Project - Horticulture

From September 2012 to August 2013 (I am embarrassingly behind on writing blogs), I co-taught organic agriculture classes as one of my main activities. It was quite a learning experience for me, as it is the first opportunity I have had to participate in formal education. We had four sections, each of which came to the school farm for two hours each week. For each section, we selected a project appropriate to the knowledge level of the students. One of these projects was horticulture, or vegetable production.

Some of my students planting seeds in a freshly made bed.

Solar Food Preservation

I briefly mentioned my solar dehydrator project in a previous post. Now that this project has been wrapped up, here's a little more detail.

Having lived most of my life in temperate climates, I'm used to the idea of seasonal fruits and veggies, and the need to preserve produce in order to have something tasty to eat in the winter. Sure, NAFTA eliminates some of that need, but preserving food is still an important part of American culture.

During the first few months in Ecuador, I quickly realized that food preservation is very rare here. Before refrigeration was widely available, meat and fish were smoked or dried to extend the bounty of a hunt for up to a month. Now, even if a family doesn't own a fridge, the store down the street that sells chicken probably does. So few people preserve meat anymore.

Although food preservation isn't common, there are some products that need to be dried as part of the processing. Cacao, coffee, and plantain (for grinding into flour) are the most common.

At the school farm, the teachers were experimenting with designs to accelerate the drying of cacao and improve the quality (mold and flies are very common when sun-drying cacao).

Version 1.0 of the solar dehydrator.

The first design they came up with had a lot of good qualities:
-Made from recycled/free materials
-Improved airflow below cacao compared with sun-drying on a tarp
-Easy to use

Foto Friday: The Angry Jungle Goat

Meet Kirstie's friend-goat. He likes to fight Isaac.

Foto Friday: Momotus momota

A blue-crowned motmot (Motmotus momota), also known as a culebrero, near Canoa, Ecuador.

Creepy Crawlies of Ecuador, vol. 2 (Extra Creepy)

Happy Halloween! We thought it appropriate to share a dose of jungle-creepiness with you this year to celebrate. These are some of the more bizarre, terrifying, and weird insects we've snapped on camera during our journeys through the Amazon.

(If you missed it, you can check out volume 1 of Creepy Crawlies here.)

We'll start with one that isn't TOO terrifying. It may look cute and fuzzy, but these furry guys are not for petting. Ecuadorians tell us: "Esos pican." Those ones sting!

Read on... IF YOU DARE!!!

Making Chocolate

Earlier this year I went to go to a workshop at the Río Muchacho Organic Farm on the coast of Ecuador. Most of the workshop was review for me, but we did get to MAKE CHOCOLATE! Here's a little info about how to make chocolate - old school style.

1. Get the pods off of the tree.You can chop 'em off with a machete or whack them down with a stick.

This is a cacao tree (from Indonesia - can you believe we haven't taken one in Ecuador yet?). These are unripe pods.

Foto Friday: Baby Chicks!

In honor of the Sara setting her chicks off on their own earlier this week, we thought we'd show you some pictures of the things when they were just little fuzz-balls.

Sara and one of her babies. Not only did she incubate and hatch this little cutie, but it's also her actual offspring. Previous clutches were bought from friends in town.

Isaac and fuzziness.

Kirstie wanted to hold them, too.

Foto Friday: This is Where Milk Comes From

Foto Friday: Door Frog

Fatty and the Bulgers 2: Ready to Fly!

Well, it's that time again. The kittens have grown to monstrous proportions, are eating us out of house and home, and are ready for new adventures.

UPDATE: Thanks to our friends Bertha and Nancy for helping us find good homes for all the kittens! Humpty's getting cuddled to death by Nancy's kids, and the girls are in their new jungle homes looking for tasty rats to eat!

The Bulgers are watching... UP YOUR NOSE!!!

Foto Friday: Horses

It's not just us! It seems like everyone in town has caught horse fever!

Germán takes part in the town's celebration.

Carlos and Joesi also take to the ring. They're fast!

Here's Joesi again, getting some help from Isaac during a training day. The high school kids learned some basics of dressage, which is like dancing.

Robinson ("Copy") and Estrella working on some moves. (We should mention that Copy's attire--shirt up over the belly and pants in danger of slipping off--is the style here, for both young and old men.)

 This post is part of the Forest and Farm series.

Video viernes: Double Yolk

We slacked off the last two weeks and didn't post a photo on Friday, so this week you get a video instead.

Foto Friday: Fatty and the Bulgers

Meet Fatty and the Bulgers (a.k.a. Chicken the very pregnant--again--cat). Her swirliness makes it hard to see, but she looked like she swallowed a melon at the end of it.

 Kirstie and a black and white Bulger, the only one that isn't tabby like its mom (although the black parts might be tabby--we won't know for sure until it's a little bigger).

Isaac and a little, tiny Bulger! They were born on Tuesday night. This is the noisy one.

Kirstie and the third Bulger. You can see their little makeshift cave in the back. Go recycled building materials!

Five points to anyone who can guess why they're Fatty and the Bulgers.

..kirstie..

 This post is part of the Forest and Farm series.

Foto Friday: Chocolate Kisses

Chocolate the pony is very affectionate.

What's a watusa?

Time for a food blog! Today we're introducing two Ecuadorian foods: cuy and watusa, two animals that you might not think belong in this jungle country.

Most people have heard of cuy before. It's English name is... GUINEA PIG! It's really popular in the mountains, and is one of the quintessential native Ecuadorian foods, despite their cuteness.

Guinea pigs.
Photo by Kirstie Bickford.

Pooping Green

No, we do not have weird jungle parasites that causes our poop to turn green. (Though we probably DO have weird jungle parasites doing other things...) But yes, this is a post about poop. It's even a post about green poop, but we're using it here as an adverb, not as an adjective. Today we'll tell you how to poop in a green (environmentally friendly) way.

This is not a green toilet :(
(C) Bickfords

Chicken's Kittens

About two months ago, a stray cat started hanging out around our house. At first, she was terrified of us, but we produce a lot of chicken bones, and she liked to watch our chickens, so she stuck around (and got herself the name Chicken). Some of you may remember her from Isaac's blog Stalked at Night.

Chicken the Cat with a kitten and the chickens.
Photo by Kirstie Bickford.

As luck would have it, she was pregnant. (A story blog about that will be coming soon to I Have Girl Parts, my sister blog.) She gave birth to four kittens the day after Thanksgiving, November 23, making them six weeks old as of January 4.

Chickens are fun

Because protein-rich foods like meat, legumes, eggs, and milk products are relatively expensive here, we decided to buy some chickens for eggs and meat production. You can visit our post with pictures on Back Yard Chickens.

..Isaac and Kirstie..

 This post is part of the Forest and Farm series.

Project: Conociendo la Naturaleza en Inglés

We'd like to introduce our first Peace Corps project blog! Our project blogs will showcase a project that we have completed in our community as a part of our Peace Corps service.


Vacation Course: Conociendo la Naturaleza en Inglés

This project, which translates as "Learning about Nature through English," was a suggestion by one of our community counterparts. He originally asked for an English course for the high school students to attend during their two-month vacation from school, but our project area is Natural Resources Conservation (NRC). So we decided to teach both English and environmental education.

Who's taller?

I remember in fifth grade learning about the different canopy layers of a jungle. You've got your really tall trees - the Emergent layer. Then comes the tallest trees that form a continuous layer - the upper canopy. From there it's a jumble of trees, vines, shrubs, and other plants of different heights until you finally get to the very bottom, where very little direct sunlight ever reaches.

My teacher used the analogy of a building with several stories to help us understand the concept. The analogy bothered me at the time, because the trees aren't actually standing on top of each other - they are all rooted at one level - in the ground. Or so I thought.

Yup, that's a palm tree. Growing out of the top of another tree.
Photo by Kirstie Bickford