Day 36

Conan is pink again. He inevitably gets this way when we wax the floor. It’s a little funny to have a pink and black kitten, but gosh he’s cute, happily curled up on my lap right now as I type.

Today a few of us dug some new subsoil out of the pile to pack into the stairs of the long-drop toilet:

Here they are, coming along! We're building a retaining wall around the earth bags, and filling the space around them with the subsoil, packing it with the wooden handle of a hoe (gently) so we don't disturb the bricks.

The house is looking amazing:

We mixed a giant mix of cobb for Kim and Marcelo’s house today.

It took all morning to make it, and we used fresh cow poop which wasn’t optimal (it’s fine to use, but the smell: not so amazing).
We soaked more for tomorrow though, and apparently when it is mixed with water it removes the bad smell. We shall see…
I found this very cool spider who was evading my camera... I know this isn't the best photo, but look at that butt! So cool!
Jo found this spectacular butterfly, who looks just like a...When it opens its wings it's a beautiful burnt orange above!

Our lovely lunch:
Coop's companion:
Tomorrow we are having a pizza party, firing up the oven for the first time. We meant to do it for Keren’s going away party, but we didn’t have a pizza peel at the time so it never happened… While we were in Iguazu, Marcelo made one. It’s quite the sight- so long! He’s all excited about it. He said that his grandmother always baked by lighting the fire and then removing all of the coals once the oven got hot. She would clean out the bottom quickly, then load the oven with bread… so that’s what we’re doing tomorrow. We started cheese making today. We are going to try our hand at making queso cremoso again (our last batch was very wet because we didn’t have time to let the ricotta drip dry)- Kimberly says it’s like mozzarella, and I’m so excited to try it!

Here are some of our sprouting garden shoots for transplanting:
Marisa has been picking us beautiful boquets...
And check out this super cool spider that Coop and Marisa found! We had an awesome picture of her butt as well (which looks red with little stars all over), but unfortunately I erased it accidentally. She's a nighttime spider, and what a sight she is!

My tent has consistently smelled like dried apricots since I got back from Iguazu. I’m not sure why, but it always makes me smile when I climb in at night.

Day 35

A lovely breakfast: fruit and yogurt and matéA little drop of Argentine sunshine:
We collected cow poop from Marcos’ house. It was fun to walk around in the field, talking with Marisa. The bags got so heavy though, and we lugged them quite a distance! (And the poop we collected was not so dry, so it started dripping out of the weave in the polypropylene bags, which got all over everything- so gross!) Jess and I got to help Kim with lunch today, one of my favorite jobs.
After our work session this afternoon Kim, Jess, and I all did Reiki on Sasha, who is sick again. She has had recurrent throat problems since before coming here, and has been sick twice since coming. It was an awesome experience working together, and I felt so energized afterward.

This new butterfly is amazingly beautiful, and so skittish! I snuck this shot when she was eating poop from the driveway...

Things we do during siesta:
My new little fuzzhead friend:After dinner I finished carving my spoon while everyone else played Skip Bo, a card game that we have here. Marcelo told us that he spoke to a friend that said the wood we’re using to carve is toxic… so that’s good. Kim wants a second opinion. Either way, I decided I wanted to finish my spoon. So now it's ready to dry. It’s tucked into wood shavings in a bag. Once it’s dry I will sand it and oil it… and then use it to… scoop laundry detergent perhaps? Or maybe it really is rosewood and thus fine to use for food. I guess we’ll have to find out.

We have been gardening every afternoon, amending soil, planting, starting seeds, watering.There are a lot of grasshoppers around, and one of Kim and Marcelo’s methods for inviting them to leave the garden is by eating them. They go down there, and say out loud “Wow! So many grasshoppers! Thank you! You are in our garden where we grow food to eat, and you will add to the protein of our meal. We will have a delicious supper tonight with you!” Coop has been wanting to try eating insects for a while, so yesterday afternoon he caught a number of grasshoppers, and left them in a jar (with holes in the lid so they could breathe).

Kim says this is important because then they poop out everything and are clean. This afternoon before dinner he prepared them by pulling off their legs and wings, and then he and Marisa fried them in two batches: butter and garlic, and butter, cinnamon, and sugar. Woah.
Eating insects is something that I have thought about for a long time too. I am not very squeamish (as you know), but thinking about eating them is one of the things that reliably turns my stomach. I know it’s something that many cultures in the world do though, they are everywhere, a great source of protein, sustainable… it bothers me that I limit myself with my thoughts. So, I decided to try Coop’s grasshopper surprise. We pulled the heads off before eating them (it’s the eyes and the antennae that get me). I went for one of the smaller ones in garlic. And it was totally fine! It tasted like crunchy buttery garlic bits from making homefries.So, I tried a second one (because I feel like it’s important to try things twice always, to give them a fair shot). The second one was not as crunchy, and I was definitely not as fond of it.More flavor, more chew… and it got my mind spinning a bit. But I tried a third one, just for the experience… a cinnamon sugar one. (After all, isn’t everything better with sugar and butter?) It was the same as the second, and I decided that it was ok for me to be done eating them. But I’m glad I tried. Maybe again another time, once I have kicked my mental blocks down a bit farther.

Day 34

Mornings from my hammock tent look like this (stuff tent ahead):Every morning when I unzip my tent, Rambo comes over and sticks his face in to say hi and get his morning scratch.
Today Marcelo and the menfolk (every time I say this it makes me giggle, thinking of the Heyerdahl’s and Jack mentioning that the menfolk went golfing while at Moosehead lake) used a crowbar to remove the wood from the outside of his house and they added some back. The new plan is to mud the outside of their house, and then we’ll paint it white with lyme. Marcelo says it will look like a German barn.
After removing the boards, we worked on mudding in the first wall of the house. We’re doing this with cobb, which is a thicker mix than the mortar we have been making for adobe building, and is slightly different recipe because it contains cow poop, which apparently makes it dry hard as well as adding fiber and making it stickier. The mix we made was 20 buckets of sifted subsoil, 10 buckets of sand, 5 of cow poop, 1 ½ polypropylene bags of pine needles, 4 tablespoons of linseed oil, and some water.
And some images from today. Here is Jo with a new friend:
Maggie and Sasha found this little spotted rainbow-colored leaf hopper by the river...
and there was a very long spider too...
This little caterpillar was sitting near the river this morning. I wonder what he'll become!
Kim and Marcelo's potted garden by their house:
Yesterday during siesta I started hatcheting out the shape of a spoon from the wood they gathered from the river. While shorter than I might choose, there are some lovely pieces of wood here, still wet (because it’s been soaking in water- is that bad?), with pink stripes and a distinct smell. I think it’s rosewood, which Marcelo says is possible because it grows around here.
My spoon beginnings inspired us to plan a carving class last night, so today I taught everyone how to hone their pieces of wood down enough that they can start carving away with a knife to see what comes out of the wood.
Here's the beginning of my spoon in the foreground, Marisa working in the background.
This afternoon during our gardening session I dug up some little potatoes that had grown in the old compost heap...
and we sifted compost too... and found this grub. SO*FREAKING*HUGE! That's my thumb in the picture for comparison. Woah.
Amanita thought him a delicious treat.

Day 33

Today we had Mama Roja love day, and while others painted varnish onto wood or chainsawed and dragged new firewood from the stream, or scrubbed the labels off of wine bottles for our long-drop toilet’s walls, Jo and I cleaned the kitchen.

After scrubbing all horizontal surfaces well with vinegar solution, we moved out everything that could be moved out, scrubbed the floors with soapy water and then rinsed them and squeegeed them off to dry. We had time to re-wax the diningroom floor too, hips bopping to music as we went. Jo is from England, and she has the best accent (and she doesn’t care if we imitate it, which makes me happy!) Before she arrived Kim warned me that I was going to have to stop with my British accent because I might offend her (she was joking… I think). So there we are, problem solved.
The lunch line...
Kimberly brought home the most beautiful produce from the farmers' market today! These mandarinas are my favorite fruit here so far. Though they are green they are perfectly ripe and delicious inside!
Such bounty!

This afternoon we started building a retaining wall for the long-drop toilet steps. Working with earth bags hasn’t been Marcelo’s favorite, so he wants to finish the steps using other methods. We will build a wall on the side of the steps, using brick and our mud mortar, and add bricks along the front of the step and then fill in the rest of the space with subsoil and pack it (just like what is in the earth bags, but without the polypropylene).

This is what happened when Clay (as in Clayton) mixed his first batch of mortar:
(No pun intended...)
Jess, our androgenous térere queen (she's also an amazing yoga teacher; it's a win-win!)
Coop's feet, after stomping mortar.

I’m excited to see how it all comes together. With many of us it feels like there isn’t much to do at the moment, but I know there will be soon. There are so many projects to do here, there’s certainly no shortage!

The kitchen in the afternoon light:
This is one of my favorite beetles I have found so far! His rhino horn makes a pinching motion with the spikes on his back when he moves his head, but I am sure I scared him more than he scared me!

Looking up at the stars at night, Orion is just over our path now, his head upside-down as if he is doing a cartwheel. It has gotten chilly here. I’m not sure if it’s because we went away to Iguazu, where it was hot, and got used to the heat before returning, but it feels like we have just shifted into fall over the weekend while we were away. I love the cool nights, but hanging in my banana pod in the air, it’s easy to get cold because the air circulates on all sides. Sleeping on my thermarest definitely helped me keep warm last night.