my aim is learning and sharing what I encounter to help inspire and grow myself and others.
Posts tagged: ecuador
“But the windfall could become a double-edged sword. In February, violence over prime quinoa-growing territory left dozens injured, and land conflict is spreading. “Sure, the price of quinoa is increasing,” says Carlos Nina, a local leader in Bolivia’s quinoa heartland, “but so are our problems.” Apart from increasing feuds over property rights, these include the collapse of the traditional relationship between llama herding and soil fertilization, with potentially disastrous consequences of quinoa’s “organic” status, and the ironic twist that the children of newly prosperous farmers no longer like eating quinoa, contributing to dietary problems.” – Source: Bolivian farmers experiencing boom and potential bust over quinoa
Excitement over getting rich could lead to the collapse of quinoa production in Bolivia, and Peru and Ecuador, if land is not monitored and properly managed. Less use of the llama for soil fertilization and the potential threat of conventional agricultural practices could lead to serious soil fertility depletion and erosion.
It’s interesting to know that the dung of llamas/alpacas doesn’t attract as many pests, but the substitution of the traditional fertilizer with sheep dung does. Unfortunately, to maximize profit and do the same fencerow-to-fencerow blanket cropping that we’ve done in the US, grazing grounds for llamas and alpacas is being lost for constant quinoa production to satiate Western demand.
To top it off, violence is starting to spark in areas that haven’t had much conflict due to centuries of consistent land management and communal ownership practices. Hopefully farmers co-ops and groups like ANAPQUI can help control the growth in sustainable and beneficial ways for all involved.
Interesting fact: Quinoa is not a grain, it’s a chenopod and a cousin of the beet, and is the only vegetable that is a complete protein.
The finished work of Rob Ormerod’s earth bag house built on the Rhiannon Community property outside Malchingui, Ecuador.
When I arrived at Rhiannon, I hoped to get a chance to stay in one of the two teepees that punctuate the view south towards Cotopaxi. Unfortunately, the numbers worked out best to house the three Texan boys and the three single ladies in the two cone shaped tents. My spirits were lifted, thankfully, when Helen announced that we would be building a third teepee on the property while I was staying there.
The design consists of 12 eucalyptus poles about 25’ tall sheathed with a synthetic tarp stitched and grommeted. Julieta was tasked with cutting and stitching the pattern for the skin and I was given the opportunity to shave the pole tips. Leó and Vincent, two very amusing men from France who sailed for three months crossing the Atlantic from Greece to Venezuela, helped level and round the teepee floor.
After the French boys cleared the land, I spent about three long hours, and a few blisters, shaving all 12 poles with an axe that wanted to fly sky high every fourth swing. Now, we were ready to do the pole lift and everyone came to help, or mostly watched and offered their advice.
Starting the structure requires three poles at 120° and then tied to form the base support for which the remaining poles are laid atop of. We managed to raise, tie and load the poles but realized at the end that the tips needed more shaving. So, we deconstructed the frame and I had at poles for another hour until they were thinner and more tapered.
The next day we set about raising the frame again, this time managing a fairly even conical shape. Leó was our monkey and shimmied up the poles to secure the rope. Getting down was an amusing slide down the poles.
Our next task was placing the heavy tarp on the frame, lifting it to the top and then securing it. Again, Leó was sent to the top, I stood on the ladder below and the crew helped heave the skin up until we got it attached securely. While that action was going on, Vincent and Jessica struggled with some shoddy tools to shave the tarp stakes down. I think I heard a few French curses from that experience.
We then had to weave the door grommets together about half-way down the tarp with the remaining distance being open for the door installation. The poles didn’t make a perfect conical shape and created a gap between the pole and the skin so that any wind would cause a violent ‘flap-flap-flap’. We spent about an hour+ re-digging and moving the poles to try and create more tension on the tarp but with little effect. Finally, we got it to an acceptable place and quit for the day.
My next responsibility, laid down on me by Kenna, a Canuck from BC, was to paint the teepee exterior. I had a few days before hand to think of various themes or items to paint. One idea I had was to paint the 12, or 13, Indians a shaman had seen in a vision that were sitting on the roof of the commune and protecting it. That got scrapped because a) I didn’t want to end up offending anyone and b) Julieta reminded me that spirit animals were usually painted on teepees. That’s when we thought, “Why not put all the farm animals on the teepee?!” Perfect idea.
I traipsed about the farm sketching the various pigs, chickens, donkey, dogs and cats we had on the farm. At first I was imaging them all sitting around a fire, with their backs to you and on the inside paint their faces. But, that didn’t seem lively enough, so I decided to paint them facing out, being themselves with a little more activity. I had also wanted to stack them on top of each other, but the height of the teepee and reaching it would be way too hard, so I kept them at my arm’s reach, about 8’ off the ground.
The tarp material wasn’t the easiest to pencil on due to its slick surface. I used charcoal from the fire pit to sketch the base drawing, and followed it with the black enamel paint for the outlines which everyone helped fill in. I wanted to paint each animal their distinctive color/coat, but my timeframe was limited so I opted for four giant, bright swirls of colors to symbolize the winds we experience on the farm and to add a shot of lively color to the southernly horizon. Thankfully, more able bodies pitched in and helped complete that before my departure. I hope the teepee is all dialed in now and is providing its inhabitants with wonderful dreams and visions of beauty and happiness.
Un Otro Mundo es Posible
This is the mantra that greets all who enter the main domicile of the Rhiannon Community “Rhiannon Community Farm located near Malchingui” located an hour north of Quito by bus. Situated on a mountain slope south of the small pueblito of Malchinqui, the farm offers 360° views of the province of Pichincha, three volcanos including Cotopaxi and Cayambe and a spectacular mountain ranges that clouds dance around as the winds and weather changes.
The farm was started three years ago by Helen and Nicky, two ex-pats from London who wanted to pursue a different manner of life, one based on sustainable living, Veganism/Vegetarianism and using the power of community to help create it. It’s almost entirely English speaking which was sort of a bummer for me because I want to improve my Spanish on this trip, but the farm draws volunteers from around the world who spoke Spanish which allowed me to practice at least intermittently.
Both women knew little of the practical approaches toward farm life when starting, they never visited an organic farm, and instead learned by teaching themselves and relying on the numerous volunteers who visited and worked on the farm to help establish their fledgling dream.
Three years on, their farm is growing rapidly with multiple projects being dreamed up each year. In my short, month-long stay I was able to help Rob finish the base plaster layer of his semi-underground home, we erected a teepee and the pizza garden was almost fully established and ready for its penultimate slice planting.
Daily Farm Life
Each volunteer is requested to pay a donation to offset the costs of housing and feeding the volunteers. Helen and Nicky don’t charge the full cost of what it would be to cover a month’s stay for each volunteer (they estimate at around $200-300 USD per month), but instead only request $50 USD per person per month. A reasonable rate for the five hours of farm work scheduled for each day.
Our daily schedule usually goes like this:
- 07:00 Wake up to the bell that is tough to hear if you’re in the teepees down the hill (or 6AM if you have breakfast duty). Eat, caffeinate yourself, clean the sleep from your eyes, etc.
- 07:45 Farm manager (usually Helen/Nicky and a volunteer if they’re not there) rings the bell and we gather for a short meeting to find out what animals you’re responsible for, daily tasks and any farm jobs that are pressing and need attention.
- 08:00 Everyone heads out to their respective animals (more on them later) with at least 6 people first going to the pig tractor to move their pen to a new location for the pigs to root and stomp uncultivated land.
- 11:00 Manager rings bell to signal break. People are allowed to make themselves a snack. Recently they’ve allowed eggs on the farm for those who feel the need to supplement the fairly adequate farm meals. A nice accommodation considering their Veganism/Vegetarian wishes. If the day is the main watering day where every area gets a weekly watering, then the work is over until 16:00 where we begin the roughly 2 hour task of watering the entire property’s plantings.
- 11:30 Bell is rung again to end break.
- 12:30 Volunteers on lunch duty end their second shift early to begin preparing lunch. They make up the extra hour by doing evening watering which has a schedule that lives on a cork board in the kitchen.
- 13:30 Lunch bell is rung. Work is over for the day (unless it’s the big watering) and we are allowed leisure/free time for the rest of the day.
- 17:30 Dinner duty begins for those assigned to it for the day.
- 19:30 Dinner bell is rung and we feast. Usually followed with a wood fire indoors, games, reading, etc.
For every five days worked, volunteers get two free days to travel and explore of stay on the farm and relax. Helen and Nicky are accommodating and allow people to take consecutive days so as to allow people to travel farther and explore for of Ecuador’s beauty, culture and cities. Otovalo, a heavily indigenous town about 2 hours north by bus is a popular destination. (I recommend the Hostal Geronio in the $8/night rooms which were definitely nicer than the $5 dorms. If you go to Otovalo, save your food cash for the evening vendors who descend on the plaza after 18:00. The chock (fresh corn) is off the chain! Oh, and barter with the clothing and jewelry vendors during the day, especially if you’re a foreigner.)
¡Los Animales!
The farm is bustling with life, both domestic and wild. On the domesticated side, they have:
- 1 burra/female donkey named Ursula. A sweet heart, bit stubborn at times (go figure) who grazes and mows down the un cultivated land on the farm. We use her poop for a variety of things like compost, plaster and use in the lombricultura/worm bins.
- 3 chanchos/male pigs who go by the monikers Miguel, Calem and my favorite name, Kevin Bacon. These boys are not raised for food (they currently don’t get enough to even make them appealing for slaughter anyhow), but instead are fed our food wastes and weeds from the gardens and property. They live in a pig pen that gets moved daily (Rob and I think it should be moved twice a day to offer them more food and speed up the land turning they do with their powerful snouts). It’s cool to see their old tilling because at times squash/chayote or sunflowers/girasol spring up in their wake. We should also be sowing some legumes or nitrogen fixers behind them to help improve the soil.
- 6 gallinas/lady chickens. Don’t know their names, sure they’ve got some. They live in [chicken tractors][chix] that get moved around the the property, most recently the pizza garden. They lay eggs (if they have ample grass bedding harvested from the property and if it’s clean). I enjoyed feeding them the giant grubs uncovered from digging. One giant grub was too much to eat in one gulp and a frantic, exciting chicken race occurred where they exchanged control of the delicacy until one finally overcame their bird brain nature and ducked into the roost to consume their prize in privacy.
- Worms. Thousands. They have two worm bins for generating rich compost, but they should really redesign them and build more permanent ones like [Nacho’s][nach] to collect and take advantage of the rich worm tea that they generate.
- 5 perros/dogs. Four females: Valentina, Aila, Choclo y Suerte and one boy, Matt. These dogs are awesome. Even Suerte, who many see as spoiled, are all full of love. Their various personalities were wonderful to get to know, but my favorite was Valentina, or Val for short. This dog became my best friend on the farm, mainly because I would always toss her sticks every chance I got, as far as I could, too. The high winds on the farm would sometimes help me to hurl them great distances, much to the delight of Val, who, after overheating would then plunge herself into the gray water lagoon or the brown watering buckets. We really connected the day the three Texas boys managed to lose Ursula after trying to ride her three up. After trying to capture Ursula by sprinting as fast as I could (a tough feat at 2.900m), I grabbed my Xtracycle Big Dummy and pedaled after her, Val in tow. Although we managed to miss the turn where the donkey went, Val and I managed to form a bond of cycling/running love that we repeated a few more times much to both our delight. I miss that girl!!! :(
- 2 cats. Mishki (sp?) and Gizmo. Both are sneaky beasts, but Mishki takes the cake, or bread more accurately, for brazenness. This boy will walk up to your plate and snatch any bread he smells with a lightning quick bite usually reserved for rats and mice. Gizmo is quite possibly the coolest cat I know. Cute, soft and still very kitten-like, he has developed a play style with the dogs that is lots of fun to watch. They don’t hurt each other, but go all out in their chases, attacks and wrap ups.
- 2 colmenas/beehives. Helen harvests the honey from these about once a month. They help pollinate the farm’s crops, something that would be difficult given our distance from traditional hive locations like forests or other farms. On my last day, working on digging trenches for girasol/sunflower planting, we were near the colmenas/hives and started getting attacked by some protector abejas/bees who didn’t like our presence. I managed to stave off the picaduras/stings but my compatriot, Jimi from France, got tagged three times, once in the head where I had to pull out the stinger. Jimi told me that if you burn the sting area with a cigarette it helps remove 70% of the venom. I think he just wanted a drag after the traumatizing experience, the first of his life. ;)
- Insects/Arachnids. Everywhere. I saw probably about 10 different types of spiders, all fitting into their niches very well. Tons of beetles, predatory wasps, moths, butterflies, millipedes, centipedes, slugs, snails, aphids, etc. The land was teeming with life, which is great because a permaculture approach requires these little workers to help build a biodynamic web of life.
Food
The farm tries to be as self-sufficient as possible, with the goal of deriving all food consumed on the farm from what it produces alone. That’ll be quite the feat given the amount of land, organic approaches, amount of grains consumes and lack of any real draft animals. I hope they can achieve this large goal, but believe that they’ll be supplementing the veggies with purchased food.
My stay was during the dry season (although we got some heavy days of rain during my stay). It was also the windy season where gusts would sometimes reach an estimated 60mph. The four main producing areas during my stay were the pizza garden, the Rivendale garden, the invernadero/greenhouse and the maize/corn field planted months before. We ate lots of collards, kale, corn, kohlrabi chard, uvias/gooseberries, papas/potatoes and a smattering of radish, carrots rounding out the mix. The rest was either purchased in bulk in Quito or from the weekly fruit/veggie lady who visited on Tuesdays.
Cooking was fun and was left up to the skills and energies of the cooks scheduled. Breakfast usually consisted of oats and fruit. Sometimes Lisa, Jess or Rob would go out of their way to make pancakes or some delicious fried wraps of bananas, chocolate, fruit. We cooked more oats than needed to help feed the hungry piggies.
Lunch is supposed to be the bigger meal of the day and the meal that contained whole protein. So quinoa or a bean/rice mix to get the proteins needed for the Vegans/Veggies on the farm.
Dinner usually was on the lighter side so as not to cause digestion issues for those early to bed, but this fluctuated by large scales depending on who cooked. We managed to make a pot pie, soups, corn cakes and other yummy alternatives to rice, beans and salad.
I purchased eggs to eat on my breaks or supplement meals that were lacking due to miscounting or lacking amounts. Bread was purchased in town as well as any yogurt, cheese or condiments. Our “refrigerator” is actually a clay pot surrounded by sand, usually wet, and contained in another clay pot. My goat milk managed to get sour in one day, so it was only really good for jams, butter or other less sensitive items.
The haybox was very cool. I had never seen one before, but it’s basically an insulated box that you can put soups, beans, stews, anything that can slow cook and take advantage of the heat generated by boiling/heating so as to reduce the amount of fuel used in cooking. Every home should have one if they consume beans or other items that take lots of stovetop cooking time.
Cycles of Return
A big problem with our industrialized society is our lack of return. That’s to say we have a linear system of consumption and waste. We mount our trash piles ever higher, especially with items like animal waste that once was returned to the same soil and land that fed the animals. Now, in the name of efficientcy, profit and short-sightedness, we pump those same wastes into our water and air which then gets into our bodies.
The farm tries to reduce these linear cycles by recycling all our food wastes either to our animals or to our compost heaps. All bottles or glass gets placed into bins where we reuse them for various projects around the house. One project has been to take tetrapack (think wine or juice boxes) and slice them up to weave replacement windows where the glass has shattered from the strong winds flopping the windows back and forth.
Water is conserved through a few methods, and given the arid nature of the land, it’s imperative. Most structural roofs slope to gutters which dump into rain collection buckets that either have hoses connected to them and are raised to use gravity pressure, or have open tops to scoop water out with the various jerry cans or watering cans.
Kitchen water and bathroom sink/shower water is diverted from municipal drains and instead feeds a gray water lagoon that is planted with water loving lilies and other hydrophilic aqua life. Frogs and tadpoles abound in the murky water, some of which is used to irrigate downhill trees and plantings.
The highlight, for me at least, was the bathrooms. Helen and Nicky had a very large and spacious bathroom constructed with two inordornos/toilet stalls and two duchess/showers. The toilets are composting toilets that collect the pee to be used in the regular compost piles and the shit and paper for use for the tree compost piles. There are two heads in each stall, one is allowed to sit and mellow until the other is full, then we shovel out (one of my lucky jobs with Léo) layered “cake” and start a new pile with other organic matter to sit and breakdown for up to two years before using it on the trees.
When one poos, you take a scoop of sawdust and ash from the fire pits to cover it to reduce the smell and keep flies from laying their eggs in it. I had to flatten and cover the piles once to quash some powerful odors, but the system worked great overall, except when people put sawdust in the peephole!!! (that’s for you, Kenna. :) )
Volunteers
The one constant at the farm is that there is no constant besides Helen and Nicky. People are always coming and going. Helen and Nicky try their best to vet new volunteers because they only want dedicated people who can honor the two-week time commitment (something I think they should extend to three or four weeks because you don’t really learn much about the people, the farm or yourself working on a farm in less time than that). I think I worked with roughly about 20+ volunteers while at the farm. The farm operates best with about 13-16 people. We had some days with only 5 which means only the bear minimum gets done.
Meeting people is one of the joys of extended travel, and this being my first communal experience, I was thrilled to have a communal setting to really form deep friendships with people. We shared many laughs, drinks and stories as we exchanged cultural differences and energies. I’m looking forward to future community experiences like this, but know that Rhiannon isn’t like most in terms of the family feeling that is cultivated and sought.
Permaculture
The farm has had a few volunteers over the years of permaculture background. I was able to look at maps and plans for developing zones and some permaculture techniques like swales, animal tractors and cycles of return are in use. However, the farm could use a professional permaculturist for a lengthy stay to help them set up tree guilds (currently they’re just planting trees in the ground without nitrogen fixers, insectary, or other beneficial plants), develop a food forest and apply other techniques like sheet mulching/composting in place, worm bins, etc.
I shared info with Helen regarding n-fixers, fortress plants, composting in place techniques and dead wood swales. Hopefully they’re able to have more volunteers with strong backgrounds in permaculture to help them build a strong foundation to improve the soil quality and life. Something very difficult to do in the vary arid landscape and terrain of their property.
I really appreciated being invited to work and stay on the farm. It was a wonderful start to my South American farm journey. I now have some wonderful, life-long friends scattered across the globe, some of which I’ll be meeting up with on our travels and have realized that I do, in fact, love working with my hands, out doors and on a farm. I hope the commune can continue to grow, draw exceptional people and be a place of continued inspiration and excitement.
I’ll be posting more specific posts on some of my work on the farm at a later date. So, check back in a few weeks for those posts.
Update: A friend of mine shares some words of her Rhiannon experience here.
Panoramic views of Rhiannon on a clear day; interior of great room; clouds making their way in; view from above tool shed; glorious sunset; hill west of property; top of hill west of property; sunset after watering day; crystal clear day with no clouds.
