Harvest Season at Ka'Way Monti
It has been a strange year for weather indeed this past year. We have wondered often since last August whether the strange turn in weather has been due to climate change, El Nino, or a bit of both. Having pretty much no climate background, none of us can say, but our dry season in August had two weeks of sporadic rain, and the beginning of the heart of the rainy season in January was shrouded in draught. Many of our neighbors lost crops due to mold when the rain came unexpectedly, and potatoes have been a little skimpy lately.
All that said, however, just two weeks ago, Norma & Herminia harvested our first small crop of potatoes which were delicious. These potatoes were planted sometime in early September with Herminia’s youngest, Miguelito, in a belated birthday celebration with him. The best batch were the potatoes we’d planted in an old metal drum riddled with holes on the bottom. Around the compost toilet, we found very flavorful, though tiny, potatoes which we ate for breakfast the next day with our fresh eggs from the chickens.
In these last six months we’re proud to announce that many of our back burner projects from over the years have come to fruition and already borne some fruits. In September, just after the first run of our Living-Change program, we bought some chickens off of Herminia and turned the old half cob house into a make shift chicken coop. The walls of the cob home are a little over a meter high, so we cleared out all the rubble from the floor, slid some planks between two pallets to stabilize them in a triangle, and nailed some boards along the edge to give them a roost. For the roof, we used up many of our left over 2 meter eucalyptus posts laying them across the gap, covered it all in old tin sheeting, and weighed it down with our many rocks. Late at night, Americo showed up with seven chickens from Herminia’s house and we snuck them into the coop. They were never the wiser the next morning when we let them loose over the grounds for the day to pick at all our stick bugs and grasshoppers. Two months later they started laying, and now we’re beginning to see about 3-5 eggs per day.
Along with this make shift coop, one of the students from our Living-Change course stayed on to volunteer for three weeks, Will Hahn, who built us a 2 meter long, 1 meter wide, chicken tractor. Over a few months we decided it was far too heavy, particularly after we widened it, doubling it in size, so in January when we built a real coop for them we tacked that on as lovely screened in run for them. Just before building this coop, Herminia took back two of her chickens, as we had always arranged that we were simply looking after those two for her, then went to market and got three more little chickens who now sort of run in their own pack together apart from the other four. Apparently you’re supposed to always sneak them into the coop in the middle of the night so when they all wake up together they integrate the new comers into the flock. We had many weeks of dealing with peck wounds on the little ones from the elders.
Part of the decision to finally get chickens had to do with a desire to start farming cuy (guinea pigs), which are big money in the markets down in Huaraz. The plan was to get chickens to till the gardens in the long awaited large in-ground greenhouse, then move them off to finally complete the greenhouse and plant alfalfa to feed to the cuy when they sprout two months later. We never followed through on the cuy plan, but we did follow through on the greenhouse when two Coloradan volunteers showed up, Dusty & Claire. Within a month, we had heavy posts in the ground, cross beams wired in, and was planted by the end of November. Now we have some beautiful strawberries that are about ready to eat, beans climbing half way to the roof, corn stalks behind them, and radishes that we harvest for salads about every other week now.
In our Superadobe Dome, which was finished last August in the Living-Change program, we built up some stone garden beds with a bench and planted it by October. We tried an experiment with hanging tomatoes, and it wasn’t necessarily a success, but we are still excited about the one tomato it has produced as it’s turned a brilliant red in the past week. Some of our other tomato plants in the beds have also turned out two more nice red tomatoes. A work in progress.
Such are the activities going on at The Hof these days, Ka’Way Monti’s non-profit hostel. The Hof is our financial arm to the NGO, and all profits go toward projects either here on the grounds or with the schools down in Llupa.
