farm life

(first, see previous post for info on Esteli)

YEA!!! this is my trip to my spanish teacher´s farm! during class one day she casually mentioned that she lives on a farm an hour´s walk from town and i said, ¨whoa - you should have tourists come stay and see farm life!¨ and she responded with, ¨ok, when do you want to come?¨ and it was as easy as that!

this pic is of Juana, with her husband Juan, and daughter Belinda Larissa. this was at the end of the trip and we were running to catch a ride in the back of a pickup so we wouldn´t have to walk all the way to town.


when we arrived after what was a really exhausting but beautiful walk (which Juana did with 2 year old Belinda Larissa on her shoulders) we had a HUGE little house on the prarie size lunch of leftovers: saucy vegetables and chicken with rice and tortillas plus a giant cup of soda. it felt so good to eat really hearty food after being sick and trying to eat healthy for the past few months. mmmm...






after lunch, Juana and I helped out around the farm. that means i followed her and took pictures. this is her bringing the cows in for their evening meal of ground up sugar cane. we got lucky they had all remembered to come down on time, otherwise we would have been scouring the large hill of their farm looking for them (and i´m not sure how effective i would be at rounding them up, anyways - they terrify me!)



next it was time to cut firewood. with a machete.












then was time to start dinner! we made ¨aguajada¨ - which is a type of ¨easy cheese.¨ basically, they add ¨pills¨ to their fresh cows milk, let it sit and coagulate, add salt, and then hand squeeze the curds into cheese patties. it was messy and fun and DELICIOUS! we ate the cheese with tortillas, beans and eggs for dinner and then again for breakfast on a fresh tortilla (so amazing - read on).






so, in betwen chores and dinner and talking we did steps of making tortillas for the next day. here is more or less the process:
-peel dried corn from the cob
-rinse well and boil for one hour
-rinse again and soak corn overnight
-kneed the corn (pic to the left) to get rid of debris
-rinse and drain again
-(at 5:45am) take it 10 minutes down the road to a grinder where it is ground with water to make corny, watery paste
-THEN run home and spend 40 minutes hand-patting the paste into 15-20 tortillas that will last you one day.
-repeat. ahh! so much work, but i have never had a more delicious tortilla in. my. life.


MILKING! so from what i can tell it´s primarily a dairy farm that also grows some beans and they have the obligatory chickens and roosters (who crow at ANY hour, it turns out). i got up at 4am with Juan to watch him milk cows. it was awesome - he tied the calf to the mom´s leg to make her think it was it asking for milk and then milked it. so tricky! once he was done he loaded up his BIKE with canisters of milk and biked the 25 minute journey down a stoney road to drop the milk at a corner store to be sold that day. BUT not before i reserved a cupful to drink warmed up with a peice of bread. AHHHH - SO GOOD ALSO!!!

this is me reading to Belinda Larissa. my mom brought some books in spanish for the organization i worked at in Granada. she suggested i bring one up north in case i meet any kids that need a book. BAM! i certainly did. Belinda Larissa is now familiar with The Little Engine that Could and i think will be a better person for it, as i was. :)



mmm- farm life (minus hard farm work) was just what i needed. my next stop is Matagalpa - supposedly still cool and mountainy but with COFFEE!!! :)