I was glad to have access to the Mazda 2013 – that’s right,
we now have to distinguish between our two Mazdas by year because we have two
of them. I can’t believe how much we achieve and it all gets overshadowed so
quickly by the next big thing we have to do, project we have to redo, crisis we
have to solve, grant we have to win.
Right now I’m feeling insecure about my work, and a lot of pressure to
kick some major ass this week and impress Curt.
So last Saturday I took that Mazda 2013 and drove down that route
that has become so common to me, like a piece of “home” here, outside of Xela,
past the rotunda, round the corner to the Cantel and Zunil, coasting out of
those beautifully green highlands and into the tropical heat of the coast. I
played podcasts and Radiohead music and hung out with this crazy head of mine
and all of its thoughts. Oh how I love the solitude, whether it’s with coffee
in the clouds or a cold agua pura in
the coast.
I stayed at Noes house that night, although there wasn’t
much to report. Its crazy how much slower life moves out there in the rural farmlands
of the coast. Its quiet. Its like being at grandmas house. Theres not a lot to
do but sit around, play with the kiddos, eat a little bit and swing in the
hammock before you go to bed. I wonder how different it will all be in another
generation – will these hammocks still swing or will they be replaced by
western-imported recliner chairs? Will the kiddos’ favorite satuday night game
still be scooting across the concrete floor? Will the chickens still eat the
scraps thrown out beside the pila? At
the same time that the life moves slow, the industrial evolution is happening ever
so fast. The cocacola sold down the street cheaper than water, the television
blaring Toy Story 3, the neighbors that just pulled up in a 2014 Hummer. Its
like this place, and perhaps all the rural places of the world, are some giant
mixing bowl where all the great fads of the world slyly sneak their way in, for
better or for worse – what I wouldn’t give to see some raw food fad slip into
the local scene.
It doesn’t always make for a good mix - the Catholic priest
steadfastly upholding community morals on Sundays, trying to maintain attention
while a Miley Cyrus concert blares on the television at the tienda next door. We have passed the
point of return – there is no preserving that ideal bucolic life in some static
vacuum. I believe that. Change is the way of the world, and the best we can do
is vow to aid and abet in making the most peaceful, just and environmentally
sound new mix of rural life.
Noe Estrada is one of the best smallholder farmers I have
ever met. An orphan of sorts, raised by
grandparents and earning his first quetzales
working long hours on a foreign-owned plantation. Noe stuffed those $2/day
earnings deep into his teenage pockets until he had enough to buy a piece of
land for himself, the parcel he currently calls home with his wife and three
daughters.
But this is no typical 18 acre plot suffering the ails of chemically-drowned,
monoculture corn farming. Noe grows corn, sesame, Chaya, avocado, limes, a
variety of local herbs and even sweet potato. And unlike the rest of the
farmers on the block, Noe is not subject to the cruel limitations of the once-a-year
market run by coyotes (middlemen) who
pay – if you’re lucky – $0.12/pound of corn.
Noé kept stuffing those few quetzales
in his pocket, saving enough over the years to build himself an irrigation system.
He plants a new corn crop every two weeks, allowing him to collect a continual corn
harvest throughout the year and enjoy a hefty price increase for his corn in
the dry season. And when the coyotes still
refuse to offer a good price, Noe uses his corn harvest to make elote, a local favorite sold to his
neighbors throughout the year.
“Why limit yourself to such a fluctuating, unproductive
crop?” Noe tells me, speaking of the tradition of monoculture corn across the
region. “Diversify, that’s what I tell my neighbors.” Enter the most beautiful,
perhaps smallest and most productive part of Mother Earth’s great ecosystem:
honeybees. While beekeeping and honey
production may be one of the most lucrative options for smallholder farmers in
the region – few inputs required, low labor costs, low competition – most
farmer won’t give it a shot for fear of the infamous behavior of the bees,
explains Noe.
Noe was not scared. Working on a sesame harvest one year for
some extra cash, he met a fellow farmer and friend who was raising bees. “I’ll
give you one box, with ten panales
and a Queen. Just try it.” his friend said. That one box turned into two, and
the next year two boxes will turned into four, and soon Noe had his own little
colony of honebees. Today, Noe has three different forested areas where he
keeps colonies of bees, a total of about 150 boxes full of queens and worker
bees working ceaselessly, producing a sweet, simple, healthy and pure product
that he can sell locally to his neighbors and for export – literally tripling
his annual income.
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