Part Two. Give me spots on my apples, but leave me the birds and the bees... - Joni Mitchell

When we were returning to Quito from Carchi, our program coordinator had given us the option of getting dropped off in Otaválo if we were interested. My friend Meg and I had been wanting to go horseback riding for quite some time and we decided that Otaválo was just as good a place as any. The first time we went to Otaválo, while visiting la cascasda Peguche, we met a man named Fabian who had just finished taking a few people on a trail ride. We struck up with a conversation with him, then while Meg and I were petting his horses, our friend Constance got his phone number and was told that anytime we wanted to come riding, that we should give him a call.

So that was our plan. We called him that afternoon, met him in La Plaza de Ponchos to set up a time to meet the next day then headed back to our hostel to relax.

  

 

Hostal Valle del Amanecer

Our hostels coutryard, complete with hammocks. This is the hostel we wished we had stayed at last time, but had received a bad review in my Lonely Planet. Turns out the review was a few years old, and this place turned out to be cheaper and cozier than the hostel we stayed at last time! 

After a night of conversation and waiting far too long for a meal at a shisha bar where the smoke made you want to douse your eyes in water, Meg, Brittany (who was in Otaválo for her first time) and I woke up at 6am in order to walk to the animal market, a place where people and animals meet to form a space of noisy and smelly chaos. As we got closer and closer the market, signs that we were almost there were popping up everywhere; the skin of a cow piled in a bloody mess on the curb; a goat carried in a bag on the back of teenager; pigs being pulled unwillingly by young boys.

The market itself was a wild place, full of animals of all sorts crowded into small spaces with their owners hoping to sell to people passing by. It was an extremely interesting cultural experience where sitting and observing could easily pass the time. In this case, the pictures I took will tell the story better than I can…

A view...

...from above.

Just carrying some chickens...

Here is a mother and her calf, the only animal not tied down in this market. Notice how the calf is muzzled and the mother's udder is full. It was dripping with milk the whole time we watched them and the calf was clearly hungry. We think that the owners weren't lettering the calf drink so as to show potential buyers how much milk the mother could produce.

Here we were observing a transaction between the owner (man in the black jacket counting the money) and the buyers (the men in the blue and red jackets). The animal that was being bought was the black bull. Earlier on we had seen him being handled, and that his right horn was covered in blood. We thought this might deter people from wanting him, but apparently not...



This little piggy went to the market...



Alpacas!



Squashed chickens.

Cuy. Or your family guinea pig. Here Cuy is a traditional Ecuadorian dish. Haven't tried it yet...working up to it.

Kittens on top of puppies on top of chickens.

The CUTEST puppy I have ever seen in my life. Seriously considered buying him.

This little boy was caring for this calf the whole time we were there. We think he was praying that he wouldn't be sold...they seemed to really like each other.



Wooly sheep.

At 10am Meg and I met up with Fabian outside our hostel and walked to where his horses were kept. Our 4 hour ride would take us through  the beautiful Ecuadorian countryside, to El Lechero and El Parque del Condor.

This is Asavache, the horse that Meg and I had actually met back in Sepetmber during our first trip tp Otaválo. This guy was sturdy. This is right before we left...my pockets are full of sandwiches, some snacks for later on.

This is at El Lechero where we stopped for a rest as well as to take in the view.

This is El Lechero, a tree said to have magical powers. You are supposed to make a wish, but Meg and I, excited over the fantastic view, forgot. The tree is said to be a man while the lake in the background is said to be a woman. The two are lovers, forever near each other.

This is a flight demonstration we saw at El Parque del Condor. We didn't get to see any condors fly because they were much to big and heavy to be brought out.

This is a bald eagle, named, coinincidentally, Gringo.

This is a condor. By far the biggest bird we saw in this park.



Meg and Gaston.

Breathtaking. Fabian and Apache.



Loving life.



This was byfar the best day I have had in Ecuador so far. Felt free and happy, lungs with clean air and mind well-rested. We plan to go back to see Fabian for a 7 to 8 hour trail ride. Can't wait.

Part One. Hey farmer, farmer Put away that DDT now... - Joni Mitchell

Hello all!

Yes, it has been a while, of that I am aware. And in the month that I have not posted a single blog post, I wish I could say that all I was doing was exploring Ecuador (which is true), but to be honest the reason behind my neglect lies with school. Things have just been a little busy and so in my spare time breaks for my brain were important, and I didn't want to be posting mediocre tellings of what I had been up to. School does this to everyone I think, takes away little pieces of their lives that they need, particularly time. While travelling though, it's a little harder to stay focused...

 This is what I am going to do. The next few blogs that I have are going to be mostly pictures with captions at the bottom explaining where I was, what was happening and why. A picture is worth a thousand words right?

For the sake of organization and clarity (yup I'm a university student, its about time I start doing this!) I have decided to split up this blog into two parts based around my experiences during October 13th to 15th.  I hope you enjoy it!

Part 1 of this blog involves a two day field trip to the province of Carchi, which is in the North of Ecuador, bordering Columbia. Our purpose here was to visit a few different places in order to explore and witness agriculture practices that are currently taking place in farming communities which are pushing the boundaries of traditional ways of producing food in order to gain food security and advocate food sovereignty. Gotta say, this was my favourite field trip of all of them.

      The first place that we visited was the community of Chitacaspi, in which a women's group had formed because they wanted to be able to produce their own food in an organic manner versus using the chemical pesticides that had been pushed on them.  These pesticides may initially increase their yields, but the effects have serious implications for the health of the crop being produced, for the people applying the chemicals, and for the people consuming the crop.

The community sits high up on a mountain while the vast lands of a hacienda stretch below. During the agrarian reform when 'land distribution' was taking place, peasant producers were given less desireable plots of land while the hacienda owners kept those that were more nutrient rich and had better quality of soil. The acitivities we observed in Chitacaspi were just some of the ways in which this women's group proved to be resisting certain aspects of their circumstance.

Upon arriving we ate en ENORMOUS lunch in which all of us struggled to finish as much as we could. In Ecuador, especially in places that are more traditional and often less well-off financially, refusing food or not finishing what is on your plate is considered extremely rude. Sometimes the people whom you are with are giving you more than they have because they want you to feel welcome. Unfortunately this amount is usually too much for the normal-sized human stomach...

Here we had a chance to both observe and participate in the making of an organic fertilizer. One woman explained to me some of the ingredients which are used, some of which include aji (hot pepper), ortiga (nettle), estiércol de vaca (cow manure), roca phosphoric (phosphorus), levadura (yeast), borax, melasa de caña de ázucar (sugar cane molasses) as well as bacteria acquired from cheese. When I inquired about the strength of the fertilizer and what is was used to protect the plants against, she told me that they applied it to crops such as lettuce, potatoes and onions to ward off moscos and lanchas, as well as to provided nutrients and vitamins to the plants. She also said that although it was to be used especially while the plants were starting to develop, that it could be used at any stage of the crops development.

The next woman I spoke to told me that after the fertilizer was prepared, that it needs to sit for three months in the tanks before it can be applied to any crop. This is because it needs time to ferment, and the bacteria need time to multiply. The tanks that the mixture is kept in are 200L each. When I asked how much land one tank would cover, she said that one tank would supply one hectare of land with enough fertilizer to be effective. When I asked if the fertilizer was difficult to make and how often they did make it, she said that it depended on the amount of people available to help and that the time between applications varied, depending for example on weather, and could be between every couple of weeks to every couple of months. She also stated that the fertilizer is not just used for the crops that they work, but that it is also sold to other people in the community who are searching for alternatives for insecticides and fertilizers as well.

(So much for not writing a lot eh? Okay, for real now, here are some pictures…



Here are the women adding the chopped up ingredients to the 200L tanks



Here are Mike and Kirsten cutting up leaves and hot peppers...using machetes I might add.





I myself was pretty good with the machete. Those leaves didn't stand a chance.



Here you can see one of the many plants used in the making of the fertilizer as well as cow manure, a bucket full of cheese juice (for the bacteria), and a bag of molasses.

Women mixing the yeast and brine.



Beautiful land that small peasants will probably never get their hands on...

The next place we visited during this field trip was to the Chota Valley and being at less than a thousand metres above sea-level, it was significantly warmer than Chitacaspi. Here we visited a couple of farmers who were attempting to also farm in an organic and sustainable way while doing so in an area in which water is scarce. It was really cool to see how these farmers we producing organic crops in an area like this.

Amazing the life that water can give...this is a picture I took on the fence line of a farm called La Finca Agroturística de la Mata a la Olla.

This is Alfonso, the man who owns La Finca Agroturística El Cedro. He owns one hectare of which he farms himself and he is the President of an organic farmers association in the Chota Valley.  

Oh sweet land and water...what you can make together is beautiful.