How does our Garden Grow?

Again, this entry is more about the pictures. Here are some of how our garden looks now. It might not be super easy to see, in the small picture, but on the left is our row of Sunflowers, all doing very well. We may cut a few of them and test how they sell down in the market of Las Palmas. In the foreground is a purple Gladiola, they are doing ok, a beetle larva called "gallina ciega" ate some of the roots, and caused some mortality in these.

Gladiolas are well known in the markets here, but they do not have a wide variety of colors. So, we are expanding that a bit. Past the Gladiola are the summer squashes and zucchini. We brought 3 colors of each. Strangely enough, it seems like the best producer as well as most resistant to the "plagas" (any pest, fungus, virus, ect...) is the yellow variety of both zucchini and summer squash. The picture on the right shows our garden from the bottom along with some of the new beds we are preparing for more seeds like asian veggies, eggplant, and different califlowers.

We are growing all of these without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Might as well learn how they fair under this condition, no real need to introduce yet another crop that requires lots of expensive management. We do use the "worm juice" as a folliar fertilizer, and the "lombricompost" that our group here is producing to sell to organic farmers. Also, I have occaisionally used a "plagucida" made of garlic, hot chile, onion, and soap. To the left there, you can see some of our products, along with our industrious salesmen!

Tenemos Pollitos

So this is just a quick fun entry showing some pictures of our latest house guests. One of the nice things about a rural life is that you get to have lots of domestic animals, doing their own thing. The family that we live with decided it was time to let their very broody hens rear a couple of batches of chicks. I think that they also fostered a few eggs from next door, because they ended up with around 14 chicks each!

It has made walking around the house a bit more hazardous... you don't want to accidently step on a chick, plus the hens get very protective. Katie like to play with them, or pet them...even though she knows that in the end, they will be soup. We can by frozen chicken when we want it, so we have not yet bought a live one and killed it for food. This is what many of the families would do...but so far we haven't felt the need to experience that part of life here.

We don't really eat that much meat in the first place. It is nice to have fried chicken, or chicken soup every now and then, but I'd say we eat veggie or pasta dishes a lot more. It is funny, because the Salvadoreans think that vegetarians are very strange, but really their normal diet only has a smattering of real meat, and most of that is chicken. While in Guatemala on the other hand, lots of carnitas and chorizo is consumed, they eat a lot more meat than their neighbors...and strangest of all, they eat black beans! Salvadoreans only eat red beans, a very important distinction.

Feliz Tarde from Antigua

So, this post is being written on the fly so to speak, from an internet cafe in Antigua Guatemala. We are on a "vacation". combining a little work and studying, with good food coffee and beer. The photos for this post are from our Feliz Tarde event at the school in our comunity. It was to raise funds and was mostly planned and instigated by Katie. It consisited of games, a movie, a dance, and lots of food. In these pictures you can see some of the food stalls, including the all important pupusas, the national food of El Salvador. On the right there, is a woman (one of the students mom), making the pupusas, and behind here you can see them frying on the grill. Up where we are they mainly come in two flavors, cheese, and bean and cheese. Elsewhere you can find a lot more variety, like chicharron, ayote, and loroco... all in various combinations with beans and cheese. The cheese is a special cheese called quesillo that is a bit like mozzarela (sp?). They only use it for pupusas, but I have started making lots of lasagna like things with it in our crock pot, and it works great!

To the left here is one of the better fund raisers we had. It is what is called a "canasta basica" or basic basket. You buy a basket (plastic) and fill it with all of the basic food requirements, like rice, beans, sardines, soda, ect... we gringos made up this basket and added a few stranger things, like juice and toilet paper... it was fun, and the winner got a lot of good stuff for the entry fee of a quarter (pronounced and spelled "cora" here in El Sal, where they use our money) a ticket. We made $86 on the "rifa" (raffle), good money which the school is thinking of using to help build a covered play area for the kids. One of the bigger projects they want for us to work on is a basketball "cancha" so that there will not just be a big muddy play area like there is now. This is a bit more costly, so we have to figure out how to raise or find the money.

Should have some more entries over the next few days, I brought more photos to show, but not the write ups...so probably not particularly well thought out entrys, but some good fun photos! Afterall, you guys probably get more out of the photos than what I write most of the time. With that, I will just end on a cute photo, that shows that the kids enjoyed the feliz tarde as much as we did. Cheers!