On Neighbors and Music

It´s commonly known among people of the world, that neighbors can be one of our biggest assets.  This is most especially true when you need four-wheel-drive to get to your front door.

Our little family shares a plot of about thirty acres with two other families. At one point they shared things as intimate as their water-well, that is, until the water ran dry.  But now they mostly share fun times together as well as a gentle dependence on neighborly favors.  Imagine if you ran out of eggs during a recipe, and your neighbor just happened to have 25 chickens?? Or what if you were digging a giant hole in the garden, and your neighbor just happened to be a sculptor with an endless supply of tools – perfect for digging?  These sorts of things happen often. What we didn´t know when we originally read the description of our family in the WWOOF directory, is that both families are full of incredibly talented musicians. In turn, they have become some of our favorite people.

Paulo y Paula, the neighbors who live closest to our family, are in love with Brazilian bossa nova and samba, so we are becoming enamoured with the music of Caetano Veloso, the infamous Brazilian musician.  So far we have learned three songs by him, in Portuguese!! (thinking of you Emily, Galen and the Farias!) The other neighbors, Ariel and Adriana (I know, these couples really picked their name-twins) play sitar! Ariel is supposedly one of Argentina´s best sitar players – probably one of the only sitar players, as well.  But he studied in India and has like 500 sitars in the basement home studio he is building. Wow!

A few Sundays ago, Ariel and Adriana invited everyone over to their house for some music. They have two younger sons, age 4 and 11, who are very lively, as well.  The evening began by sharing folk songs on guitar and banjo and ended with Grandma dancing the tango with a broom stick! Every time a song would end everyone would erupt in applause and the tiny little boy would scream at the top of his lungs in excitement. Yes! I love these people! They also taught us one of their traditional Argentinian folk dances called the Chacarera, where the men and women make eyes at each other the entire dance, but never touch. So there Graham and I were, stomping and twirling with our arms in the air, fairly clueless, but having a wonderful time.

These evening music jams usually includes wine and savory home-made torts. Paulo y Paula also have an extensive live-concert-DVD collection, so often we sit around listening to records and introducing each other to different songs and artists.  Recently, at one of our jam sessions, Paula exclaimed that she knew the owner of a local bar and asked if we´d like to play there one night.  Um, in front of an entirely Spanish-speaking crowd? For who-knows-how-long and under who-knows-what conditions?  We agreed, wholeheartedly.

Below you´ll see some photos of the bar – which actually reminded us of some cozy, Government Camp lodge in Oregon. It´s called Potrerillo (whatever that means..) and we played way up high in a loft like corner stage. The place was packed and our family and all the neighbors and their mother-in-laws and kids came too. Here in Argentina, they do everything later. Dinner is typically at 9pm, so even though we were the only people playing, we started at 12:30pm, que raro!!! The show went fairly well. The sound system gave us trouble the whole way through, so I´m fairly certain I blew out some ear drums with my harmonica. We asked the neighbors if they´d like to accompany us on a few songs, and we had a blast with those. A few people came up to us afterwards with very warm compliments. One couple in the crowd requested Pearl Jam and mentioned the soundtrack from ¨Into the Wild¨.  Unfortunately we had to let them down, but we did play a Beatles song that got some good applause (The Beatles are unbelievably huge here).  However, maybe the coolest thing of all is that we got paid $700 pesos! You heard me, $700 pesos. Okay, it´s about $165 bucks, but that´s way more than we ever get paid in the States. Thanks Argentina! That little pocket of dough will probably fund our entire three months in this town.

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Overall, we are still having a great time and we have about a month and a half left of our stay here. Then, it´s up the wind to send us in our next direction.

Thanks everyone for reading!

On farm work

I currently have six insect bites on my left hand pinky finger. This is what weeding near a red ant hill will do to you.  We are quickly gaining an even greater appreciation for the hard-core-ness of small scale organic farming. Weeds grow where plants grow. This we already knew, but when you have to pull weeks for 6 hours a day multiple days in a row, the reality of a farmer´s life starts to come into focus… or maybe a blurr. All I know is, at this point we need a nap.

Our master gardening ninja, Diego, was gone on a trip for a few days last week, so we had pretty light work, like pickling veggies, crushing dried leaves, harvesting raspberries and cucumbers and milking the cows. But Diego returned yesterday and he basically kicked our asses in training. The first thing we did Monday morning was to ¨prepare the soil for planting¨… which meant that we hacked away at raw land with pitchforks then turned the entire plot over with hoes and shovels. We cut the grass from its roots and turned the weeds upside down, so they don´t re-root when it rains. It was backbreaking work. Today, I feel like I got hit by a truck. I´m sore and Graham has blisters on every finger. Yesterday, while we worked, it crossed my mind more than once, how easy the job would be with a rototiller. Diego even told me he had one, but he doesn´t like to use it because it ¨cuts everything up¨. Hm, I thought that was the point.  He and Nuria both have a particular way of making the work more exhausting. The other day, Nuria had us ¨chopping¨ a mixture of dried herbs , we used a little Swiss gadget with a blader that slams and turns when you push on a little lever. To chop about 3 tablespoons of herbs, it takes about 150-200 pushes on the lever. Again, the wonders of modern technology came to mind, and I was dreaming about a food processor. I´d definitely seen one in the cupboard. About half way through the job, I nonchalantly asked Nuria if she´d every used the food processor for chopping herbs. She smilled and said ¨I don´t like to use it because it turns everything into sticks and dust, I prefer this way¨. So Graham and I sweated out 2 hours (per person) of lever pushing madness.

But what can I say? This is probably why both Nuria and Diego are in such excellent shape in (what I imagine as) their late 40´s. They work their asses off. And if I take a moment and stop complaining, I realize that this is exactly what I want for my ass – to work it off. This doesn´t necessarily mean I would turn away a food processor or a rototiller if they were offered to me, but the manual labor does give a sense of accomplishment. And when all is said and done, I can look back and say, ¨wow, I did this all by myself¨. .. What a sucker, huh?

Aside from the hard work, (which we were definitely expecting) we have been learning gagillions of amazing things. Diego and Nuria are incredibly well-read and educated in the art of bio-dynamic farming. One amazing thing we witnessed yesterday was how to make compost fertilizer from cow horns. See the pictures below. The method was introduced by an Autrian scientist and biodynamic guru named Rudolf Stiener and the recipe goes as follows (please note this is simplified for the general public like myself)

1) Get some new-ish cow horns

2) Stuff them full of cow poop

3) Put them in large jars underground for 6 months – 1 year

4) Get them out, and stir the gunk in a large basin of rainwater for approximately 1 hour.

5) sing some songs and drink juice while stirring.

6) Spray the brown water on all your plants for magic fertilizer growth food.

As time goes on, we are actually falling more in love with our little family. The girl stirring here is Lucia. She is the daughter of a family friend who has also come to volunteer for the summer. She´s pretty core-girl too. She´s sixteen and works longer and eats more than Graham or I. Her accent is difficult to understand, but she is helping us learn Spanish and she´s very laid back, considerate and patient with us. Below you´ll see a little picture of our room, off the end of the workshop, blackberries we picked by the river, and the river itself. There´s also a few pics the little pueblo, which is a tiny German tourist town, where Argentinians come for the summer and stay in little cabanas. Very cool.

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Our Fabulous Farm

We made it! We´ve been on our farm now for about a week and we´re already scheming on how to stay longer. It´s so nice to be out of the big, dirty, pick-pocketing city, and finally breath deeply on our charming little granja, or farm. Our family is wonderful! They are so warm and gentle with us. Diego is the master farm ninja, as we´ve started to call him. He is so knowlegable about everything biodynamic and never hesitates to stop work in the field to explain how the cycles of the moon affect the plants or how a particular variety of vegetable grows better in a particular soil. He also speaks very good English and wipes away our blank, uncomprehending stares when necessary. Nuria, Diego´s wife, provides much of the momentum behind the operation. She is a tiny firecracker from Spain and speaks to her children in Catalan, a language and region in the north of Spain. She is quick to laugh and is an amazing cook, using her nimble fingers to transform the fresh gifts of the garden into hearty and flavorful meals.  So far, my favorite has been a fresh tomato gespacho with a hot barley, squash salad. Every meal is followed by a dish of home made yoguert topped with fresh fruit or sweet marmolade from the storage room.

Our room is separated from the house and attached to the workshop where the alfalfa and harvested crops are stored. One of our windows looks out into the chicken yard, where an adolescent rooster squacks his sorry crow at five frickin thirty every morning. Hurray earplugs! The other window looks over the road to the garden. Graham and I are both grateful for the privacy of our separate room, even though our bathroom leaves a bit to be desired (we found a frog in there the other night!).

We begin and end the day with milking. The family has two cows named Canella (Cinammon) and Negrita (Little Blackie). The cows graze in a pasture beyond the garden, so each morning we wake up, walk past the creek and call them to be milked. Sometimes they don´t come and we need to hike over the hill and find them. Once they see us they coming running.. they know we have grain to feed them while we milk (suckers!). Depite what the city kid might think, milking cows is hard!!! Diego with his ninja skills makes it look so easy, but I pull and squeeze and just a dribble comes out, or I squirt the stuff all over my arm. Nuria said if you can see any milk at all on the first try, then you are doing good, so we just need to keep practicing.

So far there is much to do on the farm. The family runs a small, biodynamic opperation that they cultivate mostly to feed themselves. They do sell a few vegetables to a small restaurant, but they said the farmer´s market culture is not good in this little tourist town, and they are having difficulty with restaurants and grocery stores who consider their fresh veggie stand unwanted “competition”. Regardless, they grow TONs of different veggies and fruits, everything from duraznos (peaches) to choclo (corn) to zapallitos (little squash that beat the hell out of zuchinni). Our tasks include weeding, harvesting, packaging, transfering, cutting, raking, etc as well as feeding the chickens, collecting eggs and milking. Some of the work is difficult but no one task lasts too long, and like I said, Diego is always more than willing to chill and talk about something. My body is still getting used to the hard labor (I don´t think I´ve moved this much in the past year) and the wholesome food is doing our systems good.They also strickly observe the “siesta”, which means after a 1pm lunch, everyone chills and naps until 4pm, then we work in the field until we milk again at 7pm, and the day ends with dinner at 8pm. How incredible!

Coolest thing so far: THE BUGS!!! See my photo log below, but there are soooo many incredible little buggy creatures, nearly every five minutes Graham and I stop and yell ¨”whoooooa” because some fantastic speckled grasshopper just bumped into our head, or a crazy mantis jumps off a leaf, or a giant lizard (which I understand is not a bug) has just scuffled into the bushes. I´ve never seen so many different shapes and sizes of bugs in my entire life. They also have lightning bugs!!! They are called taga tagas, or something like that, and they make the cool, dry evenings so magical!

On top of it all, Graham and I are learning all of this in Spanish! I can feel myself improving by the minute and Graham is getting better and better at rolling his r´s and remembering all the syllables.

Like I said, so far, we are feeling very lucky, hasta pronto!

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Buenos Aires – The Land of Good Airs

We are trying to figure out how to work this keyboard, but itś very difficult. Hello from Buenos Aires! Were still alive after four days in this crazy city! Hurray! Number one: The beer here is marginal. Most places one can buy Quilmes, the standard bud-light-ish brew, and on occasion itś cold. Number two: Hostels – We now have some lovely friends from Australia who helped us capture the criminal who tried to steal my wallet. Wait… did I just mention we got robbed? yes, I did. It was a clever trick, but not clever enough. Boom!

The story goes, we were hanging with the Aussies at a local craft market in the San Telmo neighborhood when we decided to sit down for a rest. Graham had just asked me for the map and my purse sat unzipped next to me. A moment later, an Argentine woman stopped to ask us directions in English (weird), I could not understand her and didnt really know where I was anyway, so I looked away and at that moment I saw a hand reach into my purse and slip away with my wallet! Ahhhhhhhhh!! Luckily our ninja skills instantly kicked in and I jumped up and yelled “heś got my wallet, heś got my fucking wallet!” (Graham was quick on my heels). I caught up to the SOB by the end of the block and grabbed him by the shirt then I heard Graham yell “he dropped it! I got it!” and I let him go. wow! so exciting! The police showed up not thirty seconds later and a bystander pointed out the criminal who was promptly arrested. Then I tried to explain what happened to the police in the silliest Spanish you can imagine. After experiencing the pick-pocket love first hand we are even more cautious.

Number 3: The sites – Buenos Aires is a buzzing city where the buses nearly swipe pedestrians off every corner. The buildings are beautiful, if not a bit run down, and the people are very welcoming and passionate. See photos below of La Boca, a beautiful neighborhood with colorful buildings and a hotbed of street Tango. Graham connected with an Argentine fan of the Ascetic Junkies and she invited us to hang with authentic Porteño folks. We drank beer at a funky pub and laughed and sweat through hours of fabulous Spanglish in near 100 degree heat. They were awesome!

Today: Graham and I walked around BsAs shopping for guitars. We found a beautiful Nuñez, nylon string, acoustic guitar, handmade in Argentina and now I just need someone to teach me how to play it.Tonight we take an 11 hour bus to our farm in Villa General Belgrano. We are glad to escape the heat of the city and meet our new family on the farm.

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Funemployed

Tomorrow is our last day in the United States. I’m supposed to be remembering things I’m forgetting to do so I can remember to do them before we leave. But instead I’m trying to figure out how to download pictures onto my sister’s Mac so I can upload them to this blog. Side note: my archaic phone’s T9 does not know the word “blog”, so I have to manually enter it each time I text someone about this site. Whatever.

On funemployment: If anyone hasn’t tried this state of existence, recommended for at least a month’s time (admittedly, we have about a week until we reach this goal), one should take every opportunity to try it.  Being funemployed is distinguished from every other type of idleness due to its complete absence of boredom and stress.  Note the photo log below; does that piggy back ride under the Golden Gate Bridge look dull? How about temporary “favorite aunt/uncle” to Laurel’s dogs in San Louis Obispo? Or what about shooting clay pigeons with Ryan the Rad on his 40 acre Griffin farm in San Diego? Exactly! These passtimes are the enemies of idleness, the illustrious slayers of sloth. Being funemployed is the best way to jump from obligation’s beckoning grasp and into the land of, “oh sure, you’d like to meet for lunch, let me just get out of the spa”. Needless to say, we’ve been having a wonderful time couch surfing with family and friends in California. We’ve hugged and lunched with grade school and college friends, siblings, parents and grandparents, trying to stock up on all the love we can before departing for the land of unknowns.  Most exciting moment so far: Graham almost getting arrested by the U.S. boarder patrol in San Diego (wait, did I say that out loud?) Just kidding, mama Z!

The next time you hear from us, it will likely be from the BsAs (Buenos Aires) of Argentina.

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Homeless In California

It occurred to me yesterday, as I was washing dishes in Aunt Jan’s Modesto kitchen, that I no longer have a kitchen of my own. Then the thought came that I don’t have a house, either. We are enjoying the generosity of family and friends in these weeks before our departure, but when all is said and done, Graham and I are officially homeless.

This isn’t the first time for Graham. He was a hitchhiking champ after high school and used his thumb to cross the USA more than once. And though I’ve traveled abroad for months, this is the first time I’ve said goodbye to my grown-up life and home indefinitely. So what’s going to happen? The question is equally liberating and obnoxious. Heaven knows our apartment needed to be cleaned out. But what about our lives? Our friends? Our jobs? We’ve said goodbye to all of them. At times it’s hard to swallow. One doesn’t just pick up people of the calibre and quality in our life now. That shit takes time. It takes energy and who knows how many shared beers and conversations over dinner and bike rides. It’s gut wrenching to imagine leaving such incredible people. Deep breaths. We’re on the holiday high right now. Hot chocolate being passed around, fresh California avocados with breakfast (I refuse to believe whoever told me that avocados don’t grow in Argentina), hysterical family stories and cheer. And I’m very very excited for what lies ahead, but this trip is a little different from the others, and I guess I’m still processing it.

First we have to actually leave the States….

Right now, this very instant, in our apartment in Portland I hear Michelle ripping newspaper and wrapping our dishes into boxes, we are soon to pack all of our possessions and assets into my parents basement and embark on the first leg of our trip: Christmas in California….