Rio Muchacho 2016

It’s been a busy and exciting past few days, and we are just now in town with the fist chance to access the Internet since we left Mindo and Mashpi. Rio Muchacho is an organic farm near the coast, in one of the areas hit hard by the earthquake. Just less than three months later, the farm and the community are in he recovery process and we’re happy to be there to support. Although many structures have fallen, the farm is still overflowing with fruit and vegetables. Throughout the past few days there, we have planted fruit and hard wood trees, made banana circles, constructed raised beds, created trails through the garden, and much more — and helping the farm to regain some form of normal far work after all the madness of the quake.

Each day at the farm starts at 6am, with cleaning the animal pens and feeding the pigs, horses, chickens, cows and Guinea pigs. Seems only fair to feed the animals before our own breakfast, given all the manure they provide us with — a key ingredient to the many forms of compost on the farm. After breaking a sweat taking care of the animals, we’re all ready for breakfast.

After breakfast we start with a short talk from nicola, the farm’s owner and agriculture expert. We’ve talked about principles of agro-ecology, the local climate, and the science of composting. Then, it leads into our tiring but satisfying farm work, which takes us up to lunch time — some of the best food we have had this whole trip. After lunches, we’ve participated in cultural activities such as making rings from Palm seeds and a relaxing, meditative clay face mask.

Today we’re at the beach for a much needed relaxing day and a swim in the ocean! Looking forward to returning to the farm for our last couple of days there.

Seeds 2016