First Lesson in Harvesting Beans

Today I awoke at 5:45am to the whistling choppers,  Raul and his friend who have been coming to work everyday here on the farm.  They do all the hard work that the Ticos (Costa Ricans) are used to but would kill us - literally.  I just love that they whistle while they work.  People whistle here and today i reflected on that... i am not used to that but it seems like a sign of contentment in the people here and I find it endearing.

I usually do some waking up routine then Jim wakes up and i do another stretching routine along with him so his back is getting better.  Then we have coffee and attempt to make a plan for the day. The next hour is usually spent getting ready to leave which includes boiling the milk that Anna and the kids drop off in the morning. Somtimes i make cheese yogurt sometimes just have it ready for use as milk.  Then laundry - today just taking it off the line and folding, but our washing machine is small and power is limited so we do a little everyday.

I carried mushrooms mycelium from the states and it's been a real pain to keep them cold all the while and the topper was making wood chips by hand.  Since we got the delicate mushrooms in the ground yesterday, which was our main focus for the last several day,s we took a little time to walk and see the bamboo park.  Some of it is doing well, some is getting smothered by cow grass (pasture).  I returned a little disheartened about the pasture.  It is such a big problem here if we don't have cows. We planted many things when we first got the farm when the pasture had been used by cows and was short. We had no idea of the immense problem we faced with the pasture taking over everything.  So now we may have to replan the whole farm or at least a lot of it.  Let some trees go and resrtucture our attack on the pasture and how to have more trees with out having to hire fulltime choppers.  It is difficult to explain the power of how some things grow here because i have never seen anything like it in CA.


After lunch the children came over and each one got a turn playing our Casio piano. They had asked about that yesterday and it was fun to see them get introduced to music and something totally different than their normal experience, it's quite something to be so influential  with these children in terms of exposure to different things.  I wonder, as time goes on and they grow up, what they will do, how we will effect the community, certainly this area has not had any outside influence for a long time or at all.

Then i spent an hour with them pulling beans from the field.  Anna, the kids and I would go out into the field, climb up the hill and pull bunches of drying beans back to a shady spot while Deanae (the father) would thrash them by swinging two sticks onto them to break open the pods.  I noticed the torso follow through he used.  Around here everyone has very good body mechanics because the whole life is spent doing these repititive jobs and the body finds the right way or else...

I was prepared to work with them untill they were done for the day but Deanae sent me home after just an hour. It took five minutes for his whole family to communicate that because of my lack of spanish, and it was quite funny, but finally i got the message i should go.  I didn 't know why untill i got back and Jim told me how red i was.  I showered and fell asleep.

It's two o clock.