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