You ever tried farming...

July 28^th

Today was the first day on the farm, and in some senses it feels like the first day of a another life. I spent the last month carousing around Rio de Janeiro with a rotating cast of fellow partyers and substances, drinking my fill, dancing till exhaustion, flirting with women, laughing a hell of a lot, and comparing sunrises to the ones that had come before. It was awesome, and fun, and hedonistic to the max, but also draining on the body, mind, and soul. I do not regret my actions during that month, but on more than one occasion I awoke in the afternoon with a killer hangover and different versions of the same question darkening my brain: Is this what I am here for? Is there not something more than unbridled fun, free of consequences and obligations? Is there not a more noble cause that I could dedicate my energy and mental abilities towards?

So I decided to come and live at Sinal do Valle for a month, to wake up early and work with my hands and practice the language native to the 200 million people who call Brazil home. And also, to keep this journal in order to document my thoughts and feelings and actions during this time, and see if this lifestyle meshes with my inner being, or if I should just return to the search for the next great party, because at least I know I will be happy there.

I did wake up at 6:30 am today, a time I’m used to going to bed at, and though my mind was fogged over and my body sluggish, it felt good knowing that alcohol had no part in this. After a surprisingly good breakfast of pancakes and granola, washed down with hot coffee, I was taken on a tour of the farm by the resident volunteer director, Mike, an Irish-American who used to call California home with thick brown hair and a beard to match. He showed me the terraces he had hacked out of the jungle, now growing sweet potatoes and beans, and the kale and carrots and arugula that flourished on the field above.  Throughout the tour, he spoke about the farm with gusto, firing words out of his fat brown beard at a pace that emphasized his Irish roots. After we had made the rounds, he handed me a pair of scissors and asked me if I knew how to prune tomatoes. I stammered, and he smiled and gave me a crash course on the finer aspects of tomato pruning, after which I set to work.

Three hours rolled by in which I was devoted to the tomato plants’ health, feeling along the stalk for pesky suckers and removing them, carefully winding the string about their leaves so they stand upright, and ensuring each had its own space and sunlight. The sun beat down on my back, sweat dropped down into the earth, feelings evaporated into the air, and thoughts scampered from my mind as my whole being focused on the health of the fragrant plants entrusted to me. When the lunch bell rang, my hands were filthy and my eyes stung from sweat, but my mind was calm, and my self, content.

Two people live at the farm full time, Mike, and Ryan, a Canadian from Vancouver. Both have thickets for beards and the tanned weathered faces that come from working outside every day. They have also each lived on the farm for about two years, semi-legally, and possess a passion for what they do. A Brazilian couple, Felipe and Tula, live about ten minutes away and come to the farm everyday to work along with three to four local Brazilians, but they mostly manage the animals and maintenance of the grounds, while us gringos do the farm work, so we did not interact too much outside of the grand communal lunch we all share in at noon.

Lunch is the most important meal of the day to Brazilians, and there are a couple rules that must be followed for it to be considered a proper lunch. First, there has to be rice and beans, and second there has to be plenty of rice and beans. Usually, the rice and beans are accompanied by meat, but as the people at the farm mostly adhere to vegetarianism we make do with some vegetables harvested that week. Third, the meal must be hot, and you should have a sugary drink to wash it down with, whether that be juice or soda. And finally, everyone gets a break after eating so they can digest the massive amounts of rice and beans they’ve consumed. Some take a nap and others drink coffee, but no one works in the hour or so after lunching, which happens to coincide with the hottest part of the day.

Sinal supplements its labor supply with volunteers like me who come to work on the farm in exchange for free room and board. Usually, there are anywhere from three to ten volunteers working and living there, but for some reason I am the only volunteer here at the moment. An American couple was supposed to come yesterday, but apparently they got off at the wrong stop, wandered around a random town for a bit, and then headed back to Rio. Mike promptly dis-invited them, claiming that he doesn’t want people who cannot follow simple directions working here anyways. This statement boosted my self-esteem, as I was quite able of directing myself off the bus, through the town and up the hill to my current location. Then again, there is only one road into the hills from the valley floor so perhaps I shouldn’t be too proud. Anyways, I will go to bed now, in the casa da banana that has the ability to host four other volunteers, but for now only holds one. I can’t say I’ve ever had a house all to my own before, and I must admit the feeling is quite nice. Perhaps the American dream of a house in the suburbs and a lawn to call your own has some real merit to it after all.

 The Casa da Banana - my home for a month.

 The tomatoes

July 30^th

Sinal do Valle started its existence as a coffee plantation run by slaves, then became a mountain retreat for the rich, and now has entered its current stage as an organic farm, company retreat, and environmental education center for the children of Santo Antonio, the town nestled in the river valley below. Sinal is a sprawling well-kept complex of six airy colonial style buildings, raised vegetable beds, and manicured lawns all set amidst a verdant landscape of massive fruit trees and rolling green hills. Cows and horses graze on the hillsides above the farm and a capybara splashes in the small lakes below.

View from the Casa da Papaya

Santo Antonio, a 45 minute walk down the dirt road, is a sleepy town with one way in and a hidden secret. The majority of the residents are Evangelical Christians, and a sizeable amount are also retired police officers. This is a potent mix, especially if you’re into drug dealing, an activity these Christian soldiers do not look kindly upon. So when a cohort of drug dealers, recently kicked out of Rio, tried to infiltrate Santo Antonio the residents of the town took up arms and gunned them down. Of the fifteen dealers only two survived, and the pictures of their swollen and defeated faces were proudly showcased on social media. And so with a heavy heart, I’ve decided to abandon my plans of dealing drugs while I live here.

August 1^st

The first day of August, the schizophrenic month that simultaneously drags on in wilting humidity and flashes by in the wink of an eye, as we wonder where the summer went from post-labor day offices and classrooms. In southern Brazil, August is technically winter, but for most that winter simply means there are less beach days than usual.  It’s certainly hot here in Rio de Janeiro State, and I have done my fair share of sweating over the last week in labor very different from the kind expected in office and classrooms. Sinal do valle has many projects and jobs, from turning compost to harvesting fruit to milking the cows, but the work I am most interested in, and that I have been doing involves permaculture and re-forestation.

Permaculture is the idea that you create a symbiotic ecosystem of food producing plants and organisms. They naturally support each other so that the farmer doesn’t have to expend energy in maintaining their health, or use chemical products to ensure that health. Since the organic farmer does not use pesticides or unnatural fertilizers, which make farming a hell of a lot easier, he or she must work harder to get the same yields that a non-organic farmer would. So, a basic tenet of organic farming is to implement tricks and practices that reduce the workload and also improve the health of the plants. A very basic example is raised beds for vegetable gardens, as they reduce weeds and retain water while also giving the farmer a nice avenue from which to care for and harvest the plants.

Permaculture takes this to the next level, as its end goal is a self-sustaining ecosystem that requires minimal work and produces food year after year, permanently. One way to do this is to create a food forest, where the top layer of vegetation is fruit trees whose trunks have berry vines snaking up them and that provide shade to another layer of vegetables like lettuce or beans whose roots are supported by tubers such as potatoes or carrots. A “farmer” could then stroll through the forest and pick food as it ripens. Once the ground cover is all taken, a new and different species is planted so the soil doesn’t get exhausted and the consumer tired of eating same old thing. That’s the idea at least. This of course takes years to come to fruition, as trees grow pretty slow, but people on farms tend to have a longer-term view of the future than the rest of us.

Here at Sinal Ryan had the idea of combining permaculture with reforestation, which is the replanting of trees and plants native to the area. Since those trees have evolved to thrive in this climate, it seemed logical to use them for the food forest to promote soil health and water retention. What all of this boils down to is that for the past week I’ve been traipsing through the forest collecting seeds and saplings of native trees, then transplanting them to an abandoned cow pasture and planting them alongside bananas and avocados and manioc and pineapples. And though I was sweating like a pig and sucking water like a fish the whole time, the effort expended barely felt like work at all. Hopefully, one day five or ten years from now I can return to this place and walk through a forest, eating avocados and bananas along the way.

August 7th

One negative thing about life at Sinal, besides the lack of meat, are the cats. There are somewhere between 20 and 30 cats here roaming the farm, shrieking at the moon when horny, and shitting in the garden. Originally there was one, Granny, but she got knocked up several times and even though she is now spayed, she still goes into heat and lets any old tom mount her. And so her kittens had kittens and those kittens attracted strays and now we are overrun because the owner of the farm has a soft spot for animals and Zeus-Se, a toothless old worker with a heart of gold feeds them all regardless of their living situation or social class. He’s a true socialist.

Now don’t get me wrong I have nothing against cats, I’m even fond of some like Fatty and Fluffy and Granny and Favorite Cat, but you have to be a bit unhinged to tolerate 20 cats running around. Before we become overrun by felines Ryan decided to take action and has commenced Project Laser-Hawk, a daring operation to rid the farm of the scourge of stray cats once and for all. All activities must be carried out at night and kept secret from the cat-lovers, as we don’t think it would fly with them. He chose the code-name Laser-Hawk so we can discuss it openly amongst civilians, and because it sounds really cool.

We devised a complicated system to trap the stray cats that involves a bowl of food, a stick with a long string attached to it, and an empty crate. If you’ve seen old cartoons, you should get the picture. Last night I sat upon our balcony with a book in one hand and the string in the other, waiting for one of the cats we don’t like to take the bait. After about five minutes one of the strays cautiously slinked over and under the crate. The trick is to not yank the sting right away, but wait until the beast is completely under the crate and enjoying a free meal, its guard down. I pulled sharply and snapped the trap down upon the witless animal.  A surge of ancient cave-man adrenaline rushed through me and I yelled out “I got him!” before rushing down to examine my catch. Then we dumped him into a sack with a couple of heavy rocks and chucked it into the lake at the bottom of the farm. One less cat thanks to Project Laser-Hawk.

Just kidding, we drove him into town and released him there, where there are plenty of rodents and birds and trash and such for him to eat. Maybe not as easy a life as the one on the farm up in the hills, but life cant always be that good.

That white blob down there is Fatty the cat

August 14th^th

On one of my first nights here I was talking with Mike and Ryan and somehow brought up the Dutch airplane that had been shot down over Ukraine. They had no idea what I was talking about, even though the plane had crashed more than two weeks earlier. I was shocked at this, as there is Internet at Sinal, and it had been front-page news for at least a week. I must have read a dozen articles about the crash, and in fact had become somewhat obsessed with it while staying in Rio. When I explained that Russian supported rebels had probably shot down a civilian aircraft, they accepted the news, made one comment about Russians being Russians, and then got up to do the dishes. Their nonchalance confused me, yet also incited a tiny surge of envy within me.

After three weeks amidst these green hills, hiking, planting, harvesting, trapping and digging, I now think I understand how they feel. Within that time, Russia invaded Ukraine, Israel invaded Gaza, Ebola mushroomed in Western Africa, and protests pitting civilians against robo-cops erupted in the USA. I have strong feelings about all those countries, and about the people and governments involved in the incidents, yet the news did not create emotional resonance within me like I thought it should. I read all the articles, and looked at the ghastly pictures, and even watched some post-apocalyptic videos of Ferguson, but I just didn’t care as much as when I had been in Rio, or DC, or any other over-civilized part of the world.

Maybe I’m getting older and more cynical, or maybe I’ve been focusing on myself here and less on outside problems, or maybe the isolation of this place makes it hard to give a damn about things a world away, as if the lack of strange people around me has made me care less about the plight of strangers. Instead I divert my attention to the tomatoes or compost or cats or people here and their language and characteristics and issues. Or maybe I just don’t care anymore.

Whatever the case, as this tumultuous month of August has enfolded and grabbed the attention of medias and their followers all over the world, I have remained aloof. This has created vague feelings of guilt within me, but also competing, and I think prevailing, feelings of relief and freedom. Sometimes its nice to not care, but is it right? Maybe I’ll find out once I return to the land of smartphones and 24 hour news and constant updated knowledge.

August 31st

It’s now been a week since I left the farm, and yet I find myself thinking about it quite often. I really enjoyed the work, and the people, and the simple mindless pleasure of repetitive tasks building towards a tangible goal. Does this mean I am going to be a farmer? I don’t think so, but I am not as opposed to the idea as I used to be, and I definitely don’t think farming is boring as shit anymore. There is something about creating, and giving life, and taking it also, that is in our DNA, and I think it can be refreshing to get back to those roots once in a while, whether it be for a day, a month, a year, or even a lifetime. It also helps if you are farming in a tropical climate where plants grow wild and the sun shines down on you every day.

When I got back to Rio, people told me that I was different than from when I had left for the farm. And it wasn’t just the new grown beard. I remembered something Mike had said, that when I arrived I was just another lost doughy white boy, and that when I left, I was no longer that. I’m not sure what it is that I’ve become in a month on a farm, but I can say that it is most certainly an improvement.