Ciesa - Huerta Organica

Ciesa ...Centre for teaching and research of sustainable agriculture (a crude way to translate it but thats about right). Actually it was more about organic farming on a mini scale....how people can feed themselves with a tiny parcel of land.

We´ve spent the last 3 months at Ciesa, during the Patagonian winter, actually the farm is located in the bottom of a valley and surrounded by peaks up to 2000m high so all the cold air accumulates in the valley. This meant that while we were there we had about 60 frosts.

Monday was harvest day and we had to wait for the crops to defrost before we could pick them.
At this time of year we were harvesting carrots, beetroot, kohlrabi, swedes, silverbeet, spinach, rocket, indian mustard, mizuna, lettuce, radishes, cabbage, kale, black cabbage, parsley, chicory, gypsy onions, leeks and radicchio.

The ranges to the east of the farm. We put a lot of sawdust on the beds in winter to protect the soil and the root crops from the frost.

Weighing the leeks on harvest day.

A workshop for the local residents. Fernando..the boss showing how to make good balanced compost - nitrogen to carbon ratios and nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium ratios.

Double digging very poor soil inside a greenhouse. Double digging is the method used for building up soils and producing a good environment for plant growth. You move the first 30cm of soil with a spade, trying not to break the soil structure too much or kill the micro-organisms that live in the top layer of soil - just shift it forward with the spade. Then you loosen another 30cm of soil with a fork and throw in some compost.

A larger fork for use inbetween double digging years - it has minimum impact in terms of soil structure damage.

fertilizing and conditioning a bed before planting

collecting sawdust for frost protection -there are lots of sawmills in this area of patagonia

Jamies prize lettuce - the boss nipped in and ate it before Jamie got to it!!

Seed raising boxes - these help elongate the planting season because you can put them inside to germinate and therefore leave more room in the garden beds for crops. They also don´t waste as many seeds because you only plant as many as you plan for.

Windstorms seem to follow us around - this happened on a Friday night, we spent the Saturday and Sunday sewing it back up with bailing twine! Worked a treat

Me cleaning asparagos seeds - we did this in the mornings waiting for the ground to defrost.

Nico planting seeds in July to transplant into the garden September.

Walks during siesta

Jamie relaxing by the Russian stove - this was on 24/7 and was fantastic, but I´d hate to think what the gas bill would be if it was in NZ -the Government subsidises the gas in this part of Argentina.

Hiking up to the local high point - Piltriquitron

Tedo (Plover) Arrived at the start of August and created a racket for the next 2 weeks until he got lucky and found a girl. Then they both made a racket together and for all I know they are still there.... making a racket. Seemed to like the strawberry bed the best.

You can almost imagine here how much noise they can make....

,nother little bird, liked it when we found worms for him

why?

birdy at the refuge that sold great homemade beer

Like a woodpecker, searches for his food in tree trunks like an anteater would.

Compacting plastic that you can´t recycle into plastic bottles. The people around here use them as bricks when they construct their houses - its a basic solution to stopping plastic ending up in a landfill or even worse in the ocean.

Funky little cottage that the permaculture folks built at their centre for Permaculture don´t you know. Made from mud, stones, glass bottles, tyres and wood.

'I believe that the system will collapse and so I have made pacts with organic gardening friends to form peaceful sustainable guerrilla groups in Northern Canada.' Random participant, CIDEP course

The witches and their knitting circle

Ciesa during a spectacular sunset.

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Las Golondrinas

`Let’s get out for a walk.’

`Alright.´

Six thirty in the evening, and Katie and I step out and take a break. We’re already dressed for it, trousers and boots dark with sodden dirt from our day in the huerta (vege garden). We leave Cata watching a DVD in her room, Nico has already left for his teaching job in Maiten. Kutral the tabby cat sprints along beside us on the driveway, races up the trunk of a poplar tree, and watches as we abandon her to her game.

The air is fresh and clear, almost shocking to breathe in. The sun has set after an unobstructed day in the sky. There have been 4 frosts already this week, and another is on the way. Hands in pockets.

We duck through the rails of the gate and start right, onto the ripio (gravel road) that aims for the white mass of Cerro Piltriqitron, patron mountain of El Bolsòn and the dominant figure on the landscape here in Las Golindrinas. Sunny days have stripped away much of the snow from her lower slopes, and she stands almost embarrassed, not completely dressed for winter. The final beams of sunlight fire above us to light up the multiple pointed summits in yellow, the sky a celeste blue canvas.

Closer at hand, a dog has been into somebody’s rubbish, and had a marvellous time. We look over the torn wrappers and plastic bags decorating the roadside verge, and into the tan stubble of a wheat field. A group of bandurrias, or black-faced ibis, feed on the grassy margins. Bright red legs and long beaks project from their round, grey, bodies. During the day they often fly slowly over our garden, with a long, demanding, goose-like call.

On past a neighbours house, where a heavy St Bernard barks her alert, straining at the chain she seems to be attached to twenty-four hours a day. Weeks earlier, after heavy rains, I had seen her small shelter stranded above flowing surface waters, an island she loudly continued to defend. The lights were on in her owners’ house, thirty metres away, the curtains drawn.

We move aside as a hefty Ford pickup bounces past, waving hand and quick smile coming from the driver. Trucks designed in the sixties continued in production here until the 1980’s, six litre engines, steel bodies and all. Windscreen repairs seem to be out of most peoples price range.

We continue over a rushing culvert and past other fields and dwellings, three cedar cabañas waiting for their summer visitors, and a tiny square house with rough concrete walls, a flat roof, and a TV flashing in a corner. A wooden sign points to `Trotamundo´, a hostel concealed behind thick beech trees. In here, amongst other people, lives a friendly girl with purple boots, and ´the man in black´ (we think a schizophrenic) who once randomly yelled abuse at us on the road in Spanish, and then English.

At the junction of the `Ruta Vieja´, we debate going further, but decide to turn for home, the warm kitchen, and dinner tasks. Darkness falls, and we enjoy making our way by the lights of now-familiar houses, and the knowledge that the road back is straight, and almost flat.

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Militant Mapuche Mountaineers - a not-quite-complete essay

Dario Calfunao lets you know when you’ve met him. Not through overt hand-waving or attention grabbing statements, nor through extroverted details of his life and thoughts on the world. Rather he’s likely to ask you questions, normal stuff, `Where are you from, what’s it like there?´

He’s really interested. It’s quickly obvious though, that he’s onto something, and he thinks it’s very important.

Cholila, Provincia Chubut, Patagonia, Argentina. We’ve met someone who doesn’t think those names mean very much. This is Mapuche land, and Dario Calfunao is claiming some of it back.

Dario is 34, dark, wears a beard and a neck-scarf, t-shirt and jeans. He’s married to Laura, and they are building a house on the land Dario’s family have occupied for sixty years. Like many people in Argentina, Dario has Italian emigrant ancestry. But more than that, he is a very conscious descendant of the Mapuche tribes that have lived in this part of South America for an age.

Until the 1880’s, most of Patagonia remained apart from the control of Buenos Aires and the 70 year old Republic of Argentina. Largely decentralised societies of indigenous peoples occupied the same lands as they had for thousands of years. The Mapuche were the largest tribal group, but others lived all the way to the southern tip of the continent. The tribes were not ignorant of the new civilization, however. Raiding parties of `Indians´ (mostly Mapuche) would sometimes make their way north and attack towns and settlements, carrying away cattle and even hostages. General Roca led his army south from Buenos Aires to `domesticate the savages´, in a campaign that became noted for its brutality. Several tribal groups were eliminated entirely. Remaining aboriginal people were given the option of living on reservations, or crossing the Andes to Chile. So popular was `The Campaign of the Desert´ in the rest of Argentina that Roca was soon elected President.

Dario’s history is typical of the families of Cholila, a small village in the shadow of the Andes. Searching for work, his parents left their small community and moved to the city of Esquel, 200km south. There Dario grew up, met Laura, started a youth hostel, and also began working as a mountain guide. Then events in Cholila changed where life might have left them. Dario says the local government (municipalidad) had begun selling parcels of land that had been occupied by families for generations, but now had nobody living on them.

A law of occupation exists in Argentina, whereby if you can display continuous use of a part of fiscal land for 15 or more years, you become eligible for legal ownership.

Dario’s family had lived on and used a 25 hectare block for 60 years, where a ridgeline slopes down to meet the valley floor between the town of Cholila and Lago Mosquito. It’s a stunning spot, with opposing views of lake and village. Largely deforested, some mature Cyprus trees do remain, their seedlings struggling their way up through the thorny dry Rosa Mosqueta, an introduced weed blanketing much of the hillside.

`We’re claiming the land back,´ says Laura, waving a hand at the space they have hacked out to start planting fruit trees and a garden.

The small houses on the land had fallen into disrepair, and no-one had been resident on the land since 1980, although a relative had continued grazing cattle.

`We realized to protect the land we had to be here,´ Dario explains, `And even that’s not enough sometimes. There’s been people who have had their land sold while they were living on it – they never thought to make their title legal.

The municipalidad don’t like me much now, because I’m telling as many people as I can that they can get the ownership papers!´

He turns from the township, and points out a plantation of poplar trees on the lakeshore, a patch of dun tan colours encircled by the dark green shadow of native vegetation.

`That’s the German colony,´ he continues.

`They arrived after the 40’s war and made a place down there, hidden away. It’s all abandoned now, just some fruit trees and the poplars left. Of course people say they were Nazis..´

Cholila has been used as a hideout before. Famous fugitives Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid lived here for a year while on the run in the 1890´s. After being discovered they were forced to leave, while the cabin they built remains as a lonely tourist attraction. Dario reaches high on a shelf to retrieve a wooden tile, 'Cholila' carved carefully on the upper surface. 'From the roof', he grins.

Something newly self-aware Mapuche do share with the average Argentino is a distaste and cynicism for government and local leaders. Cronyism, selfishness and corruption are assumed characteristics. 'Sobran politicos' (too many politicians) goes a chorus of a song by a popular folk group, Arbolito.

I walk with Dario from his self-built ranch down to the village to buy bread, beer and meat for our evening meal. It darkens as we make our way down the hill, circling thorny shrubs and large piles of horse dung. Our headlamps light up a disjointed footbridge made of lashed and nailed poplar poles 'The last one washed away' and we hop our way across.

We continue in the dark, towards the street lights and barking dogs of Cholila, and I try to probe the directions Dario's discontent and anger push him in..

`So what do they teach these children here, these descendants of the Indians conquered by General Roca?´

`The same as everywhere, that he was the great Argentine hero.´

`So if you wanted to work in the system, and replace these self-interested corrupt politicians with local leaders that actually want the people here to be better off, wouldn’t it possible to get the votes to do it?´

`There isn’t the awareness here, the sense of identity to join people together, like has happened with Eva Morales in Bolivia. We’re trying to start that.’

`So what is it then, if democracy isn’t working? More socialism?´

`No.´

`Communism?´

`No,´

`Fascism?´

`No,´

`I’m running out….Anarchism?´

`Si, exactamente.´

`If politicians knew that if they lied they would be killed, that might work. But there needs to be a purge.´

Desperate stuff, but something that shows me how far the collective Mapuche self-identity has yet to come, when engagement and conciliation might seem like possibilities.

`No va a ser fácil sacarnos de aquí…….´

(It’s not going to be easy to remove us from here..)

`Somos Mapuche, la gente de la tierra.´

(We are Mapuche, the people of the land.)

Kimun y la mañana.
Foto: Dan Bromfield.
Valle "El Cajón". Cholila, Patagonia.