Guinea Pig Piss Sells at $2.00/liter

On Friday, we visited an integrated farm near Tabacundo (twenty minutes from Cayambe). Everybody was really excited because it was our first day of real technical trainings. This man, Edwin, owns 2.5 hectares of land (that’s a little more than an acre) and had created a completely sustainable, organic farm. He is a great guy and is always looking for possible solutions and ways to improve his farm. For example, strawberries take up a lot of space on a farm. Because he has such limited space to work with, he is trying to grow them vertically.

Enough with this shmaltzy intro about the farm, let’s get to what I actually learned.

In the morning, we had three sessions that were led by current PCVs (Peace Corps volunteers) and trainers. Our first station was organic fertilizer. We discussed four types of fertilizing styles—compost, manure tea, boil, and bokachi—and broke down the pros and cons of each. Then we talked about what nutrients you need for a good compost: a good balance of nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous. For example, some good natural sources of nitrogen would be greens (chlorophyll is almost pure nitrogen, and if your plants are turning yellow, it might mean they have a nitrogen deficiency), legumes (I don’t think Ashkenazim have to clean the legumes out of their compost before Pesach, but I would ask a higher authority on this one. Actually, putting the legumes in compost would be a great way to clean the legumes out of your house before Passover), IMO, and manure.

The highlight of this session, for me, was using a machete for the first time in my life. I used it to cut a block of brown sugar.

Our next session was about building greenhouses. It will be very hard to remember how to build a greenhouse after a 45-minute session, but it got some of the ideas moving in my head. You use greenhouses to control moisture and temperature. This was a very technical session and would be very difficult to explain on the blog in just a few sentences, but at the end we helped Edwin build his greenhouse by using hoes (azadones) to clean the land. A lot of little worms (cusos) live in the ground. When we found them we were told to put them in a bucket so Edwin could feed them to his ducks. Well, we didn’t put all of them in the bucket.JK. They’re not kosher. But several people did eat them.

Our last session in the morning was about seedbeds. Not the most exciting to write about but if you have any seedbed questions, you can send them my way. Plus I know that you are just kicking yourself to find out why I would know the market value of guinea pig urine.

After a great lunch of homegrown veggies, we began the afternoon sessions. My group’s first stop was the guinea pig barn. If you didn’t know, guinea pig (cuy) is considered a delicacy here. Edwin can get $7.00/cuy, but people only eat them for festivals and special occasions. Traditionally, guinea pigs are kept on the ground in their cages, but this creates a lot of issues for cleaning. Plus, one of Edwin’s philosophy’s is that he wants to get multiple uses out of each component on his farm. So he devised a system in which his keeps the cuys in elevated cages. The cuy crap and piss falls beneath the cracks and he harvests it to use for his compost. He also has an intense system of breeding the cuys to make sure that only the strongest ones remain and the weak are killed and eaten (just like Vadim’s shirt says about Detroit).

Some of the local flower growers have expressed interest in using guinea pig piss as a fertilizer, but Edwin has has some issues in how to collect it (it is tough to put a catheter on the cuys). So he is working on a way to collect the piss and sell it for $2.00 a liter to the local flower growers. I forget how much he projects he can get per week, but it was pretty substantial.

After that, we had a session on pruning and clefting. Clefting is very cool because you essentially take the trunk or branch of one type of fruit and attach the branch of another. You would do this because one species of fruit might have a strong, disease-resist root system but not a great fruit product. Another species would be in the reciprocal position. So now you can get the best of both worlds. Apparently, almost all the commercial apple trees in the US have the same root system.

Then, I planted a tree. Sallah Shabati, anyone?

Our last session was on lombricultura (using worms in your compost). This is a great way to get a compost going and is very easy.

We capped the day with a ritual slaughtering of a guinea pig, per the request of one of the fellow PCTs. They pretty much just pressed the head against the ground until it stopped squeaking. Then Edwin’s wife took the hair and skin of the cuy off and prepared it to be eaten.

Overall, a great first day of technical training.