a few photos

hi folks here are a few photos from the last week for your viewing pleasure. they include:
-making grape juice
-visiting a national park
-being awesome

enjoy!

uma vista, uma idea

bending grasses in the wind
a bumpy dirt road, dust

yellow sundial flowers peek
their niche in terra verde

streaking clouds change
mutate white to pewter

arbols loom against the sky
ancient floating pinohs

cavalos graze undisturbed
upon curves of green, gold

cattle call in unison
whip cracks in the humid air

water falls from cliffs and sky
drifts into the depths of a gorge

trees grow up into lumber
and children into workers

rustic chimneys leak smoke
heating, cooking, burning

a boy and a toy are content
if only for this moment

vaca piciniño escapes
wanting more than a herd

a horse sweeps its tail
against soft grey hide

corn, palms, fejos, bananas
orange, red, pink, azul

brick and madera casas
corrugated tin, plastic

crops are squares of line
our lives seem to be spirals

trabalhao do brasil

today, oh today. i worked a lot today, and i feel great. i was frustrated and confused when i washed bottles for two weeks straight. for a while i felt like really cheap labor, but now i'm seeing things from a new perspective. on thursday ricardo received 3,000 kilos of grapes from an organic farmer in the cooperative coopernatural, which he then turns into grape juice, ice cream and other grape-y natural organic products. i would like to let it be known that i personally carried 1,000 of those 3,000 kilos... não! not all at the same time! in crate increments.

so, back to the point. grapes do not magically turn themselves into juice and so forth, although it may seem that way when we grab a welch's bottle off of the shelf in the supermarket. it takes lots of energy and people to make the purple stuff we drink out of tiny cups at communion. so how it works at a tiny cooperative here in brasil is this:

-pour crates of grapes into spinning machine which attempts to remove fruit from the stem.
-hunch, while standing, or sit around said machine and pick out stems and remove fruit still stuck on stems.
-pour gleaned fruit into buckets for next step in the process- either steaming into juice or freezing for later use.
-repeat, until all 3,000 kilos are terminado.

this was my task for the past two days.

i have found throughout my life that it is while laboring that my thoughts are the most creative and clear, some may call it day dreaming- i say screw you! it's helpful too that i cannot understand half of what the people around me are saying, so im really alone with my brain- no distractions. i became enamored with the grape clusters throughout the process and exclaimed how cute they were for about the first five hours, especially the light red grapes. they look like little brains. this lead me then to think about how if grapes were brains then the stem was the brain stem and each thought we have is a fruit. if this were the case, then your thoughts could be picked for consumption, dried and condensed, left on the stem to age and sweeten, fermented to intoxicate your spirit, squished and mixed with other thoughts, or to rot and become part of the earth once more.

oh the thoughts you have when you only need a search image to perform work. i also thought of new programs to give this summer in yosemite, what i want to study while im in grad school (can i get a hell yes for the environment?), and most importantly what my time here at ricardo's is shaping up to be.

in a previous post i was upset, and claimed that i was gaining nothing. im sure most of you could tell this was written in the heat of the moment, although all feelings are legitimate. i have learned so much already, just not what i was expecting. i was expecting a different kind of agriculture, i was expecting traditional farming methods, i was expecting weeding, i expected dirt under my fingernails not water logged hands. but, i have discovered so much about the lives and lifestyles of these people.

this is more than ricardo's idea. this is a group effort. this a group attempting to create livelihoods which are in tune with their ethics. the fruit isn't picked by a migrant laborer, nor are the products created by low-wage workers. the workers are their neighbors, people from the community, individuals in the cooperative. and the work isn't half assesd, they don't stop in the middle of a project because they can. it is seen through to the end with earnest. i find this inspiring. even im seeing projects i started come to an end! like all those bottles i lovingly washed, theyre now being filled with grape juice! oh yeah, and those 3,000 kilos of grapes i helped glean.

today i worked for 12 hours. im tired but i feel accomplished. i don't feel used, i feel helpful. i feel like the little part that i am doing can maybe help the noble cause. maybe this isn't exactly a farm, but where does all the organic juice you buy at traitor joe's come from, directly from the farmer? or any product for that matter? this is how the economy works, and im seeing that coopernatural has found a pragmatic solution. a way to modernize traditional agriculture (please see pictures of the pear farm in my first post), a way to provide sustenance that is wholesome, natural and made by humans who care.

i am now stepping down from my soapbox, if you have made it this far im impressed (unless of course you're from santa cruz, im sure you've heard this rant before-"organic produce! isn't it so beautiful? i love the farmer's market..."). in other news, i am now vaccinated against yellow fever, i have sore forearms for the first time in my life (thats what gleaning grapes will do after twelve hours), my hand are permanently stained a purplish brown color and im going to a national park tomorrow!

sorry folks, too tired to post pictures tonight but i'll leave you with a few links...

this is coopernatural's website, it's in portuguese but you can get the gist:
http://www.coopernatural.com.br/

if you really want to know what it says use this website:
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/

and if you really, really want to see some pictures here's link to my facebook album:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2188883&l=33173&id=6702180

boa noite!

arte

the past few days have been great! i spent sunday sitting on the porch drawing with joao pedro. i was watercoloring and j.p. was color penciling the world, which consisted of the house, two of his friends and the estados unidos way off in the corner. on sunday we also (well everyone but me) had chirosco, traditional brazilian barbeque. huge chunks of meat on giant skewers roasted over a wood fire. apparently it was delish. we also drank more brazilian beer and caparinas, the national drink of brazil. caparinas consist of chausca liqour with lime and sugar. very strong.

later, we went to the town hot spot. it was a park by the river with a snack stand. there were tons of people sitting around their cars, which were parked on the grass, blasting bizzare brazilian techno. luis, ricardo, loiva and i drank some beer made out of cabbage. i put my feet in the river, which was the color of chocolate milk! joao pedro and i spent a good 30 minutes throwing rocks into the river and i unsucessfully attempted to skip stones on the surface. on the way home ricardo took us on the scenic route; it consisted of, literally, driving through the river, i thought the car was going to flood! loiva was berating ricardo very much at this point; he was just trying to show off.

it rained all day today so luis and i spent the day washing and labeling bottles of nectar peach (pessigo) and blackberry (amora). this was a nice break from scrubbing the insides of bottles. also, we found the best radio station yet, 90's rock! hell yes. luis made a loaf of bread which we ate for cafe de tarde.

i spent this evening with joao pedro painting. he saw me painting with my watercolors and wanted to paint so bad. ricardo went to the store and bought a little set of tempura paint and we sat around the coffee table and painted together. pretty much joao just wanted to pour the paint onto his paper, it took a lot of help from me for it not to turn into a total disaster. i guess im working on my portuguese comands! the skills i gained instructing art to small children at artopia came in handy for the first time in a long time.

i suppose that is all for now. tomorrow luis and i are going to watch the inaguration live on fox news (hahahahahaha)! so stoked. i bid you boa noite and leave you with some pictures.

the best sunset yet!

my painting from the porch

brazilian beer

the past two days have been quite a daze. yesterday was a downer; both luis and i were sick and tired of washing bottles. this did not make a very good combination. but things turned up and we both felt better. plus, there was the most amazing sunset last night. the sky was gold, orange, pink, red, purple and grey. streaked across these colors were clouds of silver and pewter. we could hear monkeys calling from the forest and joao perdo was playing with us on the porch. we also watched the movie 'hook'dubbed over in portuguese- it was even more amazing than in english.

i still cannot quite comprehend the amount of insects that exist here. i have seen at least 100 different types, or that is what it seems like. insects were responsible for my sickness. i was attacked by a mosquito in the night and woke up with a swolen, zombie, monster eye. it was not a good start to the day.

today, we did more of the same. im sure you can guess what that was. it was fine, our spirits were high and we listened to brazilian roque and american pop while we scrubbed away in the sun. im getting quite a good tan already! the highlight of the day was having my first taste of brazilian beer! it was quite good, a pilsner- it really didnt taste like much. luis, ricardo and i sat at the kitchen table drinking two bottles of beer and discussing development in latin american and terra preta.

terra preta is a phenomena which occurs in the amazon of brazil, it is pockets of very fertile dark earth in an area which has thin nutirent poor soil. it is believed, in academic circles, that terra preta was developed by the ancient amazonians and may be the first example of agriculture in the western hemisphere. a really great book that explores terra preta, the development and preconcieved notions of the new world is '1491' by charles mann.

i was suprised to discover that brasil is 8th in the world for consumption of orgnaic products! the united states did not even crack the top ten. one thing that has really impressed me about brasil is how local the consuption is based. it seems that every product that we use and consume in this house was produced in brasil, and usually in rio grande do sul. everything, from the soaps, tools, coke and milk. this not only supports the national economy of brasil but also the local economies of rio grande do sul- they might even know the person whose cow produced the milk or cheese they are eating!

one more thing about brazilian products... the amazing and ever comfortable brazilian sandal, havianas. i have decided that these are the work boot of brazil. seriously, sandals are worn for almost every occasion. to work in the grocery stores, while stroling with the family, while building a house and operating a table saw. who would have thought? i do a double take when i see someone wearing actual shoes. i have visions of construction workers in sao paulo walking on beams 100s of feet in the air wearing hard hats and havianas.

i hope that all is well in the states! this evening luis and i watched a speach given by barak obama in baltimore. it was good, obama is an excellent orator. we thought it wa shilarious at the end when he said (we think) 'lets get out of here...'i don't blame him it looked freaking cold. were are very excited to watch the inaguration and ricardo and loiva keep asking us about it. its funny, they get one english news channel: fox.

i miss my family and friends very much but am so excited to see what the next 2 months hold for me here in brazil. until next time, i remain your faithful forgien correspondent.

the brazilian work boot

and the task of the day is...

hello again from the casa of ricardo and loiva (i finally figured out how to spell it!). today was a day much like all the others which i have e xperienced this week. i stood around a tub filled with water, chlorine and bottles and washed them. i was in really good spirits for the majority of the day; we found a radio station that was tollerable and not polka. it was "pop e roque"it played everything from rhiana to the romones with a good dose of reggae. im becoming a big fan of portuguese rock and especially reggae! so good.
anyway, all this constant, unending bottle washing has been wearing me down. i was feeling pretty sad and over it by the end of the day. i thought the idea of WWOOf was the spread and sharing of knowledge. what the fuck am i learning? im feeling like really inexpensive labor at this point. can a girl get a little variety around here? it's frustrating. ricardo said something about not washing tomorrow so we'll see if that pans out. if i spend another week washing bottles, there is a good chance im going to bid this family farewell.
loiva keeps asking me if luis and i like fiestas. everytime she asks me she's not quite sure i understand. of course i do! fiestas are universal! anyway, based upon the half of which i could understand i think there might be a party, along with a brazilian barbeque, this saturady. im excited, i haven't gotten off the property much and, as much as i like chatting with joao pedro the four year old, i would enjoy meeting some new people.
i shall bid you adios and relinquish the computer to luis who has been waiting oh so patiently. boa noite!

mais o menos

yesterday was a plus and a minus. on the plus side, luis and i got a lot of work done for ricardo and luja. on the menos, we fucking washed bottles for 10 hours. those last three hours were pretty tedious, boring and tiring. also, the day before luis and i were performing the same task and did not get nearly as much acomplished, i think that ricardo was a little disipointed. thus, i felt i needed to redeem myself. as tedious as the work is, the concept is great; ricardo uses recycled bottles for his organic juices. if he did not buy the bottles (1 real each= about $.30)they would just be thrown away. i support that. standing around a giant tub filled with dirty bottles, water and chlorine-i suppose i support that. eh, im just griping because im tired. i have seriously got it made, i wear a bathing suit while im working!

i bought a pair of havianas-this is portuguese for hawaiian. in the us these sandals cost around $20.00, which is ridiculous as they are made of rubber. i bought them at the supermarket for 11,00 $r which is about $5.00 us. whooo!

today, we worked and guess what we did? washed bottles all day long. it was a little better today because i asked loja for a radio, but it was seriously jerry-rigged. the antena didn't really work so we taped a huge peice of wire to it and then had to lean the wire against a ladder to prevent it from falling over. the only station that came in clear was italian polka from the next town over, petropolis. i guess it was better than static, crap, american pop.

if i understood correctly we DON'T have to wash any more bottles tomorrow (oh, please). i believe we will be bottling suco de ova (grape juice) in the recently washed recycled bottles. i think this is what loja told me, i hope! i ususally understand about half of what she is trying to tell me. im just going to believe my little pipe dream. plus, there isn't any more room in the vinicula (the building where they make wine, juices and dulce de leite) for the bottles anyway and in the last three days we must have washed over 500 of those suckers.

this morning i resuced a little bird (avio) from the house. it had flown in and gotten itself stuck. loja tried to chase it out unsuccessfully with a towel. it almost hit me in the face when i startled it trying to go up the stairs a few minutes later. it flew into the bathroom and tried to fly out the closed window, poor thing. i managed, after many attempts to catch it in a towel and carry it outdoors. it was pretty calm when i was holding it but once it saw the open door it escaped my grasp and flew to freedom. poor bird, it lost a lot of it's feathers in it's excursion into the casa.

man, standing in the sun all day long has got me exausted. i had a lot of coffee with cafe de tarde (dinner) and i still managed to unwillingly pass out for about an hour afterwards. i tried to do some drawing after i woke up, but i just felt like a zombie. all i managed to do was sit on the lawn and grunt in response to luis.

luis and i have been planning out next move, and it looks like iguazu falls is on the agenda. it is a waterfall on the border of brasil and argentina and is one of the 3rd largest in the world definitly, bad ass. according to wikipedia it is 275 falls all converging in a 1 mile radius. i can't wait. the only downer is that it will be a 30 hour bus ride one way, but flying is a total rip off price wise.

in other news, i called human resources in yosemite yesterday to check on my seasonal applications and... i qualified for the gs5 and the gs7 positions! yes! my application just needs to be cleared by the hiring official and then im golden. whew. i suppose that is all i have to say for now, and i've said quite a lot. boa noite! or for those of you in the states, good afternoon.

iguazu falls

butterfly on a dead spider
the 'hood

caminamos no oa rua
the iguana under the porch

cleaning 2070 ml bottles, again.

pizza de brasil!

hello friends and welcome to another episode of rural life in brazil... today has been a lazy day becuase as ricardo told me "domingo e a dia de descanso" or sunday is the day of rest. so, we had cafe da mahna (breakfast) of coffee and mango.

let me backtrack a little, so my second day here loja asked me what i knew how to cook and i began listing off items which i felt comfortable cooking for others, icluding pizza. oh man, loja was so excited! apparently brazilians love pizza... well, who doesn't?? anyway, yesterday at the market ricardo and loja bought ingredients to make pizza and told luis (code name: mateo) and i that we would "fraze pizza por almoco a dia" or make pizza for lunch today. so that is what we did. luis made the dough (masa) and i made the sauce and prepared the toppings. pizza in brazil is a little bit different. apparently brocoli is a common topping and it is good to eat it with mayo, mustard, ketchup and pickles (it's not a burger!). it was fun and enlightening and we have decided that every sunday will now be pizza sunday, luis and i are already planning our next combination of ingredients; he was trying to convince me that adding nutella to the sauce would be a great idea. i vetoed that one.

later we went for a walk along the rua (road) and acted like silly tourists. it's funny, here in picada cafe we don't stand out as much as we would further north in brazil where there are more people of african descent. so, the town's people were aprroching us asking us questions, commenting on the heat and the rain of last night, but we had some problems understanding/responding so mostly we just smiled and nodded.

agora (now) it is raining with thunder and lightning. it came so fast! just an hour ago were were walking in the sun! we had to run around the house and shut all the windows and doors because there are some fierce winds as well. tonight we sat on the porch and listened to monkeys howling in the forest and i read about sao paulo, the third largest city in the world. 'luis' and i have decided that it is nessesary to visit florinopolis. it has some of the best beaches, liberal minded people, veggie friendly resturants, young people and did i mention beautiful beaches??? can't wait. im off to smell the freshly cleansed earth from the saftey of the balcony, boa tarde!

os primero dias en brasil

brasi is a beautiful (linda) country, although i have only experienced a small portion thus far. i am living with a family of three; the husband, ricardo, wife, loja, and son, joao pedro. the nature of work is not nessesarily what i was expecting, but it is fun and rewarding none the less. i guess all the pot washing i achieved while working at the university greenhouses is going to come in handy! the first day i worked with loyva recycling glass bottles for use in juice bottling. huge tubs of water held hundereds of used glass bottles which we scrubbed until they were squeeky clean... for eight hours.

a little more about where i am staying... i am currently in picada cafe, a small city in the state of rio grande do sul, the southern most state of brazil. interestingly, the city is mostly composed of individuals of german desent (ww2 escapies??). when i first arrived it appeared that i had entered bavaria of the tropics. seriously, driving through the town center today we passed groups of young people standing by their cars blasting techno music, how very european!
there is some much green here it is unbelievable! a million different kinds of trees, including pines! there are many animals as well. living under the porch of the house is a three foot long iguana, which has been dwelling there for seven years, according to loja. there are also many, many birds (tocans!), monkeys and huge insects (my favorite are the beetles and butterflies).


yesterday, i washed and labled bottles of peach necter and accompanied ricardo to caxias do sul, the second largest city in rio grande do sul. there we went to a meeting of organic cooperatives from rio grande do sul. the only problem was that ricardo didn't tell me this until i was in the car, wearing a tee-shirt, shorts and sandals as i had been working all morning. the issue is, in brasil you do not go to a meeting dressed in this manner. all the women at the meeting were wearing blouses and high heels! i felt a bit out of place to say the least, not to mention i could only understand about 1/3 of what was transpiring. after the meeting i went with ricardo to a farm where he obtains pears and necterines to turn into to juices. the orchard was nothing like an orchard at all! it was more like a forest where pears happened to be growing. we ate pears picked from the trees and it was good. the whole understory of the pear orchard was covered in lilies! it was shady, cool and verdant.

i have yet to experience life in the cities of brasil, but country life is calm and domestic. i like it. everyday the entire family has their meals together (except perdo who is at school for lunch), ricardo comes home from work to eat! the meals are delicious and it's not difficult to be a vegitarian here. i have tried so many new foods! dulce de leche, tapioca bread, pan de queso, papya, a small melon like fruit, blackberry juice, necterine juice, peach juice, mango juice (juice, juice, juice!), crema de leche, melado, and... well that's alot! i am so thankful that the people of picada cafe love their coffee, it is included in almost every meal.


today we went to an area by the river where the most bizzare bird lives. this bird, called sargento, builds it's nest from human hair and hangs it from the smallest branch over the middle of the river. it is much like a bag where the birds crawl in and out of the top. ecological adaptations never cease to amaze me.

as far as the weather goes it has been great, even cool. it has rained 3 of the 4 days that i have been here and there has been thunder and lightning almost every night. i have had no trouble keeping a 10 p, (22:00) bedtime as i have been working hard every day. also, i have started thinking in portuguese and spanish!

until next time! i am off to the porch to soak up the rolling thunder and flashing lightning.

p.s. sorry i haven't quite figued out how to rotate the phots, so just turn your computer on it's side!