lunes, 3 de diciembre de 2007
viernes, 26 de octubre de 2007
citruses and scientific method
So I woke up feeling even sicker today, and now I cannot sleep. I´m still not quite there at the ultimate point of illness, although I had a vicious migraine all during the afternoon, and cold spells. The morning began pretty well: I successfully launched a family debate the night before about the citrus in the Garden, which prompted a tour from Flor and William this morning. I had no idea we have so many varieties of citrus! Limón dulce ...Limones criollos ...Limón mandarina ...Mandarina ...Limón persa ...Naranja Washingtón ...Naranja piña ...Naranja valencia ...Naranja malageña ...Naranja agria ...Grapefruit. I have come to an important realization: there are times when scientific and local knowledge do not fit into each others´ boxes, nor should they. For all these different citruses, it would be better to make tags for them simply with the names and appearances comparatively, instead of tracking down the scientific genus-species name. The latter might be impossible, as well as un-useful to my family and to visitors.
I finally got to see the piglets today. There are 12 of them - 7 hembra y 5 macho, William told me. There will be another birthing within the next few days. I want to see it. William let me hold one of the piglets - I nearly melted. S/he had soft white hairs all over her body and was very warm. She struggled a little, like a cat would, and William laughed and put her back in the pen. They have a corner to themselves, the piglets, that is kept exceptionally dry and with a heat lamp. William told me that if the piglets get cold or have to sleep in the rest of the pen (which, even though William cleans it daily, is always sodden with urine) then they will get sick and die. About a week ago the pregnant sow bit one of the smaller pigs - now I know the meaning of ¨bleeding like a stuck pig¨. The poor creature was squealing and walking about and smearing blood all over the pen. The other pig was nuzzling against it and doing a good job of helping the spread. I think my mouth was slightly agog as I watched.
I asked William how old the two smaller pigs are ...I asked years just to be polite. William calculated a bit and judged them to be 3-1/2 months old. He said that they would live to be 5 months old - on Christmas one will be for William´s father and the other will be for us. He also said that the piglets will be sold once they are ...I´m not remembering, but I think it was 10 days old or something like that. Or maybe that´s when we´ll be cutting the tails off. So I have a little more time to enjoy the feeling of their soft, warm skin.
We left them and took the oveja and her baby out to pasture. The ovejito still sounds musical when it bleats. Magical. We took the goat out too, then the ovejo. He made like an escape artist and squeezed through the bars of his own cage, before William even had time to open the gate. He got stuck halfway through, and after a bit of wrestling William got him all the way out. He has the gnarliest bleat! I swear, he sounds like he just woke up and is trying to hack a loogie when he bleats. I couldn´t stop laughing; William looked amused.
Julí and I weeded the boarded beds a bit - a few culantro seedlings are coming up. They have long cotyledons - very distinct from the various species of the monte. Julí was pulling out hers by hand, but I got tired of it; the monte is ini seedling stage too, and it feels roughly like trying to pull out every hair of a man´s stubbly beard. The machete wasn´t around initially, so I used the broken head of a shovel to ¨shave¨ the earth. There was also raking to do - the bed next door had nothing growing in it but monte, so William had me knock back the weeds and smoothe the bed out. Very therapeutic.
William had some chile seeds to start in a tray (bandillo) and we sowed chile dulce, chile campana, and 2 species of chiles ornamentales directly from the fruit of the plants. The soil was very clayey, even though it was mixed with (or made from?) some type of manure. Initially I didn´t put enough in the tray and so went back for more, which made the process take even longer. Afterwards I changed into clean clothes and swept the house.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening finishing signs: jengibre, canela, granadilla, and carambola. I am still working on the latter two. I also finished the list of plants from the February inventory, complete with family and scientific names, and gave it to Julieta. I might wind up doing the inventory with William instead, or maybe make it a family outing.
My friends are going to Puerto Jiménez tomorrow, and I wish I could go. I asked Sara to pick up about ten postcards for me, so I can mail them to a few more friends. We´re having a party for bisabuelo (Flor´s father, I think) on Sunday, and so I have to be home this weekend. Maybe I will watch El Señor de los Anillos with Didier.
I finally got to see the piglets today. There are 12 of them - 7 hembra y 5 macho, William told me. There will be another birthing within the next few days. I want to see it. William let me hold one of the piglets - I nearly melted. S/he had soft white hairs all over her body and was very warm. She struggled a little, like a cat would, and William laughed and put her back in the pen. They have a corner to themselves, the piglets, that is kept exceptionally dry and with a heat lamp. William told me that if the piglets get cold or have to sleep in the rest of the pen (which, even though William cleans it daily, is always sodden with urine) then they will get sick and die. About a week ago the pregnant sow bit one of the smaller pigs - now I know the meaning of ¨bleeding like a stuck pig¨. The poor creature was squealing and walking about and smearing blood all over the pen. The other pig was nuzzling against it and doing a good job of helping the spread. I think my mouth was slightly agog as I watched.
I asked William how old the two smaller pigs are ...I asked years just to be polite. William calculated a bit and judged them to be 3-1/2 months old. He said that they would live to be 5 months old - on Christmas one will be for William´s father and the other will be for us. He also said that the piglets will be sold once they are ...I´m not remembering, but I think it was 10 days old or something like that. Or maybe that´s when we´ll be cutting the tails off. So I have a little more time to enjoy the feeling of their soft, warm skin.
We left them and took the oveja and her baby out to pasture. The ovejito still sounds musical when it bleats. Magical. We took the goat out too, then the ovejo. He made like an escape artist and squeezed through the bars of his own cage, before William even had time to open the gate. He got stuck halfway through, and after a bit of wrestling William got him all the way out. He has the gnarliest bleat! I swear, he sounds like he just woke up and is trying to hack a loogie when he bleats. I couldn´t stop laughing; William looked amused.
Julí and I weeded the boarded beds a bit - a few culantro seedlings are coming up. They have long cotyledons - very distinct from the various species of the monte. Julí was pulling out hers by hand, but I got tired of it; the monte is ini seedling stage too, and it feels roughly like trying to pull out every hair of a man´s stubbly beard. The machete wasn´t around initially, so I used the broken head of a shovel to ¨shave¨ the earth. There was also raking to do - the bed next door had nothing growing in it but monte, so William had me knock back the weeds and smoothe the bed out. Very therapeutic.
William had some chile seeds to start in a tray (bandillo) and we sowed chile dulce, chile campana, and 2 species of chiles ornamentales directly from the fruit of the plants. The soil was very clayey, even though it was mixed with (or made from?) some type of manure. Initially I didn´t put enough in the tray and so went back for more, which made the process take even longer. Afterwards I changed into clean clothes and swept the house.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening finishing signs: jengibre, canela, granadilla, and carambola. I am still working on the latter two. I also finished the list of plants from the February inventory, complete with family and scientific names, and gave it to Julieta. I might wind up doing the inventory with William instead, or maybe make it a family outing.
My friends are going to Puerto Jiménez tomorrow, and I wish I could go. I asked Sara to pick up about ten postcards for me, so I can mail them to a few more friends. We´re having a party for bisabuelo (Flor´s father, I think) on Sunday, and so I have to be home this weekend. Maybe I will watch El Señor de los Anillos with Didier.
jueves, 25 de octubre de 2007
quinta cosecha
Amanda and I arrived in the rain at don William Valverde´s (aka Pollón) cafetal and began picking. The whole family was out there - don William, his daughter (whose name I´m forgetting - Helen?) Justín, the abuelo Evelio, and the younger sister too. Only Jack and Giselle weren´t there. The rain was so intense that I was soaked within the first hour, and the mud became treacherous. Justín fell at one point; I helped him pick up his spilled cherries and then we took parallel calles - he took the high road, I took the low road. Amanda joined us, and before we knew it the harvest was over. I had only picked half a canasto and was sorely disappointed. The harvest was only 2 hours long, and we were very proud of ourselves.
I spent the rest of the afternoon in and out of the cooperative and at home, trying to draw more plants. I decided to rewrite the inventory of the garden on a separate paper, so that when we do the next one we can mark which ones died off and which ones have prospered. I am including the family and scientific names as well as the English and Spanish ones. I have noticed that there are not so many ornamental plants on the list, yet there are tons out in the garden. Also, not all species had numbers of counted individuals - maybe they ran out of time. It was February 27th earlier this year when the inventory was done - the summertime here. I wonder what effects the rains have had on the productivity and reproduction of the species. Neverminding the speculations, I made great guns of headway on recreating the list, enough to know that the trouble will be actually doing the inventory (censo) itself.
While at the cooperative I did some research on some of the names that were cropping up. The citrus is more complication than I thought: I had previously assumed that all the citruses were lemons, because of their colors and shapes. But I learned, for example, that there is an entry on Wikipedia for Sweet Lime (C. limetta), whereas the Limón Dulce we have is a very yellow fruit. I wonder if they´re one and the same? There is also an entry on Mandarin Lime (C. limonia), and we have a fruit called Limón Mandarín... Limón Persa, and an entry for Persian Lime (C. latifolia)... Yellow limes? Or at least, limes that weren´t a complete shade of green, that didn´t have an ovular shape with a little point on the very bottom? This research rasied more questions than answers, and I decided to have a talk with my family when I got home...
My family got into a huge debate about citruses. Flor did something I will never forget; she took me outside and pulled three citruses out of the box in the dark and, while doing so, explained to me each variety. In fact, she started with the limón dulce, knowing that there was only one left in the box. I was impressed. My mind flashed back to the example at the front of Ernesto´s and Chris´s paper on Participatory Action Research (Chris Bacon and Ernesto Méndez? Cris Miranda and Ernesto Pepito? Is there an echo in here?) - the example was about a farmer who meets a researcher, and the researcher attempts to tell her information she already knows using high-tech equipment, and tells her falsely this so-called information. I am wondering where to draw the line in how far I go with what I ¨know¨ about Ethnobotany. I find myself looking up a lot of the plants in the books, which pleases my family. They read what is in the books as well - but I begin to wonder, and I have asked before, what they want of my signs, my project. They seem impressed by the beauty of the signs, but I wonder if there is something more they may want.
Still working on that list of plants from the last inventory...
Til then,
Yvea
I spent the rest of the afternoon in and out of the cooperative and at home, trying to draw more plants. I decided to rewrite the inventory of the garden on a separate paper, so that when we do the next one we can mark which ones died off and which ones have prospered. I am including the family and scientific names as well as the English and Spanish ones. I have noticed that there are not so many ornamental plants on the list, yet there are tons out in the garden. Also, not all species had numbers of counted individuals - maybe they ran out of time. It was February 27th earlier this year when the inventory was done - the summertime here. I wonder what effects the rains have had on the productivity and reproduction of the species. Neverminding the speculations, I made great guns of headway on recreating the list, enough to know that the trouble will be actually doing the inventory (censo) itself.
While at the cooperative I did some research on some of the names that were cropping up. The citrus is more complication than I thought: I had previously assumed that all the citruses were lemons, because of their colors and shapes. But I learned, for example, that there is an entry on Wikipedia for Sweet Lime (C. limetta), whereas the Limón Dulce we have is a very yellow fruit. I wonder if they´re one and the same? There is also an entry on Mandarin Lime (C. limonia), and we have a fruit called Limón Mandarín... Limón Persa, and an entry for Persian Lime (C. latifolia)... Yellow limes? Or at least, limes that weren´t a complete shade of green, that didn´t have an ovular shape with a little point on the very bottom? This research rasied more questions than answers, and I decided to have a talk with my family when I got home...
My family got into a huge debate about citruses. Flor did something I will never forget; she took me outside and pulled three citruses out of the box in the dark and, while doing so, explained to me each variety. In fact, she started with the limón dulce, knowing that there was only one left in the box. I was impressed. My mind flashed back to the example at the front of Ernesto´s and Chris´s paper on Participatory Action Research (Chris Bacon and Ernesto Méndez? Cris Miranda and Ernesto Pepito? Is there an echo in here?) - the example was about a farmer who meets a researcher, and the researcher attempts to tell her information she already knows using high-tech equipment, and tells her falsely this so-called information. I am wondering where to draw the line in how far I go with what I ¨know¨ about Ethnobotany. I find myself looking up a lot of the plants in the books, which pleases my family. They read what is in the books as well - but I begin to wonder, and I have asked before, what they want of my signs, my project. They seem impressed by the beauty of the signs, but I wonder if there is something more they may want.
Still working on that list of plants from the last inventory...
Til then,
Yvea
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