harvesting corn

Ranae walking through a corn field that she cultivates with a sharecropper.












They bend the matas (stalks) in half and leave the mature corn in the field so that the corn kernals dry out. This takes a few months and since they can practically continually plant and harvest on the land year round due to the consistent climate, they replant new corn below the old. So here you see the dried corn stalks and the new ones that are still growing.

In this picture Junior (12 year old boy in back) and Fatima are 'tapiscar-ing'.






Tapiscar is the vocab word which means to take the mazorca (dried corn cobs) off of the mata (stalk).




















This is Aura, the mom in the house that I lived in. She sharecrops this field with Ranae. It is Ranae's land, so Ranae puts forth the land, seed, and half of the money for pesticides and fertilizers, while Aura puts forth the labor and other half of the money necessary.









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We picked about 30 huge bags (see picture below) in an 8-hour day.













Hauling the sacks of mazorca up the hill to the house for more work later.














These were some of the critters crawling all around me on the dried corn stalks!! Yep, it's a spider.

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the spider's belly

Gorgeous, gorgeous scenery was our backdrop no matter where we went or what we did.
















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This is Ranae in her house (which she isn't living in yet). All the sacks were hauled here (they weighed over 100 pounds so they didn't make the ladies haul them). Then we spent a week 'podridar-ing'. This means we pick out the bad kernals that have rotted or started to seed or have been eaten by bugs. This waste we feed to the pigs and chickens. I am sitting across from Ranae doing the same thing.












This is the good mazorca (corn cobs) that is left. You can see that some are full of granos (kernals) and some are almost empty, but all the granos left are good. Then we 'desgranar' to take these off and keep the good granos in sacks to use for tortillas or the special treat of nacatamales.

If all the granos did not dry in the field, we set them out to dry the rest of the way so they don't mold when we store them. This is the patio at the house where I lived.

When they're ready to make tortillas, they rinse them to get off any dirt or powder or shells. (I barely helped with the cooking part as I mostly worked outside.)

Then they cook them over the 'hornilla' with some water and stir them for an hour or so in the evening. They let them sit for the night. . .

and in the morning they grind the corn. Here I am grinding with a hand grinder while Juana makes the tortillas. I tried to make tortillas but don't have the double hand slap down well enough that they fluff in the middle =( Juana is still learning as well, but is pretty good for 11!

The house I lived in fed a lot of farmworkers everyday (anywhere from 5-40 in addition to the 9 family members who lived there), so they use this machine.

The women all have a small piece of wax paper that they lay out to use every day, and then wash and fold up carefully when they finish making tortillas. They take some corn dough and pat the tortillas out on it every morning.

then cook them in the comals over the hornilla.

And here are our fresh tortillas!! Many women get up several hours early to make these fresh every day-and they are delicious!

a glimpse at the coffee process

Baby banana trees just planted, and if you look closely, you can see the baby coffee trees under them. The bananas provide shade for the trees which they need to be healthy.

















A baby coffee tree, just planted at about 9 mos old, it will produce in another 3 years probably.

Coffee tree branch ripe with fruit (cerezas) and ready for picking! Only pick the red ones and be sure to twist the cereza just right so that no stems come off. Blossoms are already growing on the stems, so if you break them they won't have fruit next year.

Coffee tree-this was my Christmas color for the season!

















Jasmina with an Esperanza in her hand. She was a fellow cortero (picker) with me for a few weeks. She always brought 2 or 3 kids with her and babysat them while picking long days. She was amazing.









Gorgeous stream through the coffee field.






























2 of these buckets equal about 1 lata; I picked 8 of these buckets on my best day-and it was a short day of only 7.5 hours! 4 lata earns 140 cordobas, which is about 7 US dollars.












Picking in the rain.


















Juana, picking with me.

















I just don't have good animal pics, but here are a few. In one day I saw several frogs, a lizard that was a foot long with his tail who turned from green to brown in front of us, another smaller lizard, the Esperanza bug, stinging caterpillars (these are the worst!), in addition to an infinite number of other smaller bugs!!!








It has a blue belly!














=)















Esperanza













Washing coffee. After we pick it, we depulp it (take off the fruit), wash it, then dry it, next sell it, and then the coop finishes up with the toasting, marketing, and selling. Though we saved the worst coffee to toast for our own consumption.















Andres, the cook's 2.5 year old son who always tried to help. We're picking out the bad coffee here as it is drying before we turn it in to the coop.












Ranae, picking through coffee on our patio.














Ranae, toasting coffee to send home with me.