ecuador may 22nd and 23rd

Wednesday May 22nd

Woke up early and worked with the cows again. They were all in thier plces so it made things really easy! I had to go collect the grass i talked about earlier for the cows this morning. Man i didn´t realize how heavy it was! and sharp!! It rained lastnight all night so the roads were really muddy and washed up making it difficult to carry the leaves the distance i did. But im a lot stronger now ;) It was an adventure!

More class after breakfast. Our main focus today was composting which was super interesting and relevant to bringing back home. We talked abuot invisible urban composting anmd the two methods of that: hole and trench. When i get home im looking forward to trying our the hole composting. I believe it will work really well at my house! ç
Once agian today was cultural day. We took a little hike to a HUGE tree that has been taken over by parasite. It was trully amazing. Apparently the local people look up to the tree because it is able to survive and create beauty with the parasite. Later we made rings out of old nuts from a native tree the practially has no use. Nicola and Dario believe that everything has a use and this tree is continully beingh cut down for because many believe it does not. So they have come up with a way to make it useful. and not to mention provide great gifts made by myself to bring back home!

May 23rd
 Cleaned more stales this morning. Dirty work, but it´s worth it. Clean, happy animals = healthy animals ;)
After breakfast was another class in permaculture. We leanred more about compost. Primiarly hot and cold composting. We then went to the garden and made our own hot compost pile. We used dryleaves, green leaves, manure, little bit of soil, and lots of water to complete the pile. Its about 4 ft tall now but when fginished composting  in 3 weeks it will shrink down to about a foot. It was so easy to do this! i know i can do it back at home for sure. Hot compost has to be made all at one time and it´ll have to be at a much smaller scale with less compost remaing but hey! i can use it on my house plants :) We also talked about 15 day composting and bokashi. We took a more in depth tour of the farm as well. looking at all the random things around the farm. It was all so interesting. We discused the solar and biomass systems the farm uses as well. The solar system here at the farm was actually donated by a company from Colorado! So cool! along the tour nicola introuduced us to a dye that natives use to paint themselves and dye thier hair. Im the only one with blonde hair on the farm so i was voted to use it to dye the tips of my hair orange. Its really cool haha!  today was a great day full of information, applied application and fun!