The hummingbrids are activated. This is a place to be visited now
or else deep, tricky-to-gather nectar is being wasted.
The cabin is still the same, although now at the corner of the
house, there's a viny plant growing that will string itself along the
porch ceiling and drop down a cord with flower after flower, a maroon
and gold hummingbird attractant. It grows until it reaches the floor
or is cut by a human or detroyed by a kitten. In trying to
manipulate the flagship vine, I snapped it clean off. Sometimes, I'm
my own worst enemy in the garden, but less and less so recently. The
offshoots from lower nodes seized this oppurtunity to spring forth,
and the old top has now been replaced and will die off unnoticed.
Around this time of year, in a beautiful, hazy, hot calm period
before the rain begins, I'm wishing I had a closed-in cabin, a tent
or a mosquito net. I wake here and there at night itching my hands
and wrists, but then in the morning there's never any trace that bugs
were leisurely feasting on my blood .
The plants have proved themselves. We worked, we shaped, we
planted and we had theory. With time and light care, plants thrived.
The plants said this: "We like the land and the air, we like
the animals, we like you, we like eachother and we like the coffee.
We will grow. Some of us will sprout more than others, some will
grow more often, some will grow and die and others could outlive
you." The plants have grown, but this time around, in the next
wave of planting, I still doubted the seeds dropped and the sticks
jammed into the ground would lead to much, but it's working again,
and the gratification and confidence that derives causes a motivation
that makes the growth and development exponential.
Yesterday, for instance, we got some yuca(cassava) cuttings from
Brian. We chose a little area by the house and leveled it out a
little. Ben planted the six yuca cuttings but you can't grow
something by itself so we planted a quick food forest around it. We
tried for each of the layers of the forest, bottom to top:
- Root Veg – Yuca, White Raddish
- Ground Cover – Yarrow, False Peanut
- Grassy Things – Spinach, Arugula, Comfrey, Broccoli
- Herbaceous – Cilantro, Celery, White Raddish, Black
Amaranth, White Amaranth, Sorghum, Rosa de Jamaica
- Bush – Pigeon Pea
- Small Tree – Yuca, Tree Tomato
- Large Tree – Exempt
- Viny – Exempt
Eric gathered a few bags of compost, we tossed that on top. Then
a light layer of woodchips to bounce the sun and sponge some water,
then we watered, then I threw in some worm garbage. The plan is
probably this: let it grow, eat from it. Eat salads and radishes,
harvest actively to eat and make room for other things to grow. Let
the yuca grow, harvest pigeon pea and let them pump nitrogen into the
ground. Cut back sorghum and let it grow back. Eat delicious tree
tomatoes and make more seeds. When there's probably yuca to harvest,
we'll dig it up and wipe out the whole garden, or maybe let the
chickens do it, Then we'll plant a young lime tree, the ground better
now than when we found it, and plant bomb a new forest built to help
that lime tree thrive.
Area by area, this is what we're doing. Some coffee goes down in
the process and a lot remain.
The coffee is delicious, the process elegant. Handfuls of ripe
coffee lit up red in small patches here and there around the orchard,
and one recent sunday afternoon, I grabbed a basket and started
picking, nice and gently to not disturb next year's growing harvest.
Ben, eager as always, jumped in to help and an hour later, at sunset,
we had about seven pounds. Long story short, I pulped the fruit by
hand, which took a long time and set it to bathe in a small bucket
for 2 nights. I completed the process of drying the coffee and
cleaned it little by little removing bad beans, small beans and
peices of leftover pulp. It was a truly ridiculous amount of time to
spend on such a small batch of coffee, but I'm sure I'll never love a
batch of coffee as much as that final final pick of 2015. In the end
I filled the dried green coffee with the shell still on into a small
basket, the size the kitten eats from. Without any other plan for
this minibatch of pergamino, I decided to roast. I hand shelled the
parchment layer from each bean and this also took forever. Finally I
had my mug almost full of coffee beans ready to roast. I put the
fire pretty high under a black saueepot dropped the coffee in, and
put on the lid. To imitate the constant agitation of a professional
roasting oven, I shook the coffee every 20 or 30 secnds for a about
20 minutes. With the second half of the batch, with the experience
from the first time, I pushed for a darker roast. I heard the cracks
for the first time, having only read about them. They're much softer
than I expected, not like popcorn at all but much more faint. I
smelled continously, not coffee, but what seemed like the smell of
caramelization. I think in this unrelated aroma lies the key to
roasting coffee well. When the second cracks slowed down, maybe only
moments from burning, I killed the fire and dropped the coffee into a
ceramic bowl and began to stir with a wooden paddle. After a minute
or two, I dropped again into another ceramic bowl to hasten further
the quick cooling process. I had a beautiful dark roast, a false
black which when held in the sun revealed a deep, dark brown. It's
still so fresh I don't need to put a lid on the jar for it would
stifle the curing that's still active. I got with the grinder, which
had become sloppy and loose and gummed up with cacao. I cleaned it
and learned how to align it well for a powdery, crack espresso grind.
Today and yesterday, I had the best cups of coffee I've ever had,
and the drink went from tree to cup without leaving El Jocotel. Goal
2015-16 coffee season: process all coffee harvest from El Jocotel,
feed the pulp to the worms.
I'm good. I thought about going home to the US this summer and it
seems like I won't. I have no car, no cell phone, no money and a lot
going on here. If I need a vacation, I have Guatemala and the rest
of Central America to explore. El Jocotel is legitimate. It's been
a year, and everyone who comes loves it. Ben left the work he was
doing to live in a tent here and help out for two months. Ben is a
gregarious Austrian 26 year old. I know I'll be sad that when he
leaves, he'll take with him the hilarious turns of phrase that come
from a German speaker with his level of English. While I still LOL
on the inside, I'm now focusing more on his point for the benefit of
the conversation itself. He helps on the farm and casually arranges
delicious meals when instead I would go hungry, go to the comedor or
just eat peanuts. We discuss life, women, plants, animals, medicine,
government, etc. The exchange involving work, food and beds usually
enter much more into the mix than just those three and I'm happy for
Ben's presence and learning much from him. I met a Mexican guy Eric
who was looking to volunteer and now he's up here, too, sharing the
tent with Ben. We weren't sure because Eric was a no-show in the
afternoon but ended up coming in the dark at 8:30. Also, his English
and our Spanish are so bad that, while we can tell he's a really nice
dude, there's this barrier we all have against expressing ourselves
quickly and well in our second (or third) language. I know the Eric
that bumbles through English doesn't really represent the Eric who
grew up in Mexico city, speaks Spanish, and almost became a
commercial airline pilot but decided to try for a life of service,
away from the grips of money and regular work hours. I'm glad Eric
came, and he will have helped a lot, hopefully learned something, and
in a couple more days, he'll probably vanish into his journey again.
I have it all really, except companionship. I've had some nice
partners, ones I've loved, but the vast majority of my experiences
have been alone. I'm fine with it and everything else in life is
quite fulfilling, but as time clicks by faster and faster, it gets
harder but I know you can't force it so I'll just keep plugging along
and trying to enjoy all the people that come into my life.
The restaurant has a roof. As Brian accurately stated, 'It needs
a human presence.' My tentative plan is to move the tent down there,
where it will be roofed under and live down there, letting the ideas
for develpment come as the do with presence. Checklists for the
success of that plan include finishing the perimeter, erecting a
front entry and creating some kind of pooping facility.
Tzununa's fair, which coincides with the day of Santa Elena de la
Cruz, kicks off this Friday. It is almost undistinguishable from any
other fair in Guatemala, if maybe smaller, but it's our turn to have
some different snacks, clothing for sale, arcade tents, music, light
dancing and planty of beer-drinking. True to form, Tzununa drunks
remain polite and minimally molestive, often resting their heads on
the table or their entire bodies by the side of the street. Most
times, it is too loud to really hear anything, anyway. We didn't
pull much together for Feria 2015 in terms of food selling, but in
2016 we are aiming for some tasty offerings.
Hope everyone is well.
