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!