Earthquake Milkshake

This is me plugging back into the virtual world.

It has been exactly a month since I last wrote, which is slightly uncharacteristic of me since the inception of this voyage to the other America. While it is true that my internet opportunities during this timespan have been scant to say the least, I must also admit that when these opportunities did present themselves, I found it difficult to spend more than a few minutes in front of a computer. Maybe the farmer in me has truly taken over; maybe my journey into the woods has affected me more than I thought, but I find myself shifting in my seat even as I type this, simply because I'd rather be outside. Especially when outside, at this very moment, means bright sunshine, two different mountain ranges (one green and round, one jagged and rocky) with tons of hiking trails, and one of the best ice cream shops I've ever visited just two blocks down the road.

Still, as most of you know, I like to express myself linguistically, and a large part of that is writing, so at the same time I feel this urge to attempt to give an account of the happenings of my life in these past four weeks. Shall I start with the earthquake?

The night of the big one in Chile, I was on my farm outside of Mendoza, Argentina, sleeping in the lower compartment of a bunkbed in a tiny wood and adobe casita where all of the farm volunteers slept. I woke up suddenly around 3:30am to a dizzy, swaying sensation. I thought that maybe I had eaten some bad quinoa or something and thus was feeling some vertigo, but after laying awake for a few seconds, the pulsations got stronger, and I realized my bed was rocking back and forth. I thought that maybe my bunkmate Michael was taking advantage of the late night peace to pleasure himself (but, nooo, he wouldn't do that! Would he? Wouldn't he?), and so, horrified, I froze, sucked in my breath, and waited, unsure of what to do. Then I realized that the whole entire house was rocking.  Earthquake? Really?

At that moment, I think the other five volunteers woke up as well, and someone asked, ''¿Qué es?'' and I responded, ''¡Temblor! Uh, Terremoto!'' and just as we all scrambled to get out of bed, slamming into each other in the darkness, I heard Amparo, the grandmother of the farm, screaming something across the field from her house and then the loud clanging of the large steel bell that they usually ring to round up the troops. The tremor was so strong that the bell was ringing on its own. It was surreal to hear the bell clanging in the middle of the night while feeling the ground rolling under our feet. Adrenaline pumped in my ears. We all jogged over to the main house and gathered together with the family, who were waiting for us to debrief. By that time, the rocking had stopped, and we stood around, shivering in the dark, chatting a little bit. ''Earthquake,'' they said (duh). ''Everyone okay?'' Yes, everyone was okay. We all went back to bed, but I don't think any of us really slept after that. There were a few aftershocks, but not nearly as strong. Mendoza suffered little to no damage, as in the rest of Argentina.

And then we found out about Chile. About the horrendous damage and loss of life. We weren't even able to get updates on the situation for the first day or two because there was essentially no functioning line of communication. It's so awful. I can't imagine the terror the people in Concepción must have felt that night. And what it must have been like when the sun finally came up.

A few days after the quake, I headed south to Patagonia for the final days of my trip. It really makes me laugh to think about how this trip has gone; honestly, I didn't even think I'd make it to Argentina this time around. When I bought my ticket, my return flight was out of Lima, Peru. Argentina was just too far, I had already been there two times, and I really believed that I had had my fill of the country. Never dreamed I'd make it further south than Bolivia. And then, an impromptu trip to Buenos Aires for my birthday to see my host family from my college semester abroad. And then, (why not?) a trip in early January to Mendoza to perhaps find a farm to work on. Found a farm, planned to stay for maybe a month at most, and ended up staying for two. You'd think that with about three weeks left to get my toochis back up to Lima for my flight, I'd maybe start planning a trip northward. Nope. Patagonia--the south--was calling my name. I mean, come on, it would be pathetic to have spent a collective 8 or 9 months in this country and to have never made it to the south. So, I packed up my bags about two and a half weeks ago, left the farm in Mendoza, and headed down to El Bolsón, in the Rio Negro province, because it sounded nice. Everyone I had met on this trip and past trips said the town was amazing, and plus, there were tons of farms on my farm list located in this area. So I went and hoped to find a farm once I got there, á la my seat-of-my-pants Mendoza adventure. Hey, that one worked out, so why wouldn't it here?

Of course, the farm gods are with me, because I managed to luck out once again. First of all, let me just attempt to explain just how beautiful El Bolsón is. It's a little town nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains and lakes. Everything is green--both flora-wise and politically. Green pine trees line the mountains in the distance, and in the foreground it's trees and flowers and grass everywhere you look. There are loads of hiking trails, which means that they are never crowded, and they wind through forests and alongside rivers and, if you're up for it, straight up rocky ledges. El Bolsón is a 100% smoke free town, meaning you can't smoke cigarrettes anywhere, and there are signs everywhere urging you to pick up your trash. There's also a great sign in the center of town that reads ''Planting native trees helps us to maintain our roots.'' I really like it.

There's an amazing farmers market and crafts fair that takes place three times a week in the main plaza, and it is by far the best open-air market I've seen. You're only allowed to participate as a vendor if you sell locally-produced items; and in this case, local means within about a 60 mile radius. Fresh fruits and veggies, jams, cheeses, artesenal beer, baked goods, BELGIAN WAFFLES, homemade soaps, knitwear, woodwork, books by local authors, and other sorts of artsy gifts can be found here on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and it's a true pleasure to meander through and have a look at the wares. As someone who works with farmers markets and the local food movement back in Boston, I was certainly in my happy place when I took a walk through it the first day I arrived.

So, after exploring the town for a day, I decided that it was time to try to find a farm for a couple weeks. I took a walk through the fair and was immediately drawn to a stand with little round wheels of cheese stacked on top of each other. I bee-lined over to the table and was greeted by a jolly German man who eagerly sliced me off a sample piece and chatted with me in German-accented Spanish. So charming. As I munched on his homemade organic cheese, I let my eyes wander up to the poster advertising his products. I recognized his last name from the farm list, and so I asked him if he was accepting volunteers. He hesitated, but then said maybe, to just give him a minute to call his wife and check. After a rapid-fire German conversation via cellphone, he hung up and turned to me with a sparkle in his eye and said, ''Va a andar'' (it's going to work!). ''Great! When can I start?'' I asked. His reply was, ''Do you want to get in the truck with me after the fair and come to the farm with me today?''

Uh...yep.

I had a good feeling about him. Knew nothing more than the fact that he made cheese, he had a farm, and that they (presumably) have volunteers sometimes. Good enough. The cheese was good--I mean, really good. I don't think evil people are capable of making cheese like that. That cheese was made with love. You can't go wrong with a cheese man. So I said ''sure, let's go!''

Once inside his truck, I asked the questions I probably should have asked before if I were a responsible young woman. How many volunteers do you have currently? (none) Where do you live, exactly? (about 25 kilometers outside the town, up in the mountains) What kinds of things do you do at the farm? (milk cows, feed the chickens, make cheese, jam, bread, do other sorts of tasks around the farm) And finally, I asked:

''How many volunteers have you had so far?''
''¿Sabés que? Sos la primera.'' (You know what? You're the first one)

So I was their first volunteer! They just joined the organization a month ago, so it's all very new to them. I felt a lot of pressure to be a Good Volunteer, in fact, The Best Volunteer, so that they would always remember me as the First, in a good way. I think I did a good job. Except for that time a couple of weekends ago when I left on a day hike and didn't come home until the following afternoon. The weather was awful at the top of the mountain and the ranger advised me to stay the night and not attempt to hike back down until morning when the rain and sleet had stopped. My German family was quite worried about me. Understandably. Way to go, Ali.

A bridge I crossed during a weekend hike. Stable, secure, yes.

I lived with The German, his German wife, and their seventeen year old son. They have lived in Argentina for over 25 years, just living the simple life on a plot of land nestled on the side of a mountain. They have six cows at the moment, which are the most beautiful, cleanest cows I've ever seen. Every morning, we woke up early to hike up the mountain and find them so that they could come back to be milked. Then, after milking, we brought them back up the mountain, where they would graze all day until sundown, at which point we would go find them again, milk them, and send them out for more nighttime blossom snacking.

And now, the customary ''look what I can do!'' photos. 

I learned how to milk a cow with my hands and with the milking machine.

I got to work with bees and take the honey combs out of the beehive (and I got to wear the beekeeper suit!).


I learned how to make cheese that actually tastes like something someone would buy.  I made jam and preserved vegetables for the winter. I learned another way to kill and clean a chicken (I preferred this way to the way we did it in Colombia--much more humane and super quick--just a whack over the head and then a swift chop with the ax). I learned how to make bread, I got to use a chain saw to cut wood, and I consumed more dairy in the past two weeks than I had in the previous four and a half months. Mmm milk. And I take back what I said about raw milk in earlier posts--if the cows are happy, eating well, and well maintained, raw milk is the best milk in the entire world. I am going to miss that milk.

I also learned how to count to ten in German, and also that there are many similar words in English and German. Lampe is lamp! Milke is milk! Shtool is seat! Gute is good! I was like a 2 year old in their home, bursting out with my newfound German vocabulary and counting slowly from one to ten at the dinner table, then looking around for affirmative or adoring looks from my German parents and brother. I think they liked me?

I left the farm yesterday because they only take two volunteers at a time, and their second one showed up yesterday. I guess that's what happens when you, like, plan in advance or something--you get to stay at farms for longer than ten days. Still, it was a great experience, and I think that it will be important for me to spend a few days in town just chilling out, writing, reflecting, and enjoying some serious Ali time before I have to head back to Buenos Aires and then to Lima to fly home...in a week.

Yep. I fly home in a week. Cha-cha-changes.

Oh, hey, just realized it's Saint Patty's day. Cheers!

La Visita de Los Uruguayos

Last week, our hippy dippy organic vegetarian apple orchard was visited by two meat-eating roughousing Uruguayan boys. Javier and Gabriel, aged twenty-two and twenty, respectively, had shuffled onto our farm with their packs and a tent strapped to their backs and about two hundred dollars to their names, and were hoping to find a (free) place to camp out for a while.

The boys had hitchhiked their way across the Uruguyan border and were hoping to stretch their savings across six months and most of the South American countries (and possibly Central America, and maybe even Mexico, and, heck, why stop there? U.S.A!). Needless to say, these boys were here for financial reasons and not ideological ones. I don't think they had any idea what they were getting themselves into. I'm pretty sure the truck driver who gave them a lift from their last city just knew that it was possible to camp out at this farm, and so the boys jumped out and knocked on the door and that was that.  They were not crunchy little idealists who wanted to try their hands at organic farming and vegetarianism, oh no siree.

The sheer youth that these two young souls emanated was a giant gulp of fresh air for my rapidly old lady like self--what with the ache in my knees I'm starting to experience after a day of squatting in the fields, or the truck-like blow of fatigue that hits me at 10:30pm every night, it was nice to be surrounded by two young guys who seemed to be filled with so much unharnessed energy and passion and so little direction or sense of reality. Gabriel was especially fun to watch, and I'm not just saying this because he had the thickest, darkest eyelashes I'd ever seen and two full rows of brilliantly white teeth that would give even the most fastidious Western toothbrusher a run for his or her money. It wasn't his tan, soccer playing body either, although all of these things were certainly not ugly to look at (my mantra was, ''twenty years old, Ali. Twenty years old. Baby.''). What I loved was watching his and Javier's interactions in the fields and at the dinner table with the farm family.

They arrived just in time for our Andean potato harvest. The farm family had bought a bunch of special little seeds the previous season from a Bolivian potato farmer as an experiment in different potato varieties and how they would take to the Mendoza soil, and so last week was time to dig 'em up and see how they turned out. Potato harvesting is...well, it's hard work. You're out in the unrelenting mountain sun, hacking away with your hoe at heaps of dirt under rows and rows of weeds mixed with potato leaves, which often closely resemble the weeds. You must be careful not to chop too deep or too close to the potato stalk, because if you do, you risk chopping a potato in half as well, which you cannot see since it is hidden deep below the soil. After you've freed up a patch of dirt, you must get down to the level and the soil and painstakingly feel through the mountains of cool musty earth for round little balls of potato. There are also many round little balls of dirt, probably put there just to fool you, so once you find one, you must sqeeze it to ensure that is indeed a potato and not a poser. You must dig deep with your fingernails until you are sure that you've found every last one from that stalk, and then you must stand back up and start the careful hacking (if those words were ever meant to be together, it's now) process all over again. It's a lot of sit down, stand up business, lots of dirt under your fingernails, lots of lightheaded near-blackout ''oops I stood up too fast and it's HOT under this sun, I might pass out'' moments, but it's so satisfying to find these gorgeous little red and purple papas.

Anyway, the Uruguayans were the saddest addition to our work team that I could have ever imagined. In fact, I think we all got less done with them around. Every time I looked over at either one of them, they'd be perched under the shade of an apple tree taking a break, munching on an apple, or standing around with the hoe laid horizontally across their shoulders, stretching their backs a bit after an arduous two minutes of work. Every five minutes came the questions of ''when do we finish? when is lunch? when is dinner?'' When these questions weren't asked, the conversation was punctuated by some of the most interesting comments about politics (Gabriel: ''I have absolutely no problem with anything about Uruguayan politics. I'm completely content with our government and the general state of things.''), religion (again, Gabriel: ''I saw this really cool documentary in which it proved that every religion has some sort of Jesus character.'' Me: ''Uh, what about Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam?''), and science (both Javier and Gabriel: ''We don't believe in evolution.'' Me: ''Oh, well that's cool, do you believe in divine creation, then?'' J&G: ''No, we don't believe in God, either. But evolution definitely didn't happen. We were never monkeys.''). I have never met anyone who was an evolution denier who didn't use religious grounds to base his or her point. So fascinating.

At dinner, their poor bodies were clearly suffering from the lack of meat. These boys were daily meat eaters, and they appeared listless after their first day of ''work.'' Amparo, in her lovely mom role, in an attempt to get some animal protein into the bodies of these poor little guys, prepared a giant casserole with a whole lot of eggs, which the boys shoveled down immediately. It was so hilarious for me to experience this clash of culture because it once again reminded me that I'm living among the minorities of the minority here in Argentina, and it's a healthy dose of reality to see that it's not exactly typical, especially down here, to go a meal or two without any meat. I think nothing of heaping piles of potatoes and squash and lentils onto my plate and going to bed with a full, satisfied belly, but these guys were hurting.

They packed up their tents after day two; enough was enough. It was sad to see them go, simply because they were so entertaining to watch and listen to, but it was also sort of a relief because we would actually be able to get some work done. And we did. And the potatoes are so lovely (and delicious).

The New Laurita Gordita

Lessons in cross-cultural relations and body image: the adventures of Ali La Grande in Argentina.

In 2005, I spent a semester abroad in Buenos Aires. It was marked by moments of introspection and steps towards self-knowledge, identity crises, label-shedding, and also moments in which many Argentines took the liberty of giving me one very constant label of their own. Grande. Large. Big. As a nineteen year old girl, it was difficult to hear that word associated with me, especially since for women, at least in the U.S., large usually connotes fat. I considered my self esteem to be in a generally good place, especially for a teenage girl, and due to the fact that I had spent most of my life on a swim team, my body never really had time to gain much fat, and thus if people in the U.S. commented on my body (which they rarely did, because we don't talk about those things to people's faces in my culture), they would usually use words like ''very tall,'' ''slender,'' and sometimes, ''muscular.''  I never worried about whether I was portly or not. Until Buenos Aires. People loved to comment on how grande I was. My sheer size delighted people. The cute little boutiques of Palermo Viejo, with their delicately-patterned sundresses hanging in the window, generally carried one or two sizes, the larger one typically being a dress that might fit around one of my calves. The petite ladies behind the counters would often eye me up and down and tell me straight up that they didn't think they carried anything for people as grande as I was. Grande became a large part of my identity while I was down there, and it definitely messed with my mind for a little while.

I'm back in Argentina, and luckily this time I'm a lot more comfortable with the state of my body and the relativity of the word grande. Good thing, because the grandes have been flying at me left and right, along with their sister word, gordita (fatty, chubby) and occasionally, grueso (thick). The family here on the farm is delighted with my size, especially because they had a volunteer here a couple of years ago named Laura, who apparently was my identical twin when she arrived on the farm. They love to talk about Laura because of the massive amounts of weight she lost during her five month stint here. Apparently, she requested a special diet of only vegetables and the occasional fruit: no bread, no flour at all, no sugar, no dairy [no fun] in order to cure a mysterious stomach parasite that she had self-diagnosed herself. Since Laura spent so much time here, and because she underwent such a drastic transformation, the family loves to talk about her. ''Laura was so much like you,'' they say, ''when she arrived. Gordita, white, with a body muy grueso, grande, grande, but after five months, she was tan and very thin! Cured!'' Gordita, just like you. Yep.

Now, I must be fair and state that, down here, gordita is also a term of endearment. It is often used for little babies, and sometimes has nothing to do with how much blubber someone actually has. Also, the only two permanent (non volunteer) women on this farm, Mariel and her mother, Amparo, are not exactly typical representations of the female body. They are both barely five feet tall, eat raw fruits and vegetables as their only source of sustenance, and so their frames resemble Somalian 8 year old boys much more than, say, 30 and 60 year old Argentine women, respectively. If they are the norm, then I'll take grande, please. So, on this trip, grande has become my friend. It reminds me that I am a robust, strong, tall woman who loves her fruits and veggies but who has also been known to consume a bottle of red wine, an entire loaf of country bread, and a big chunk of Vermont cheese in one sitting. Maybe my body would be ''healthier'' (and less grande) if I never ate those evil foods. But they taste so good, and to me, food always has and always will be more than just sustenance for the body--there's a strong spiritual and emotional component there, too. I think I've rambled on enough about what food is to me in my last post, though, so I'll just leave it at that for now. Plus, my grande fingers have more to type.

I've been in sort of a reflective place this past week, especially since I am nearing the end (I fly back home in about a month). I have been thinking about one of the last nights I spent at home before embarking on this voyage, outside, dusk, in my parents' back yard with my family and a few friends, sitting around our wood burning stove, roasting marshmallows and seeking refuge from the mosquitos. Suddenly, a large, hard-shelled flying insect kamakazed itself at full-speed into my head, became tangled in my hair, and stutter-buzzed around in the net it had formed as I shrieked and clawed at my head, searching my scalp for that vile creature so that I could chuck it as far away from me as possible. My whole family just watched, then laughed at me and started to tease me, ''Really, Al, you're going to go live in the countryside of various South American nations, and this is your reaction to a New England beetle?'' I was flustered and frustrated because I knew they had a point. I had never been much of a lover of insects, and that was a theme I had chosen not to think about until that moment. But I also knew that part of the reason I was doing this trip was to be more at peace with nature--I knew that in the tropics of Colombia, which was my first stop, I'd have no choice not to adapt, fast.

I used to flinch and twitch when the sound of buzzing insect wings flew by my ear. I'd get this tic, snap my head to the side, earside down, with the shoulder below it rising immediately to reach it, kind of like a one-sided shoulder shrug with an added head-tilt. It was an immediate, automatic reaction, usually accompanied by swatting at whatever caused the sound, or, if it was a bee or wasp, a quick freeze and sucking in of breath until it flew by me. I secretly hated that part of me; I didn't want to be that person who wanted to save planet earth but was okay with the extermination of any biting or stinging or crawly insects.

And so recently, I came to the realization that I no longer do that flinch and twitch. I don't know when the change happened, but I was squatting along a line of pumpkins and zucchini, severing them from their vines with a knife, when I realized that there was a general hum of flies and other flying friends around my head, and I hadn't even heard them until I took a moment to stop and actively listen to the sounds around me. I don't even hear them anymore. And bees? Not a problem. If they're inside the flower of a plant I'm also working with, I can work around them without the rapid increase in heart palpitation that used to accompany that situation.

Okay, so wasps still freak me out. They are larger than life down here, and they are mean. One attacked my friend Aurelia last week while she was minding her own business. If I see a large nest hanging from an apple tree, I run in the opposite direction. And I still smack mosquitos and paquitas, which are other nasty (but tiny) little blood-sucking beasts that bury their entire heads into your skin. But they're slow and stupid, and you can almost always slap them and kill them, which yields a satisfying blood smatter as well. Well, it's your own blood, but still, the image is carnal and statisfying. A proud fist-pump or war cry almost always follows.

You Say Potato, I Say, Eleven Year Old?

We harvested the first of the potatoes this week, and they are the most potatoey potatoes I've ever eaten. They put my pre-farming potato experiences to shame. They are delicate and buttery-sweet and have a thin skin that, when thrown in the oven, gives in when you press against it with your fork. I have been enjoying this added element in our home-cooked meals lately due to the dynamic change in flavor and texture that the potato brings, but I'm also loving that the grandchildren who visit the farm are so tuned-in to actually tasting their food and participating in all steps from planting to harvesting that they make very un-childlike comments about them. Take last night for instance when Alondra, age eleven, stuck her fork into one of them and slowly chewed it with eyes of contemplation.  She swallowed, flattened another one on her plate with her fork and smeared it slightly to separate the skin from the white fluffiness in the middle, looked up at her uncle, and said,

''Uncle, look at the texture of this potato! It's beautiful!''

Only on a hippy-dippy, organic farm of food revolutionaries would a child be raised to not only eat potatoes without exorbitant amounts of cheese or salt, but also understand what a good potato's texture should be and to comment on it. I was floored. Not sure why I was so surprised, really; this child eats heaping portions of vegetables like green beans, squash, tomatoes, and chard at every meal, just as she has been since she had her first teeth, I would imagine. It's so interesting to be around children that know exactly where their food came from [their garden, or grandma's garden], what went into growing it, and just what the product should look like before it's ready to be yanked from it's vine or tree or home of dirt. It reminded me of my first week on the farm when Mariel, Alondra's aunt and general coordinator of day-to-day orchard and garden activities, sent me out to the garden to get some lettuce for dinner. She sent me with Alondra, who knew where the lettuce was. The two of us grabbed a knife and walked out to one of the gardens, big girl following behind little girl, stepping gingerly around cabbage and broccoli and pepper plants and onions until we got to the line of lettuce: bright green bundles of leaves which stood out against their dark soil backdrop, especially because we were in the last hours of daylight when certain greens of the plants are illuminated in that mystical irridescent glow of dusk.

I followed closely behind her as she stepped around each head of lettuce, pointing at each one with her knife as she passed by it, saying, ''This one is too young to pick, this one's not ready yet either, too young, too young, too young, AH! That one is perfect!''  She squatted down, sawed off its head, and did the same to the next three or four heads as well. Honestly, the difference in size between the premie lettuce and the ready lettuce was so miniscule that I certainly wouldn't have noticed, or at least it would have taken me much longer as I pained over each one, teetering between making a decision, ''Is it ready? Is it not? Ready? Not? Readynotreadynotready????'' And Alondra just knew, immediately, as if she were deciding between two things so obviously different as carrots and tomatoes. I love this fine-tuned consciousness that comes with spending time a farm like this one. So cool. It makes me happy to know that these children are part of the next generation. Oh god, I sound like a grandmother. When I was a young lass...

So, I think I've established that this farm is more than a little unique. They are certainly not your typical Argentine family, what with their rejection of meat in a country that worships the Sunday family barbeque, with their non-consumption of alcohol and thus wine in a region that produces the bulk of the nation's supply, and of course with their general lack of attention to generally accepted Western-driven aesthetics (they [we] walk around in dirty t-shirts and blackened bare feet, both Amparo and her husband, Enrique, are missing some teeth, etc.). They grow cabbage and onions and carrots in an area surrounded by giant farms that grow nothing but grapes and apples. They would be kind of off-beat in most of the U.S. [welcomed with open arms in my former state, Vermont]. In Argentina, forget about it. So, you can imagine the delightful clashing of cultures that arose last week when Enrique's family came to visit.

They arrived in waves, first two, then three more, then full carloads as the week continued, each with meat, beer, wine, other typically farm-prohibited fixings. They set up their tents across the river, still on the farm property, and spent their week of summer vacation camping out at Enrique's house. My favorite visiting family member was Tio Negro, a short, slightly balding beer-bellied gentlemen in his sixties, who always seemed to be singing some sort of romantic balad as he strolled through the grounds of the farm. Cousins, uncles, aunts, grandchildren wandered through our kitchen at all hours of the day and night to extract their perishables from our fridge, and it was odd to see nearly forgotten goods like t-bone steaks resting next to the leftover quinoa soup. There was something so wonderfully comforting about his family, so delightfully familiar, just a bunch of good people sitting back on their lawn chairs by the river, sipping on beer and blasting the radio and cooking up meat on the grill. I have definitely met them before in some form.

You'd think that two sides of the family with such drastically different lifestyles (or at least eating habits) wouldn't get along.  Not so. Everyone seemed to be mutually respectful of the other family's beliefs and ways of life, and it became even more apparent when the visitors invited us all (even the volunteers) across the river on Sunday for a big barbeque. Tio Negro had made a giant six-foot long pizza in the brick oven, along with some delicious grilled chicken. Our side of the river brought salad and grilled veggies. There must have been at least thirty people there in the end, all sitting at one long rectangular picnic table (which was actually about three or four tables lined up), and it was lovely to see everyone come together over a meal, especially when it is food that is the substance that would theoretically divide them. Okay, so the majority of the farm family didn't touch the meat, or the pizza (I made up for what they left behind, don't worry). And the visiting members barely ate any of the salad (fair; although it was made up of tomatoes and lettuce and onions, it also included a variety of delicate yet bitter herbs and greens which most of Argentina would call WEEDS). Luckily, Mariel knew her family well enough to make a special salad for them which included all of the typical stuff minus the weirdo bitter green things. And I did catch a couple of the cousins carefully testing the weirdo hippy salad with their front teeth, then inserting the rest of it into their mouths, and some of them claimed to love the flavor and helped themselves to more.

And this is why I love food. Yes, if people are unflexible and unyielding, preachy and proselytizing, it can be a vice that drives people apart. But in most cases, it's the glue that holds us together, as individual specimens and as a culture. It is a way to share thoughts, explore new flavors, throw a little bit of yourself into a dish that will nourish others (I did not mean for that last bit to be taken literally--please don't throw a little bit of you into a dish if you cook for me). Food is a way to tell stories of the past, it's the medium we use to preserve that of our ancestors, and a space for us all to be creative, to see what happens if we add a splash more of this or a handful less of that. We need food to survive, so it might as well taste good and be enjoyed with people who make us glad we're alive.

Constructing walls just to smash into them.

It becomes more and more apparent with every day spent on my current farm that I have found a really special place.

Being here excites the same parts of my personality that studying Anthropology in college did. At the risk of emanating an appearance of the charmed Westerner who has embarked on an ethnological study to marvel at the backwards ways of the salt o' the earth dwellers of the southern hemisphere, let me explain to you why I love it here so much, and why it reminds me of the best parts of my major. Anthro presented me with a discipline devoted to dismantling the ways that one assumes the world works. I have always been someone who has found it difficult to take sides in debates because I can often see both arguments easily. I think I naturally find the way to imagine what cultural influences might have led to someone's sense of self and belief system, even if this imagined environment involves situations way outside of my own. And studying Anthropology sharpened my tools of expression and showed me the countless examples of people who have travled the world in search of proof that pretty much nothing is static, nothing is normal, there are endless possiblities in raising children, educating the population, creating and maintaining customs, eating--anything works. And being on this farm has been a welcome reminder.

Most of these little reminders have to do with my learned idea of cleanliness and what cleanliness means to others.  There is no soap on the kitchen sink, and the sponge is a greasy rag. Olive oil is present at every meal. Cold water and bare hands do not leave plates and utencils feeling sleek and clean. As a compulsive handwasher, this has presented a challenge for me. He or she whose turn it is to wash after a meal is left with a thick grimey film layered upon wrinkly fingers, and it's an uncomfortable situation for me. We have a composting bathroom which routinely has a layer of dark mud littering the floor, which, of course, is almost certainly nothing but mud, since it's right next to the river which sometimes overflows, but since everyone walks around barefoot (including me), it's unnerving to step into the bathroom and slosh around in warm brown muck while sitting down on a hole directly above a giant bucket of live human feces, even if the brown substance clinging to your feet is absoloutely nothing but wet dirt. Mind games.

Both of these instances illustrate a learned understanding of what it means to be clean. The slimy dishes and the mucky floor are certainly icky for someone who has grown up with indoor bathrooms and dishwashing detergent (or a dishwasher), but they don't actually imply any type of health hazard. What's a little bit of olive oil and dried basil encrusted on a plate really going to do to the system? It's certainly healthier than a Big Mac, which I've heard is the only restaurant that routinely passes Board of Health inspections. No one eats meat here--so sitting in the composting bathroom is probably a heck of a lot safer than opening up a jar of peanut butter in the U.S. and risking getting infected with a poop bacteria. And the composting bathroom never obligates the user to touch anyone else's poop any more than a traditional Western indoor bathroom would--that is, the poop drops a number of feet way down into the bucket, so the only way you would have to touch someone else's do-do would be if they missed the bowl completely--which can also happen in the fanciest of flushing Johns. I like to challenge my own belief systems constantly, whether they are on the deep, political level or on the more superficial poop-and-other-bodily functions level.

And speaking of challenging conversations, there are some beliefs that hold true for me no matter who I talk to. The other day, while one of the seasoned farm volunteers was showing my how to clean the composting bathroom, he put on the big rubber gloves and reached into the hole to pull out the giant bucket of poop and soiled toilet paper. My face made the automatic reactive look it makes when I'm disgusted, and I crinkled my nose and gagged a little bit. The sheer amount of human poop was astounding. I had never come so close to such a mountain of waste. The volunteer made a comment about how we humans are conditioned to be afraid of poop, not to touch it, that from a young age our parents slap our hands and tell us not to go near it, and that it's really all a taboo because poop is not a threat.

Um, excuse me?

His argument was that we don't like poop because we're told it's bad--that really, poop is a fine substance, risk free. I don't agree. I think we're taught not to have a close relationship with it because it's a PUBLIC HEALTH HAZARD. Not so much on an organic, vegetarian farm, but certainly on the grand scale, where people are eating who knows what. There's a reason we wash our hands after we use the bathroom! Now, it's true that the recent health scares involving e coli were actually a result of the poor treatment and processing of sick cows and not simply because a Skippy employee pulled a wipe and run, but still, this is still a poop issue nonetheless. I've learned that everyone here is pretty sure of their own convictions, though, so there's not much use in plodding on with the same argument after some time--I think we've all learned to let it go after the conversation becomes repetitive. Anyway, is that really the point--to talk someone over to your side?

That's what I love so much about this farm; on the grand scale of things, that is, among humans worldwide, everyone existing in this space is more or less of the same political and ideoligical inclinations. We all appreciate a life apart from the industrial production of goods, we value a more locally-focused market, especially that involving our food, we all seem to agree that eating a lot of vegetables and less (or no) animal products is a good idea for a variety of reasons, and everyone here seems to be aware and in support of movements that search for a more humane and just existence for humans everywhere. However, since we're all in the same place, and have all likely come to believe in these ideas through critical thinking and questioning the traditional system in which we were raised, we're a bunch of arguers, and everyone is up for a debate. The possibilities are endless. As I've mentioned before, not a day goes by in the fields, in the warehouse, in the kitchen, when a lengthy passionate discussion is not occuring. The poop argument only scratches the surface. It's so great for my brain to be doing something so manual, like weeding around basil plants, while dicussing the semantics of the word ''ethic.'' Yeah.

The idea that this farm expands minds is not mine alone. The other day, Rudolfo, one of the members of the family, was talking about how the composting bathroom exists maybe more for this very reason than for saving the composted waste to use as compost for the soil. So far, they have yet to do anything with the composted poop. It just sits in a big wooden bin, and then, when the bin fills, it's moved to a big pile outside the orchard. He said something I loved, which was something like this: ''Here on this farm, we've built a lot of giant walls with the sole purpose of people smashing into them. The composting bathroom is one. I have no idea why the hell we save the poop and compost it if we're never going to use it, but I think that's fine. Everyone has to use it, everyone has to clean it, and it's probably been the biggest source of discomfort among visitors.  A lot of people have a very difficult time accepting it, but after a while, everyone gets used to it.  The bathroom serves as just another one of those walls that we crash into in order to change the way we think about things. Sometimes that's the only way I truly grow from within, not so much gradually, but with giant blows from the walls that other people put up.'' I really like that way of thinking about personal growth and the different ways it is possible. I too enjoy smashing into things. See: my post-graduate year in Burlington, Vermont.

This place seems to be as much a healing refuge as it is a working farm. There always seems to be someone new arriving while someone else is leaving. Many people come here to spend a few days with Amparo, who is the mother of the family and the reason behind the fact that they all moved out here fifteen years ago to build a life around healing through good food. Amparo's knowledge around natural healing is astounding, and I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical at first. However, this lady is legit. Headache? Just mix a few dried herbs (don't bother asking me what they are--my brain is on new plant overload) with onion and honey and boil. Drink. Cured. Or maybe I did that when I had a sore throat. Hmm. I'll get back to you. Whatever I had, it was cured after this mysterious concoction.

One day, just a few days in, while I was crouched over in the strawberry patch, I heard the crunching of grass underfoot which meant that someone was approaching from behind me. I turned around and my eyes met a willowy young woman with a large turban wrapped around her head and a single five foot long dreadlock trailing behind her, complete with wooden bead and some sort of amulet at the end. She was carrying a naked baby with wild tangled curls, and I greeted her and introduced myself. She told me her name, smiled, and kept walking. No other words.

My head was spinning. Uh, who are you? [I like your single dreadlock]. Are you a family member? [Are you a vagabond?] Are you going to help me pick these berries? Who is that bare-bummed child in your arms? 

I learned a few days later that she had met Amparo at a raw foods conference in Buenos Aires, and decided to come back with her to learn about the farm. I have learned to stop asking who people are, since there are so many of them coming and going. It keeps things spicy around here. Variety is the spice of life. Or is spice the life of variety?

In other news, I'm back to making cheese, just like I did in Colombia. There is a lovely neighbor who sells fresh raw milk, and it's not nearly as cow-y smelling as was the milk I bought from my Colombian neighbor, which must explain why the mere scent of it doesn't send my stomach into an automatic curdling retch. Either that, or I've finally cured myself of whatever bacteria or parasite I had when I was further north. Whatever it is, I've been having loads of fun with my fellow volunteer friend, David, who was thrilled to go in with me on six liters of milk. The idea was to make yogurt and cheese, but interestingly enough, every batch with the intent to make yogurt has yielded something closer to cheese, and vice versa. All of it has resulted in some very delicious mistake babies. My favorite yet has been a ''yogurt'' that turned into mozzarella, that when left in the fridge and dried out a bit became ricotta. Delicious.

The apple harvest is drawing near, and the apples are getting fatter and redder (or, in the green apple case, just fatter) by the day! I must eat at least 7 apples daily. Maybe this means that I will keep the doctor away for seven times the time that one a day would.

Argentina farming, one week in, feeling really good about it.

I think that this trip became a whole lot more political since my arrival into this country. Everyone I meet who is in some way connected to the organic and/or local food movement has a lot to say about big agriculture, global food politics, and how they relate to the marginalization and exclusion of certain groups of people.  The current farm on which I find myself these days is certainly no exception.  Every single day, whether I'm picking zucchini in the fields, planting potatoes, or preparing bunches of chard for the weekly farmers market, I find myself in conversation with one of the volunteers (or, more likely, one of the members of the family who runs the farm) about genetically modified organisms, monocultures, Monsanto, etc. For those of you who are less obessed with this issue than I am and therefore for whom this is a bunch of technical and meaningless jargon, I apologize. For those of you who are into this stuff, you probably understand how interesting and exciting it is to be amidst a bunch of local food pioneers and, on top of it all, to have the opportunity to be a part of a movement taking root (pun sort of intended) down here in South America.

Sidenote: yet another study came out a couple weeks ago about the potentially devastating effects that genetically modified corn (copyright Monsanto) has on the human body. Lab results showed that this corn helped cause significant organ damage in rats. Studies like this come out all the time. Read all about it: http://www.biolsci.org/v05p0706.htm

Even the little children who live on the farm know what's going on with global food politics. Alondra, age eleven, who lives on a neighboring organic farm, struck up a conversation with me the other day about the deforestation in Paraguay on the Brazilian border and the giant soy crop companies that are buying out small farms and essentially terrorizing the farms that refuse to sell.  Age eleven, this one.

Not only is this farm politically aligned with me, it is also the perfect place for someone who dislikes doing the same thing every day. I never have the same day twice. A couple of days ago, I found myself walking along a long line of freshly tilled dirt, barefoot, dropping little baby potatoes into the ground about 12 inches apart and lightly patting them with the soles of my feet afterwards to push them into the ground. The day before, I was hacking away at the giant weeds that had begun to overtake the eggplant and basil plants. The day before that, I was putting labels and caps on bottles of apple cider vinegar. The day before that, I spent a large part of my day swimming in the river with the little kids from the farm, since they couldn't con anyone else into taking them. Con, please, it was at least 85 degrees outside. I had fun.

I have yet to take a ''shower'' here. Bathing in the river is much more fun. The farm is perfectly located so that the melted ice from the mountains flows down and runs right past their house in the summer months (so, right now) and thus they irrigate by digging trenches that run the water directly to the orchards. And bathing in the river, albeit frigidly cold (melted ice is not exactly tepid), is wonderfully refreshing and really puts some hair on your chest. Uh, I mean, so to speak. It certainly gives me a big slap on the back and a surge of lively energy to my soul.

Everyone here is a big joker, with varying degrees of sarcasm, which I highly enjoy as well. Every meal is eaten together around a long rectangular table, jokes flying, people playing tricks on each other, and at the same time it's a giant free-for-all where arms tangle in reaching for the salad bowl, salt shaker, tomatoes, etc. No one says, ''please pass the...'', it's more of a bark: SALT! SALAD!

I had more to write, but I have to get on a bus back to the farm!

Oats and Beans and Barley Grow

I am sore. My butt, abs, thighs, neck--there's a marked stiffness in my gait, and jogging gives me a Quasimodo-esque quality. My feet are soiled almost beyond recognition; there's dirt caked in my toenails and the few flecks of pink nailpolish are now more of a tan color underneath a thick layer of dirt-dust. I have a slight sunburn under my eyes and on my shoulders, and my armpits smell. My hair is starting to resemble a wig.  Either I've developed a crystal-meth addiction and am now living on the sidewalk, or I'm back in the farming world.

I'm back in the farming world! It's so great to be doing something again.

So, I got into Mendoza (Argentina) on Wednesday, in hopes of finding a farm in the area. I must admit that I was feeling more than a little anxious--I had not really planned ahead, and had only begun to start to contact the farms on my list in the last few days. Hadn't taken into account the fact that MANY more people travel to Argentina than, say, Colombia, and in addition, I was entering Argentina at the peak of high season. Also, many of the farms don't have internet access, so it can take up to a week or two just to get a response from someone, and oftentimes, in Argentina, in January, it's a straight-up ''no.'' Well, really it's more of a ''we're so sorry--we'd love to have you, but we're up to our elbows in eager volunteers for the next three months! Maybe next year?'' I received a few messages like this, and started to wonder if I'd actually find anything.

Luckily, I speak Spanish. I called every phone number on the list, and found a farm! The family had been celebrating the holidays with other family in town and thus had not had time to check email or host any volunteers, and I guess I called at the right moment because they told me I could come immediately and stay as long as I wanted. Excellent. I packed up my bags and was out of the gringo-land hostel the next morning (although the hostel wasn't all that bad--I did meet an awesome girl who was into food justice issues and knew what she was talking about. It was so great to have a nerd moment with her and talk about philosophies and politics and not have to explain the history of things).

The trip to the farm was an interesting one. I arrived at the dusty bus terminal (one room, one bench in the center, no people anywhere), where I was told I'd be able to catch a bus to the town where the farm was located. I arrived around 2pm, and to my dismay found that the next bus left at 8pm. Luckily, a nice man overheard me griping over the fact that I'd have to wait six hours in a deserted ghost town, and he offered me a ride. He and his wife were heading that way anyway. So, (parents--close your eyes and scroll down a bit, please) I happily hopped into the car of this unknown man in a deserted town and off we went! We picked up their son on the way (his name was Nacho...actually, a common nickname for Ignacio, but I still think it's so funny that people are named Nacho) and we drove through vineyards and valleys and eventually got to the crossroads where the little farm is located. I thanked them profusely for saving me from wasting an afternoon, and off I went.

I immediately liked the farm. There were little homemade signs all along the road advertising their organic produce, preserves, and juices, and I walked by a giant bathtub with flowers growing out of it as I approached what I assumed was a workshop or at least a place I could expect to find another human. I was greeted by a barefooted french woman named Aurelia, who was another volunteer who had just arrived the day before. I also immediately liked her--she had a fantastic laugh. She explained to me that I had arrived during siesta, which meant everyone was probably sleeping or relaxing (score! We get a siesta here??) and brought me to the kitchen, where I met Jorge, a guy from Buenos Aires but now lives in Australia who had volunteered on the farm a few years ago and is now back visiting the family and helping out as well.  He reheated some lunch for me, a delicious mixture of veggies and millet, or some grain similar to millet, and I breathed out an enormous sigh of ''Yes, I'm back in the woods and eating organic vegetarian food with people who don't wear deodorant. I missed this.''

Later, I met Manu, who is a French man who is married to Maribel, who grew up on the farm, and now they both live here. Aurelia, Jose, Manu, and I spent the hotter part of the afternoon in the shade of the workshop putting labels on their signature organic applejuice, which they sell to to restaurants in Buenos Aires and also at the farmers market in Mendoza that would take place the next day. Then, we took a walk out to the gardens and picked green beans, also for the market. I took off my shoes, too, and I really enjoyed walking through the mud and letting it ooze out through the spaces in my toes. I kept singing a folk song from my Sharon, Lois, and Bram tape that I listened to as a little nugget, the one with the lyrics ''oats and beans and barley grow, oats and beans and barley grow, you or I or anyone know how oats and beans and barley grow!'' Not sure why, I guess it just seemed appropriate. I talked about Community Supported Agriculture with Jose in between the bean stalks, who knew all about it, and relished my round two of food system banter.

The suns stays out so late here! I love it! I can't get used to it! It completely throws me off--I mean, it's only been two days, but I'm always shocked to find out what time it is when I'm out in the field weeding or something and the sky is still well-lit and it's 8pm. Amazing. And ohhh, the sky here. First of all, you have a view of the Andes mountains and, early in the morning, you can see the snow at the top. Then, flat, green fields of produce or wildflowers, and then a bit further out, really tall pine trees. The neighboring farm grows sunflowers, and it's purely magical--just sunflowers packed together like corn in the midwest, as far as you can see. At sunset, the sky explodes with purples and reds and oranges, and at night, of course, since we're pretty far away from the city, it's just stars, stars, stars.

I love the mental strength that comes with working on a farm. Yesterday, I had to weed the strawberry plants, two rows of them, probably at least the length of two football fields, promise I'm not exaggerating. That's a lot of time squatting, picking around one type of green leaf to yank up another type of green leaf. It's a daunting task at the beginning, so you have to tell yourself that it's not all going to happen in ten minutes, that it's a task that requires time and patience (I tend to not have much of either one). But it is absolutely the most satisfying thing when, after about an hour or two, you turn around to see the work you've done. Just two neat little rows of clearly-defined strawberry plants. And then to turn your head the other way, you see that yes, there's still so much to do, but comparing the wild, crazy, weedy plants to your left and the clean ones to your right is a constant reminder of how much great work you've done. And, I mean, I like to tell myself I'm growing my gluteus maximus by doing all that squatting.

Next time you see me, this baby will have some serious back.