at night versus how hot it can get on a sunny day.  Makes dressing for work pretty difficult.  A couple weeks ago we had a killer frost overnight and lost all of the outside squash and much of the corn.  Such is the difficulty of farming in Patagonia.

We just started harvesting the rye and will soon begin with wheat.  A friend of Alex´s built a thresher that takes the plant in and sends out clean separated whole grain.  We still harvest the plants with a hand scythe so its a pretty labor intensive process.  Yesterday we did a process of making bread from the field to the table, hand milling freshly harvest grain and baking it in the brick oven.

Several weeks ago we joined with some local friends to collect seeds from natural plants for a project of re-greening the Argentine steppe and areas affected by fire or deforestation.  The idea is to fill clay balls with many different types of seeds and distribute the balls throughout the affected area.  The clay provides a contact point with the earth and over time the seeds that are most suited to develop will develop and start the process of re-greening.

I recently spent 10 days at a workshop on natural construction.  Over 100 people participated in various projects from solar water collectors to green roofs to different techniques for clay-mud walls to natural paints and plasters.  We built a geodesic dome (8 m diameter) out of pvc pipes that can be taken apart and put back together as a portable community ¨space.¨  I helped build a small structure that will serve as a seed bank using the technique of ¨super adobe.¨ The idea is, in a basic sense, sand bags full of packed earth layered on top of each other to form dome structures.  The dome is then covered with plaster and the result is an anti-seismic, cheap, and quick-to-build structure that uses primarily local materials.  Throughout the workshop there were chats on alternative energies, permaculture, and different aspects of natural construction.  Lots of great ideas and community links were created during the week and its likely that a group of people who organized the workshop will travel to other parts of South America to keep spreading the knowledge and furthering the idea of community work.

I recently had to leave Argentina to renew my visa, so I took a 2 day hike across the border to Chile.  On the second day I walked four hours to receive an entry stamp and exit stamp from Chile at the same moment, turned around and walked four hours back to Argentina, where I sat and watched the full moon come out over turquoise Lago Puelo.

We just finished hosting a five day workshop at the farm.  The workshop was led by Max Edelson, Alex's brother, and was dedicated to the construction of a high-efficiency heating stove.  The stove will be used for heating the community kitchen and for some cooking as well.  The stove channels fire through a series of tunnels that pass through a large bench which can be used as a heated bed or seating area.  The design allows wood to burn closer to a temperature needed for "true combustion," a reaction whose only byproducts are water and carbon dioxide.  This means less smoke pollution and more efficient usage of firewood..  The stove was constructed (its not totally done) over the course of five days by approximately 8 students led by Max and is made of adobe, refractory bricks, clay mortar, cement, and gigantic river rocks.  It has some iron pieces made by local metalworkers that are friends of the farm.  I was part of the kitchen team for the workshop, which meant cooking two meals and an afternoon snack for over 20 people each day.  Alex's mom, a trained chef and kitchen master, and Max's girlfriend Eva, also a master, were my partners in this endeavor and, while the kitchen was nonstop intensity, we had a blast and I learned a lot about cooking for groups.  In two days we host a workshop on clay plasters and paints so the madness will continue.

A neighbor asked me to take care of his house for a few days last week, so I got to sleep in a bed, use electricity, take hot showers (heated by firewood), use a full, indoor kitchen as well as a massive wood-fired brick oven for pizza.

I finished the massive novel Infinite Jest several weeks ago and loved it.  I have also finished Siddartha, The Revenge of Gaia, and am currently reading Sailing Around the World Alone, The Open Veins of Latin America, and bits and pieces of several books on permaculture, no-till agriculture, and natural building

I am happy here in Bolson and enjoying what is a continuing learning process.  I feel at home in the community and am thinking of staying through the winter if I can find a warm and comfortable house which needs caretaking.  Plans are to focus more seriously on practicing the guitar and singing, start learning some woodworking and traditional carpentry, keep learning natural building techniques, learn to weave, get into making cheese, and keep making beer.  Winter would be a time for beginning or continuing some of these projects, reading and planning for others, reflecting on what has been a busy summer, and starting to write more again.