In Bogotá, headed to a FARM!

Yay, we have finally been able to arrange another farm north of Bogotá. We are not sure exactly what work we will be doing or for how long we will stay, but we are very excited nonetheless.

In the comments section yesterday, church Lady Melanie mentioned how our trip has evolved from our original idea and wondered what we might be learning. This is something we reflect on together often and since we are almost halfway and about to head to another farm for more learning, this is a good time to briefly talk about what it is we are learning.

It was our plan to do a lot more farming along the way in our travels. This did not work out exactly as we planned, but it has really been a benefit to us as we have not had to rush through countries that have such rich and interesting histories. We have been able to really take our time and try to wrap our brains around the Peruvian and Bolivian and other peoples and make attempts at connecting current culture with the thousands of years of history that exist in these countries. It has also given us opportunities to venture off the main roads into places full of beauty. But as readers, you know this, so what have we been actually learning?

Well, for us learning is a process that extends well beyond the experience. However, we are really excited about how things have worked themselves out. We were able to start out with a couple of great farming experiences where we learned lots about caring for sheep (including milking them and making cheese!), planting, some harvesting, beekeeping, and many other aspects of organic and sustainable farming, including eating local and in season when there is not a whole lot in season.

This set us up really nicely for the things we would see next, that we did not realize we might see. We see now that through taking our time and learning about indigenous groups and their arts and how the agrarian socieites worked along with interacting with indigenous people and seeing them struggle to keep those traditions and their own culture alive in settings that have often made it difficult if not dangerous to do so. This has helped us to put the meaning into what it is we ultimately hope to do with our knowledge and experiences. We have seen and been saddened by exploitation that runs rampant making us understand the urgency of new local economies that include local food economies in our own town (wherever that ends up being). We have seen the value of beauty in art through our interactions with artisans and through learning about cultural practices that utilize arts not for entertainment, but as a way of making life beautiful and preserving a culture that they see, and rightly so, as worth preserving. From this we have learned little about how to grow food, but have learned lots about the value of local cultures and beauty in those cultures, as well as the work that comes with this art and preservation of local culture. We have learned about the value of hard work in the face of the pressures of industrialism. Having met a family who still plows with a mule, not only because of the economic impossibility of owning a tractor, but also because they feel it is the best way to interact with the land and cultivate their food. They also would be unable to continue thousand year old traditions of cutting the mule´s hair before each field is plowed as a ritual as tractors do not have hair. To value passing on cultural traditions and to value passing on your small tract of land with its fertility in tact (not chocked full of poison and matted down from overuse) to your children more than you value profit is something that Americans including ourselves need to learn. We hope that by seeing the faces of people who live such simple lives and struggle so hard to pass on things that they find to be valuable and not just profitable, the experiences we have had will be transformative and not just educational.

Now we move on to a new farm, ready to learn more and with new eyes through which to see some of the things we may learn. This farm will not be without some sad irony. At the same time that we are working on a small organic farm in Colombia, we will be paying our taxes, part of which go to fund programs supporting aerial spraying of high powered Round-Up on large parcels of land in Colombia in the name of coca erradication. A fact that we find both disheartening and frustrating. We understand the negative effects of cocaine, however, after our experiences with small farmers in Latin America, it seems unjust to put the burden on them, especially with careless spraying of poisons that effect water supplies and cause harm to both human populations and to future hopes of food production on that land.

So, to sum it up, we feel we are learning. We also feel we are changing and seeing things on our journey that we hope will change the way we live when we return to the United States. With this in mind, we also are enjoying every moment of being in beautiful Latin America while still looking forward to our return to be with friends and family who we miss and can´t wait to partner with and continue to learn from (we know our parents and grandparents have years of agriculture and North Carolina culture in them that still needs to be passed on) in figuring out how to live in a way that reflects our experiences on this journey.