And of course...I got to meet Mark, the water buffalo!

Farming is Hard Work! (so I took a break)

View from Manuel Antonio National Park

Meechelle sitting on a log that could any moment be dislodged and carried away to sea! oh no!

Meg: I did ya one better... a FLYING monkey

Sunset at the beach in the town of Manuel Antonio

From here on out (that is until Matt shows up next week!!!) its just hauling hay for me... well figuratively speaking--there actually isn't any hay on the farm. Manuel Antonio was a very nice break from the sweatiness of the finca, but now I'm happy to be back to EARTH. Tomorrow its bright and early for me. Well I hope. My alarm clock broke so I'm depending on my INTERNAL alarm clock to wake me up.... yikes. I wonder if I even have one of those.

Off to San Jose and Manuel Antonio

The pejibayes came crashing to the ground and very nearly took out the guy who's job it was to poke them down with a really long stick... so then he dropped the stick in between his legs and well I think he was seeing stars... ouch 

These are pejibayes. First they are boiled, then peeled, and finally eaten. They kind of taste like the the yolk of a hard boiled egg but not so soft.

I'm going to take a bus to San Jose tomorrow and then from there go to Manuel Antonio National Park. I'll be back on Wednesday, so I'll update my blog then! Today my roommate and I rode our bikes to a restaurant outside of the EARTH campus bubble. I thought that I had ordered just a normal lunch, but somehow I ended up with 3 plates of food plus platacones (double fried plantains). I'm still full. 

I'm back in black.

Rainbow... it was cooler in real life

Pretty Sky!!!!

Pulling myself across the river

Ok.... so I missed a few days. The past week we harvested sweet potatoes, more cilantro, pineapples, more cilantro, beans beans the magical fruit the more you eat the more you toot AND more cilantro. Lots more was going on, but I'm too far behind and I don't feel like writing an essay. I'll be better this week.

Double Digging with EARTH students

The Biointensive

The Double Dug Bed that will forever have a puddle of my sweat in it.

Here we are not double digging... just weeding

Ok even if I had a picture of me during the process of preparing the bed for the biointensive garden there is no way I would post it. Basically the biointensive garden is designed to produce as much food as possible in the least amount of space. To do this all the beds are dug out twice as deep as normal so the roots are able to go down instead of out. This makes it possible to plant crops closer together. I was really excited to get the opportunity to learn about the double digging because I think its something that can be applied at home pretty easily. However... wow it is REALLY hard work. I mean worth it BUT really tiring. I had three or four constant streams of sweat flowing down my face--of course the humidity wasn't working in my favor.

Hoeing Around

These beds got hooooed.

The Farm Cats: Camilla and Negra. They have a very love-hate relationship

Yay for meeechelle! Steps to prepare the beds for (you guessed it) MORE cilantro: 

1) Get rid of the Weed

2) Get the Hoes out and Loosen things up

3) Lather up in Compost

4) Flatten

Now the bed is ready to get laid!

Harvesting Cilantro in the Rain

A very wet Finca

Cilantro, Green Beans, Lettuce, Ginger, Asian Cucumbers, and Peppers all ready for the market

Washing and Bundling the Cilantro

As I'm sure you've gathered today I harvested cilantro and green beans in the rain, and just to clarify I don't mean an Oregon mist. I mean a torrential downpour. My raincoat that had kept me perfectly dry the whole Oregon winter was soaked through in a matter of minutes. It was really fun--and wet.