a wrist, a finger

My heart melted a little bit today when Pancho jokingly told me he's secretly planning the amputation of one of my fingers. He says if my wrist was an excuse for me to stay then surely a finger will do just as well. As the days left before Ireland dwindle, my heart strings are getting pulled in multiple directions. I want to, I need to, go to Ireland. But I also can't bear to go. Oh!

(agri)culture

Chyca's obsession with Winnie the Pooh started as a little girl. She loved everything Pooh so much that her adoration soon filled up her bedroom with stuffed Pooh bears, Pooh cups, Pooh boxes, Pooh everything. At night when she slept in her sea of Poohs she dreamt of going to the US where she would work enough to buy a life-sized Pooh bear for herself so that she could sleep next to it. But when the time finally came and she arrived in the US, her gigantic Pooh bear was nowhere to be found. She looked and looked but they simply didn't sell life-sized Pooh bears. Crestfallen but still determined, she continued on with her obsession and collected even more Pooh accessories than before.

Now years later, still toting her subtle Pooh bag, she describes this infatuation as a a thing of the past. She confesses that her fetish has subsided but she knows she will always love the idea of the chubby, carefree, happy-go-lucky bear that is Winnie.

I swear, being on this farm I have learned just as much about agriculture as I have about culture.

Warming and Swarming

Exhaustion. Today was the first day of real heat. And by real heat I don't mean the soft relaxing sun that comes at the beginning of spring, I mean heat that you can no longer enjoy. Bending over picking spinach, tokyo turnips, lettuce, sugar snap peas or whatever else it might be, the sun beats down relentlessly on your back, slowly covering your body in a thick layer of pure salt. Starting as early as nine in the morning, the intensity keeps climbing and doesn't stop until around 3 in the afternoon.

Bent over for a number of hours doing some flower transplanting, I was starting to feel like I was at my breaking point when all of a sudden I began to hear a loud and unfamiliar noise. It was like a thousand vibrations and suddenly the air seemed to come to life. My eyes finally left the crumbly dry soil I had been staring at since 11am and I looked up to see the huge swarm of bees that out of nowhere began to fill the air around us. Stuck in their cloud, we watched as they zoomed around in a frenzy, darting and swooping around. We imagined the queen bee somewhere amongst them but they turned circles around us and left us spinning before we could even begin to look more closely. After a few minutes, the swarm finally moved further away and we resumed work until we eventually forgot about them.

Hours later on our afternoon break, I lay down in the shade of one of the large walnut trees to escape the sun. I lay back to enjoy the breeze that was now starting to trickle in and at that moment I noticed one of the tree branches had an extra fuzzy mass covering it. I squealed and pointed upwards so that Rawley and Catalina could see where our new friends had chosen to live. Catalina was not so thrilled by the fact that they had chosen a spot so close to her work place but Rawley and I promised each other we will come back to visit often.

Hoeing makes the world go round

It's just me and the broccoli. Well actually, it's me + broccoli + hot hot sun + soil + my hoe + my blister from the hoe....And probably a few other things I forgot to mention, but at that specific moment it really felt like it was just me and the broccoli. I even talked to it, sang to it, thought out loud to it. But after letting out a few Beatles songs I kept quiet, listening to the birds and going back to being perfectly content, completely alone in the middle of the field.

Sitting out there in the calm I thought mostly about my newest friend, Mickey, or Mickeydonas as they like to call him.

It seems every week I spend here I discover something new, something interesting, something inspiring. Today I found Mickey.

Mickey is a quiet character, I had already seen him around a lot but the most we had ever talked was only a few hellos and some practical conversations about lamb fencing. It's amazing what hoeing can do for people. I've discovered it can bring you together. Squatting down, dripping tiny droplets of sweat onto the same dry earth together we shared stories:

He's from Sonora, I was born in Switzerland. He has 4 kids, I have none. His license is from Arizona, mine's from California. His wife lives in Mexico, she has my same name. She once came to California with him but their daughter got sick from sadness so she had to go back. They walked the desert for 4 days to get here, they found two dead bodies along the way. After that, his wife said she'd never do it again. He's going to go back as soon as he can.

Camaleón

The song that is the soundtrack to everything here:

"Cama, cama, cama, camaleon
Yo soy el camaleon
Cama, cama, cama, camaleon
Yo soy el camaleon
A mi me dicen el camaleon por que cambio de color
Para cada situacion yo tengo un color mejor (bis)
Cama, cama, cama, camaleon
Yo soy el camaleon
Cama, cama, cama, camaleon
Yo soy el camaleon
Si me habla rosa me pongo rojo
Si tengo miedo amarillo es mi color
Si me andan buscando no quiero que me encuentren
Transparente tambien soy (bis)
Cama, cama,...
A mi me dicen el camaleon... (bis)
Cama, cama,... "

- Los Tigrillos

Quince

With all my thoughts about the quince roaming, I wasn't sure exactly how it would go. I first went over to Chyca's house to get ready and try on a bunch of different dresses. I managed to get away without her offering to lend me a dress or a pair of shoes but I couldn't escape her purse and earrings. In the end I chose a gold dress with the flashiest pair of gold heels I own to match and Chyca supplied a sparkly gold purse to top it all off.
After piling little Héctor and Chyca's young niece, Loret into the car, we drove over to the hall in Woodland where the party was being held. During the day I'm sure the building would have looked like any warehouse but that night you could tell from the outside that there was a lot going on. Lights and music were bursting through the roof and the parking lot was brimming as we pulled in. After we finally managed to get to the doors the security announced the capacity was already filled but because of our lucky inside connection, we managed to get in through the back. Ducking in through the secret entrance we made our way through the industrial kitchen where warm mole, rice and beans were being served to all the guests. After pushing our way through the crowds we eventually found ourselves in the big dance room where a mass of tables and families faced the big stage. All around the room had been decorated in pistachio green to match the quinceañera's dress choice, and big colorful lights swept over the band as they cranked out popular mexican songs (none of which I knew).
We ate and talked with the people around us as the usual quince rituals carried on. None of the people around us seemed to care so I continually had to poke Mari to ask her what was happening. With all the distractions, I'm pretty sure I missed a few parts but I did get to see the quince perform a series of studied dances (including a waltz), a very poorly choreographed michael jackson-inspired number performed by some boys in matching green suits, and the quince's parents present her a tiara and a pair of heels to transition her into womanhood.
After her dance, everybody joined together on the stage with no inhibition, old and young alike dancing together. Mari and her husband Manuel danced together while I danced with Chyca and the kiddies.
Finally after a dozen songs the kids began to whine so we decided to head home. But only shortly after all cramming into the car the kids started to complain of hunger so we stopped at what I imagine was probably the only taqueria open at such an hour. The kids nibbled on some tacos and horchata while we sat around feeling cold in our dresses and tiny cardigans.
But as we sat leaning against the wall of the restaurant we realized there was also a lot of music coming from inside the building. Leaving the kids outside with Mari, Chyca, Tony and I went inside only to have our ears greeted once again by the sounds of the uber-popular song, Camaleón. The dark room throbbed with music as we watched couples dance inside, bouncing to the beat. We watched for a few minutes as the sweaty, smoky room pulsed and then turned back to make our way homewards.

Empanadas

I went again to Chyca's chaotic but fun house yesterday. I'm getting used to the rhythm now, barely knocking at the door before going in to find the plebes (kids) crawling around the house like ants. As soon as you cross the threshold they swarm and pull at your clothes as you try to get your bearings.

I went over because I've been begging Mari (Chyca's sister) to teach me to cook and dance. And she actually took me up on it! She decided to start with the easier task of teaching me how to cook a meal that I love.

To make her famous shrimp empanadas we started by peeling a bunch of slimy gray shrimp and dicing them. We mixed these in with a concoction of tomatoes and onions that were simmering on the stove until they formed a nice pastey sauce. Next we made the masa and used the press to smush balls of dough into perfect tortilla-shaped discs. Filling these with our mixture we pinched each empanada closed with our fingers and then submerged them in bubbling oil until they were perfectly golden. Served with mayo and a delicious avocado, tomato, lemon, cabbage, and onion salad, not much could have been better.

Plums

Not many people have the luxury to finish a day of work and say that they built an orchard. I, however, have this freedom. Most of the day was spent stringing cords, banging stakes, and jumping through the tall grass that filled the entire plot we were working with. Every so often our work would be paused when Sergio would announce, "¡Cada quien a sus wiriris!", "Everybody, to their weedeaters!" and we would each don our goggles and earplugs, revving up our individual motors. After many hours we finally finished and laughed as we looked at each other, covered from head to toe in tiny green specks. Looking out at the field in my camouflage, I saw the neatly staked rows and thought how there are few jobs more rewarding than knowing that the trees I helped place will remain for years and years to come.

Dinner in Esparto

A dark figure is waiting on the grass as my headlights pour over the sidewalk. I park and get out cautiously, 'Who is this guy?' I think to myself. But as I get a few steps closer he talks and I recognize big Héctor in a dark hoodie. He says he's been sent out by Chyca to wait for me. He leads the way to the entrance, an old door covered in cracked paint, and in moments opens up a different world.

Outside the houses are typical suburbia with green grass and trimmed shrubs. Except for that funny door not much is out of place, or at least not that I can see in the dark. The world inside is completely different however. There is so much new to take in I can't seem to see it all fast enough, I don't want to appear rude. In the foreground, two saggy couches are placed at an angle infront of a TV which is being watched by many tiny pairs of eyes. The kids are draped everywhere: on the floor, on the couch, behind the couch, on the arms of the couch, on top of one another. Behind them is a messy kitchen with a trashcan that is overflowing with old food and cellophane. A scrawny light bulb hangs above a wooden table that is piled with fruit. In the background, a dark hallway leads way to a web of rooms and from the dark recesses, people shuffle by every few minutes. Some faces I recognize from the farm and we say a quick greeting, both smiling simultaneously to see the other one out of their element.

As soon as I step in the room the kids swarm. "Uncle Héctor, who is this you brought?" one tiny kid yells. Another, tugging at my sleeve says, "What's your name?" and then without pause rattles off the names of all the other kids introducing himself last, proudly. Of course all the names go in one ear and out the other but I remember one little girl who sometimes comes with her mom to clean at the farm. Two girls I've never met before come up to me and hug me, I pat their heads and ask their names. They smile and ramble on about something completely different.

Next, Chyca, little Héctor and I pile into her huge black SUV and we drive to Woodland where she shows me her favorite store to buy dresses. I pass my hands over the plastic fabric and fein interest at the pink, diamond-studded, tulle-covered dresses she loves so much.

I make an excuse to move on and she brings me to the place I've been wanting to come to for so long, La Superior! It's a huge grocery store, stuffed with all the foods that remind me of Mexico. It even smells a little bit like Mexico. So does Chyca's house. I run my hands over all the different candies I never get to eat and pick up a few packs of the tamarind ones. She buys meat for pozole and I ask a worker for atole so I can drink it for breakfast. We leave and Chuy's in the parking lot in his big muddy truck. I run up to his window and say, "Guess what we just bought?" He laughs and guesses right away.

When we get back to Chyca's house she's got a trunk-full of groceries and I help her bring them down while she carries little sleeping Héctor back in. I put the bags down in her kitchen and I can feel my stomach grumbling a little bit, I wonder when we're eating dinner. She motions to me and we push through the throng of kids back on to the front steps. We're going over to her sister's for dinner. The air is cold and I wonder how long it will take to walk there but we turn at the house directly next door and go in through a side door. Mari is standing there in a big orange shirt, laying out the shrimp empanadas she just made onto the table. Her house has the same smell but the walls are not as bare as Chyca's, they're covered in baby pictures and a glamour shot of her and her husband whom I recognize as a face from the crew. A couch blocks off the living room and I can see somebody's lying on the ground. 'Won't we wake him up?' I ask. But they laugh and say "Oh, him? He sleeps through everything, don't worry." I've never felt like this before; in seconds, I know everybody and somehow we totally skipped over the normally obligatory first few minutes of awkwardness and standing around. It's probably about nine o'clock and I'm sitting there surrounded by more children while chowing down some hand-made food, awesome. We talk for a few hours and when it gets too late I make an excuse about having to work tomorrow. I drive home full and content.

What a day!

My day in a word: action-packed. And very invigorating! Read on:
1) After a lot of charging, snorting and even a bitten leg (!) we finally managed to castrate the final piglet.
2) Milked the two cows (Arnica and Mapache) and the goat (Neo).
3) Fed 12 lambs.
4) Chuy gave me two packs of tamarind candy since I told him I missed Mexican candy. It was so good, now I'm planning a trip to La Superior in Woodland so I can stock up on all my guilty pleasures.
5) Killed, plucked, and gutted all 18 roosters.
6) In a few minutes managed to accidentally give away almost all of my tamarind candy to the workers after I presented it to a group of people and they all took me up on the offer.
7) Ate lunch which consisted of a lot of fried kidneys and sautéed liver and onions that Joe made as a sort of joke. (I opted out since I was still sick and the faces of the roosters were still too recent in my mind.)
8) Fed 11 lambs. Sergio has been bugging me all week to feed the lambs which is the cutest thing coming from such a tiny, stalky, pot-bellied man. Brought Poppy over to where he was pruning plums so that he could feed her. He giggled the whole time.
9) Sorted chilis in the greenhouse so that we could later plant the seeds. Subsequently blew my nose with my handkerchief and accidentally rubbed chili powder ALL over my raw nose and a bit in my eyes and mouth. Then spent ten minutes heaving outside.
10) Practically dove into the shower after work to rid myself of the chili and the chicken smell.
11) Fed some stale crackers to the momma sow so that she might like me better.
12) Next, I'm heading over to donkey basketball in Esparto. Which is, strangely enough, exactly what it sounds like. It literally IS donkey basketball. It's a face-off between the seniors and the teachers. Everybody rides rubber-boot-wearing donkeys in the gym and then they try to score on each other. I still haven't figured out if they're all pulling my leg but I will soon find out!

A hitchhikers guide to the galaxy of words

For those of you planning on coming to Full Belly who think they already know Spanish, think again. I consider myself pretty fluent when it comes to speaking Spanish since technically it was my first language. But even so I was a bit turned around when I first came here and heard those Sinaloan words being shot around, rapid-fire. The accents seemed so foreign and the speed at which it all came rushing in didn’t leave me any time to sort anything out.

But already after just a few weeks my ears have become unbelievably well adjusted. It’s scary how I can barely hear the accent anymore…

So, for the benefit of those who are planning a trip to Sinaloa any time soon, or for that matter for those of you visiting Guinda, CA, I have started compiling a farm-word dictionary:

bato = a guy

baybies = bebés (babies)

bichi = desnudo (naked)

bin = bote (bin)

brakes (brah-ques) = frenos

catchár = atrapar (catch)

chanse = quizá (maybe)

juga

marketa = mercado (market)

morro = dude

parking = estasionár (park)

Pablo = Paul Muller (Paul is one of four Full Belly owners. For a week I looked around for this guy Pablo so I could introduce myself. Then I realized it was Paul's Spanish name.)

panchi = corto (short)

ride (rai-te) = aventón (ride)

tirar roll = hang out

trocka (troh-ca) = camioneta (truck)

trocke (troh-que) = camión (big truck)

Walmart sells everything

Part of a conversation I had today with one of the workers (all in Spanish of course):

(We had been doing stretches at break)

Alfonso: "Do you like yoga DVDs?"

Me: "Maybe, I dunno. Why?" (Expecting him to say, oh I have some I could give to you)

Alfonso: "They sell them at Walmart."

Me: "Oh, thanks...."

I had to try really hard not to laugh because to me that was really funny, but he was totally serious.

Antonio

In my opinion, Antonio is the most special member of the crew. The first minute you meet him you can tell there’s something different about him, something in his way of being that is very unique. 

Antonio is an animal man. Any trouble with an animal and immediately Antonio is called over, any question about an animal and he is consulted. I remember back in October spending an unsuccessful hour wrestling and trying to coax our pigs out of some bushes. After much frustration, Antonio was called over and he quickly herded the pigs out in a matter of minutes.

Antonio smiles a lot but doesn’t speak much, he is shy and practical, patient. He has a kindness and understanding in his eyes and above all, a remarkable calmness.

Every day I chat with the workers and little by little find out details about their lives away from the farm. It feels like an excavation project, I’m slowly peeling away at the layers. I am beginning to figure out all the intricacies of their family problems, their journeys from Mexico, the lives they left behind. By now I suspect I know more than anybody else at Full Belly knows. I don’t think anyone else from the farm has ever talked to them in this way and I can see that my position is very unique. They like talking to me, for them I’m a bridge between two worlds that are very far apart. It’s strange possessing this knowledge all at once. I feel there is so much to learn from them, and so much left to understand.

Today as I was talking to Antonio I asked him how come he was so good at being with animals. Always modest without realizing it, he explained he had worked with animals for four years. But I knew that all his expert lasso-ing, milking, and sheep herding skills could not have come from just four years of work. After talking more he revealed that he had grown up in Guerrero, México, in Tierra Caliente on his grandparents’ dairy. On the farm they had pigs, chickens, sheep, and 1,200 cows for milking. His grandfather had been a big producer of cheese, making queso fresco and queso duro very effectively. When I asked him if he sold to a big company he said that he had successfully stayed strong doing his own business, selling at all the stores in the area and working very hard. This seemed like such a nice portrait of his life in Mexico but I knew that something was out of place because then why else was he here? We talked more and he eventually told me about his grandfather’s great misfortune:

Seeing that he was so successful, other people in the area became jealous and kidnapped his sons, vowing to kill them unless he gave them his cows and a big sum of money. Of course he gave them what they wanted and was suddenly left with nothing. When I heard this I'm positive I felt my heart shrink a few sizes, how could something so unjust happen to such a special person? I guess that might be part of what makes him so special. Somehow he was able to move on. But I still have a sore spot where that story rests.

Rain?

I didn’t even need an alarm clock today because the rain was beating so hard on the roof of my trailer that I woke up promptly at seven. I spent the next fifteen minutes in bed not wanting to deal with having to go outside but luckily by seven thirty the rain had completely stopped.

I guess when they say 100% chance of rain they don’t mean that it will rain 100% of the day because after that initial downpour we had no rain the rest of the day. Everyone was disappointed but in the end, the lack of rain did give us a wider spectrum of jobs to choose from. In the morning I worked in the greenhouse again and then spent the rest of the morning packing CSA boxes in the shop. After lunch I pruned roses for a few hours. I’ve been wondering if any psychologists make their clients prune because it truly is a very therapeutic ordeal. Since I’ve always had trouble making decisions it was great for me because pretty much all you do in pruning is make decisions right and left. It’s a really fun job because every plant is so different that for each rose you have to look at it and imagine its individual skeleton. This part is also totally exhausting, after a few hours of pruning I can really feel that my brain is fuzzy and tired.

I think when people imagine farming they often envision mostly manual work but I feel my brain being worked in so many directions here that I actually feel more exhausted than I did on most school days. All day today I used my brain a lot. First I spent the morning translating between Chica and Rebecca constantly and then I spent a long time trying to explain Spanish grammar to Rebecca as we packed. Then for lack of a pen, I had to do a lot of mental math to count boxes and vegetables. As I was doing the work in my head I was also thinking how the last time I had to do serious mental math was probably in fourth or fifth grade. It's so weird how in our education system you really focus so much on this in lower school but once you enter middle and high school it all goes out the window and kids all of a sudden forget how to do anything without their calculator. And I'll readily admit, I totally am one of those kids, I love my graphing calculator! Maybe I'll invest in a calculator watch one of these days just to up the geek factor.

Day 3

Today I dealt with more animals in the morning. First milking and egg collecting, then feeding animals. My favorite to feed is the little calf (Ushi) who was just weaned from her mother. After milking, we bring her back a whole gallon of her mother’s creamy, fresh milk and she slurps it down in a few seconds. Then she spends a few minutes with her head stuck in the pail trying to lick the last drop from the bottom. After her dose of milk we toss her a flake of hay and she stares at it in disgust. The other calf (Betty) who is two weeks younger, is already proudly starting to eat hay with her mother (Mapache).

The afternoon was spent mostly pruning. Despite the frost that withered all the leaves, the lemon verbena is pungent as ever, almost as good as the wreath room (!).

After the aromatherapy session with the lemon verbena, I spent a few hours in the greenhouse sorting hot chili peppers with the crew. Spending time with them I can really notice how rusty my Spanish has become. I find myself stuck on some vocabulary words that have over the years snuck back into the deep recesses of my brain. (How do you say "hinge" again?) I love their company though -- they know so much about the different scenes of farm life and about the vegetables and fruits. Most importantly, we get to share an integral part of farm life, listening to terrible Mexican radio together.