A day on the farm

I know the loyal blog readership is dying to know what a typical day on Marcio's vegetable farm is like. 

5:30 a.m.: Marcio wakes up and checks the thermometer he keeps outside the front door. He makes a note of how cold it is so he can tell everyone else in the family how cold it was when he woke up.

5:45 a.m.: Marcio prepares and drinks his morning coffee, which he accompanies with some treats he bought from Bem-vindo at the previous market day. For those that did not finish reading the previous post, Bem-vindo is the name of the candymaker who sells next to Marcio at the market. His name also means "welcome' in Portuguese. After every meal, we would eat some Bem-vindos, which are always bem-vindos.

My host mom works for a mining company in the next town over. She leaves for work at this time.

6:00 a.m.: Marcio would feed the chickens and start on the day's harvest.

6:15 a.m.: I wake up, drink some coffee, enjoy some Bem-vindos, and eat a banana. It is not very common for people in Brazil to eat fruit with breakfast. They think I'm nuts for how much fruit I consume, which is pretty much what everybody else thinks about how much fruit I consume.

6:30 a.m.: I head out to the fields, where Marcio greets me with a "good afternoon" and tells me that it was 4 degrees Celsius when he woke up.  Then he'll tell me how many vegetables we need to harvest in the morning. Greens are measured and sold in dozens of bunches. A "bunch" is not the most scientific term of measurement. My measuring stick for a "bunch" is that I can almost wrap my hand around all the stalks when they are pushed together.

Most days, we will have to harvest about 30 dozen bunches of mustard, two dozen bunches of arugula, six bunches of collard greens, and 12 dozen heads of lettuce.

7:00 a.m.: Marcio's neighbor, and assistant on the farm, shows up. When this community formed as a result of agrarian reform, all the settlers received equal amounts of land. Marcio's neighbor has the same amount of land as Marcio but plants cassava, small amounts of other vegetables, and has a bunch of chickens. He never developed the same business opportunities that Marcio did and has a reputation in the community for being an alcoholic.

7:30 a.m.: At this time, Marcio will probably point out that he has gathered many more dozen mustard bunches than I have. To which I respond that he has been doing this for thirty years, and I have been at it for a week. He once saw me typing and was amazed at how quickly I was doing it. I said that it would be the same thing if he tried to write something on the computer.

8:30 a.m.: I was once told that you know you are getting a foreign language down when you start dreaming in that language. What does it mean when you start dreaming about mustard greens? Marcio told me that the mustard greens that I harvest in my sleep don't count toward the daily quota.

9:30 a.m.: At this point, the neighbor will start to collect all the bunches of mustard we had already gathered as we get close to our daily quota. He gets crates from the washing station at the bottom of the hill and fills each crate with four dozen bunches of mustard.

10:00 a.m.: At this point, I will carry the crates of mustard down to the washing station, immerse them in the water, and prepare them to be transported.

10:30 a.m.: Now is time to harvest arugula, which is a much slower process than mustard. It's a bit more tedious, and I'm still getting the hang of it. I show Marcio the bunch of arugula that I was working on. He looks at it and tells me that we should be harvesting arugula and not weeds.

11:00 a.m.: We stop work for the morning and head back to the house to prepare lunch. We have to prepare lunch, eat it, and get my host sister to the school bus by 12:00. If she misses the bus, Marcio has to drive her 15 minutes to school. She hates missing the bus just as much as Marcio does.

11:20 a.m.: Start cooking the rice and reheating the beans. I go out to the farm to pick some greens and lemons for salad.

11:40 a.m.: My host sister reminds Marcio that he has 20 minutes until the bus passes.

11:42 a.m.: My host sister reminds Marcio that he has 18 minutes until the bus passes.

11:44 a.m.: My host sister reminds Marcio that he has 16 minutes until the bus passes.

11:45 a.m.: Start eating lunch.

11:47 a.m.: My host sister reminds Marcio that he has 13 minutes until the bus passes.

11:53 a.m.: Finish eating lunch.

11:55 a.m.: Marcio and my host sister get in the pick-up truck to get to the bus stop just before the bus passes. Everyone wins. I do the dishes.

12:10 a.m. I enjoy a few minutes on the hammock with a book.

12:15 p.m.: One of my host brothers comes home from school, looks at what was made for lunch, and decides to eat something else, leaving all the food on the table.

12:30 p.m.: After my host brother finishes lunch, I help him peel and wash cassava to sell at market. This is one skill that I developed in Ecaudor. With a good knife, I can keep up with the Brazilians.

1:30 p.m.: After finishing with the cassava, I help Marcio harvest lettuce. He says it's important to make a clean cut when harvesting lettuce. That way the lettuce will stay firm for longer. He doesn't let anyone else harvest his lettuce. I pick up the lettuce that he cuts and put them in crates. Once the crate if full, I carry it down to the watering station, throw some water on them, and head back up for another crate.

2:30 p.m.: Coffee break for the Brazilians. Coffee, banana, and orange break for Ian.

2:45 p.m.: Help Marcio fix a problem with his irrigation system.

3:00 p.m.: Marcio turns on the irrigation system. He can't water the entire field at once because his system doesn't have enough pressure. He can harvest one row at a time. The rows have to be switched manually. Each row should get water for about ten minutes. I spend the next hour making sure all the plants get enough water.

4:00 p.m.: Help Marcio make the final preparations to take the vegetables we harvested today to the wholesaler in the next town over.

4:45 p.m.: My host mom and host sister come home.

5:15 p.m.: I head with Marcio to the next town over to turn in the day's harvest and find out how much they want for tomorrow. If we get there early enough, I might be able to get to the internet cafe for 20 minutes to check email and call home.

7:00 p.m.: Get back home and start preparing something for dinner. Every night, my host mom would prepare rice and beans for dinner. I would take the opportunity to make something else for them. They really liked roasted potatoes.

7:45 p.m.: Finish dinner and dishes. Sit down with the family to watch soap operas, which I can take for about 20 minutes before heading to my room to read. As soon as the "Danza Kuduro" song comes on for Avenida Brasil, I take that as my cue to go to sleep.