Oh man, there’s no way I’m going to be able to follow up yesterday’s blogpost, so lower your expectations por favor. Seriously, if you didn’t read David’s blogpost yesterday, stop reading this and go read that poem, it made Hannah Ilan cry apparently.
But it’s probably a good thing it’s my turn in the blog rotation because what a day it was today. I’m probably the only one with any energy left and that is because I spent the least amount of time in the sun today. I’ll explain why, but first, I’ll try to explain what we learned today and why it helped me see an even greater importance for our project with the Xuchil members.
We started off the day like normal: waking up and eating breakfast (it was so long ago I can’t remember what we ate). Instead of heading straight to the worksite, we went to visit Don Plutarco, an entrepreneur in the community. Hopefully you guys read Ryan’s blogpost two days ago when he talked about Minerva’s work with amaranth even though she still plays a part with the mesquite project as well as other projects across Suchilquitongo. She’s an absolute rockstar for her innovation and work in the agricultural community here, and I realized today that there even are more rockstars that are doing amazing things for agriculture because they have a strong passion for it. Don Plutarco is one of them and we started off by him telling us about some of the projects he’s implementing, such as setting up a credit system that allows for families to invest into agricultural projects and creating soil mixtures that do not use any chemicals in order to preserve the land and our health. He’s also working with schoolkids to implement a learning system that is focused on the community (for example, agriculture) instead of the standardized system, so that in the future those kids will be able to contribute and advance the community. Those are just the ideas that he’s been able to get going, but it was amazing to see that if we had any questions like “have you tried thinking about this”, he already had thought about it and the idea either was still in the works or had a plausible reason for why it wouldn’t work. There are innovators all over the world and they’re not all in Silicon Valley.
He then took us to his avocado plants. He told us about his sustainable methods of how he doesn’t use any chemicals, but also how he takes any ideas he can get and implements them in order to improve the agriculture, such as a drip system to water the plants. The avocados won’t be ready for another 2 years (I hope you appreciate your avocado toast even more now), but he also told us that many families in Suchilquitongo are self-sustainable because of what they grow themselves. Agriculture is beyond important for rural communities, not just for their economy but to help families with their way of living. We then went into 1 of his 2 greenhouses, this one containing about a 1000 tomato plants. After letting us take some pictures, he gave each one of us a small strip of larvae that ate the bugs (a non-chemical, sustainable method again!) that damaged the crops. We placed our strip on a plant of our choice, and finally headed to the worksite.
Today was for putting up the last parts of the PSD! We got there and immediately got to work putting up the panels on the roof. The exhaust fan started working, and our vents were open and sturdy. Those two sentences brought us to lunch where we had some beef and rice. We rushed through this because we were eager to finish the PSD because we were so close. We ran back and everybody except for me (besides the last hour) put up the puerta (door). All of them worked inside the hot PSD while it rained on and off the entire afternoon. I know you’re thinking that we finished in the first week we’re here, but we still have a lot more to do, so keep reading!
Meanwhile, I was downstairs in the nice shade. If you haven’t been following our side project, we have these polyethylene bags that allow us to put in the mesquite beans, and when we fumigate it with CO2, we can kill the bugs that ruin the mesquite beans. So, once I figured out how to work a CO2 tank, we filled up the polyethylene bag with a bag of mesquite, put in some CO2, and sealed the top. The bugs we want to get rid of started dropping like flies, so we’re ready to try it out with a larger volume of bags.
Even after all of this, our day wasn’t done. Like I said, there are a lot of rockstars in the agricultural community here, and we met with two groups afterwards that are looking to make a difference as well. They met Richard through workshops put on by DCC. The purpose of these workshops is to connect farmers and agriculturists in the nearby communities to prototype machines/tools to help agriculture. These two groups had built prototypes and wanted our feedback on how to make them better! The first group we met on the top of a mountain and they had a bicycle powered composter that aerates bacashi (mixture of coal, manure, saw dust and microorganism). The second group made shovel style tools that are able to cut through unneeded grass and weeds.
Finally, we got back to our hotel to eat a lovely chicken fajita dinner. It was a long day but it showed us the importance of agriculture to the community. People devote all of their time to not only work on their own land, but come up with ways to improve processes for everybody. They want to help the community and work very hard to do so. I’m happy that we get to play a role in this community with our Xuchil team.
Peace, love, CO2, thank you for reading all of this,
- Archik y Team Mexico
Timeline Summary:
8am: Wake up & eat breakfast (I would list what we ate, but that was waaay too long ago to remember)
9am: Visit Don Plutarco
11:30am: Arrive at worksite and put in panels into PSD
1pm: Lunch at Carlos’ Dad’s House (Beef and rice, along with tortillas)
2pm: Put in door and test CO2 bags
4:30pm: Take pictures in the rain with built PSD
5pm: Head over to DCC Workshop Prototype 1
6:30pm: Head over to DCC Workshop Prototype 2
8pm: Dinner! (Fajitas! con chicken, bell peppers, and of course tortillas)
9:00pm: TEAM TIME