The Month of Rain

The month of rain in November wreaked havoc with the mountain road and increased my drive time by 20 minutes on what was a 40 minute commute. Friday’s trip to the farm from Cabarete started as many of the trips do. First I stopped to see my local mechanic to tighten a couple of hard to reach bolts under the hood. On the way up the mountain road I was thinking about Adolfo one of our community partners. I was thinking about the beginning of last March when Adolfo took our two female pigs over to a neighbor’s farm to be inseminated. He was tireless in his struggle to walk them like dogs. The pigs were having non of it. It was two steps forward and three back, often. The baby pigs after birth were weaned and then fed a mix of corn meal and a berry from our palm trees. The berry’s are harvested with a knife attached to a 50 foot piece of bamboo. We have hundreds of palm trees on the property and its wonderful to supplement the commercial feed with what’s already growing on the farm. I was on my way Friday to harvest two of the twenty that were born roughly 120 days after that trip to the neighbors. There was a box of silicone ear plugs vibrating on the passenger seat next to me as the asphalt turned to dirt and gravel. I had made the decision to do the job myself out of respect for the animals and all that is involved in the process of farming. I was hoping for a steady hand and good direction from Adolfo. I arrived at2pm which gave me an hour to sharpen my machete and trim some dead leaves from the platanos near the cook shed while Adolfo started a fire and boiled 3 gallons of water. At 3pm Adolfo said we were ready and we walked back to the pen and selected two of the largest to feed the 25 people anticipated for Saturdays gathering. The smell of wood smoke filled the air from the cookhouse window. Silicone ear plugs in place and with Adolfo’s direction I inserted the knife he gave me between the two front legs directly into the heart of each. All my senses were engaged. Afterwards we both knelt down and took a moment to give thanks and to acknowledge each other’s role on the farm and how grateful we are to work as a team. 

I then walked back up the hill to the micro house and gave lot’s of thought to the process. Like clockwork the bats arrived at dusk by the dozens to devour the mosquitos, and then the fire flies by the hundreds arrived as the light evaporated, to dart in an out of the Guandule (pigeon peas) forest we planted last year. I sat by a fire alone under a ¾ moon for an hour or two and then turned in. On Saturday morning I woke at sunrise and walked out onto the deck. 400 yards away smoke was rising 100 feet in the air from the Cookhouse and mixing with the morning mist.