Happy Thanksgiving

Well, it's Thanksgiving in Paraguay...which means...well, nothing. However, we Peace Corps Volunteers are still going to celebrate! Tomorrow (the day AFTER Thanksgiving) we are all going down to Encarnacions, about 6 hours by bus from Asuncion, and staying in a nice hotel and having a feast of our own..including turkey and the works. I'm keeping this short, since I have pictures to post and I know that's what you all REALLY want. So, on with the pictures.


Maria's garden. Amazing, isn't it? This time a year ago it was all weeds. The woman has got enthusiasm!

Showing the women my flower garden in between classes.

Summer gardening class on mulch.

Erosion demonstration.

More mulch and erosion talk.

Kids helping with the raffle after the seminar.

This is my experiment of Crotalaria inbetween pineapple. Eventually it will grow taller and shade the pineapple so that the fruits dont scorch. Also, it fixes a lot of nitrogen and it's roots release a chemical which kills nematodes, pretty cool, eh!?

I gave Maria some sunflower seeds from the states, look how pretty!

Random wildflower.

My herb section of the garden. Lemongrass, two types of mint, a little thai basil baby, some chamomile.

Summer garden. Watermelon taking over, creating a great green mulch. Two types of okra, experimenting with amaranthe , tomatillos.

Hot chilies, okra, watermelon, basil, nasturtiums, marigolds. I dont like a neat garden, as you all can tell. I feel like the "mess" disorients bugs, there isn't just one section of peppers and just one section of watermelon. It is all dispersed so that if bugs were to attack it would be localized and not destroy an entire section. The perfection lies in the imperfection.

My red sunflowers...almost black!

Maria with her sunflowers...she absolutely loves them. They are the talk of the town, literally.

This is my other neighbor, Nidia, with one of Maria's sunflowers.

The woman across the street, Juana, is using old bean pods as a mulch. Not only is it thick and will decompose slowly adding lots of nutrients, but I also think it looks wonderful.

Bees love sunflowers.

This is my neighboors newest puppy, Lupino (they let me name him), playing in a pile of Mandi'o peels.

Freshly baked Sourdough. A volunteer gave me some of her sourdough starter culture, so I made my own Sourdough with some ground lentil and flax flour along with traditional white flour. Tossed in some Sesame seeds and Caraway seeds and this is the end result.

Long Field Practice

This past week I had four trainees visit me as well as their language teacher for Long Field Practice (LFP). LFP happens towards the end of the training period, and the trainees visit a volunteer for a week. They live with families and do things that volunteers usually do to get a feel for the work and the lifestyle. I had a great group come down, they were very enthusiastic and open to everything. The families were all happy to have them and none of the volunteers ate anything TOO strange. Though, back in MY day, when I was a trainee going to long field I had to eat liver...a couple times. They had it easy.
I had a lot planned for them, we worked bees, we did a lot of work in the fields. Planted Mucuna with Corn in one of the farmers field. We worked in my demonstration plot. They also helped me with my class on summer gardening. It was one of the best classes I have given. Around 50 people from the community came and they all left very excited and enthusiastic about getting their gardens ready for summer. Most Paraguayans assume that it is too hot and the sun too strong for gardens in the summer. This class was to show that it is possible, with a little bit of planning. We had a rotation of charlas. So one group went with two trainees and talked about composting, one group went and talked about shade structures, and one came with me and we talked about mulching and erosion. I dont think it could have gone any better. The trainees were doing pretty well with limited Guarani and all the community members were conscious of their effort and they all learned something from their charlas regardless.
Having the trainees in site was also a boost for me. I got to show off my community, and how much the people there are willing to do and change. It was also pretty interesting to compare my Guarani with theirs. I remember being in their position and thinking `how am I ever going to talk like that in a year` and sure enough they were saying the same thing about my Guarani.
All in all it was a great week, my community was so happy to host more Americans and Im excited to have the new trainees as volunteers. I took a lot of pictures. Here are some, but not all from this past week.


Getting suited up for bee work.


Me giving an intro to the summer gardening charla.

Jordan and Kevin talking about Media Sombra - shade structure.

A simple, yet extremely effective demonstration on the use of mulch and it´s effects on erosion. Everyone was amazed at how much water and earth came out of the box with no mulch...and then equally amazed and how much water and earth stayed in the box with mulch.


A tour of my new flower garden.

Dan and Rachel talking about composting.

More on compost.

Camera works

It turns out that all the computers in Santani are not wired correctly because my camera works fine in Asuncion. I am in the city since I am STILL getting eaten by bugs. Unbelievable. It has been a very long couple of weeks, but I will say that the last two nights have been bug bite free. Anyways, I will keep this short and post the pictures that I was planning on posting a while ago. Enjoy



Flowers in the flower garden that Maria and I built. Lovely.


Maria in our flower garden. The arbor will eventually be covered with passion fruit (yum)/

The flower garden. Jardin de la paz as Maria calls it.

Mmmm, vegetable juice. I came into school and did a healthy eating charla out of the blue. I came in with a handful of carrots and beets and asked the teacher if I coudl talk. He was happy to have me, so we made beet and carrot juice with a bit of sugar and the kids LOVED it. When asked which was better, soda or juice, some said juice and still some said soda. However, when asked which was better for you they all knew that juice was better. And why? I asked Because it has lots of vitamins and minerals! they answered. That was good enough for me.

Seconds.

Harvesting more carrots from the garden. They all wanted more juice!

Maria's next experiment. These are lima beans growing in between marigolds. Prior to these beans there were tomatos. A good crop rotation, and a very good use of natural pest control.

Beautiful.

A double wall of protection, and it looks great too. There is some left over basil. This picture is relatively old. Right now the beans are well above the marigolds.

My new favorite toy... a handmill. Im grinding up a storm.

This is a result. Chapatis from brown rice and barley flour which I ground. Lentil and squash curry and carrot chutney. Not bad, eh?

Sweet potatos are purple in this country! And very, very sweet.

This is an older picture ( about two weeks old) of an experiment that has gone well. The melon in between the pineapple is almost completely covering the ground in between and it is in fruit, I cant wait to eat these sweet sweet melons.