Perucho is clearest seen at day break, the scene looking down the valley usually reveals the clouds on a level with the village but are different minute by minute.
We get up at 6am in Perucho and from the moment I get up till I go to bed I am learning through doing. It’s knackering but great. Every day I face the task of a dancing routine with the biggest cockerel you ever seen. It has talons like a golden eagle and it doesn’t like me. To feed the chickens I have to carefully negotiate my way in, out and around the pen all the positioning the large compost bin between it and me. And then it’s time to fatten up the guinea pigs!
But life on the farm is great and varied. I am helping Michael with whatever needs doing. I’m weeding a lot. It involves getting very covered in soil and I’m finding soil in places in rather unusual places, and muscles that I haven’t worked in a long long time.
Mid morning calls for an impromptu meeting under a mandarin bush.. problem solving at 1800m. And the chance to pick and eat what we fancy from the garden.
This week’s preoccupation is harvesting and preparing for the Sunday market. We are harvesting the avocados, savoury bananas and carrots. I, hilariously, did not realise that avocados grew on trees. Well know I know. And I know that harvesting them involves climbing up trees and balancing precariously whilst trying to hook them and knock them to the ground with a large cane. And beans.
Beans, beans beans. Beans are hard work.
Harvesting beans means climbing to the top of the world first. I tell a lie, first you drive half way to the top of the world in a 4x4 until the car cannot go anymore vertical, then you get out and walk the final part. Harvesting beans is hard work, on the terraces on the side of the mountain it’s hot but I cannot take my jumper off as I am attacked from the ground up by tiny mosquitoes who appear unfussed by the altitude. 4 terraces of beans fills a large sack. A late night session with Michael’s wife and children sees us peeling beans for 4 hours to fill one large bowl! Aaaaaahh! I never want to see another bean again… but they’re very pretty all the varieties mixed together!
I think that Michael is giving me all the hard jobs until I realise when I awake fresh (almost!) the next morning that I have, at least, had the benefit of a good night’s sleep. He has had to get up at 2am to receive his water allowance that will runs down the carefully designed network of channels on the terraces between each row of plants until 3am whereby his neighbour’s turn with the water supply takes over. It’s like this every two weeks and I am start to learn that farming is round the clock, hard work.
No comments:
Post a Comment