Rancho Agua Zarca

Well well well…we are here safe and sound at a lovely farm in Michoacan.
Our bus trip was long….very long…10 1/2 hours to be exact but thankfully rather boring and full of watching really awful movies and snacking on the boat-load of food we bought for snacking. We stopped in Morelia and took the bus for the last hour leg to Patzcuaro. It was pretty cool watching the landscape change. I slowly watched as the cactus gave way to pine trees, the broad-flat mesas change to mountains, and the flat dry scrub fill up with huge lakes. Michoacan is indeed a beautiful state. The land around the farm is rather reminiscent of Colorado to me as is the weather; dry sunny days and cold nights. We are located in a little valley just over a ridge from the village of Ziruhuen, which apparently is famous for the fact that every man of age is in a “Banda”…basically one of those Mexican bands. There are supposedly 27 in all. No one knows why this is…and thankfully we are shielded from their famous practicing by the ridge.

Our hosts are the colorful Ian and Lisa Sheppard, a Brit and an American who have loads of experience living off the beaten path so to speak. The farm actually does pretty good business with the fabulous lettuces they grow and sell to some upscale restaurants in Zihuatenejo, Uruapan and Patzcuaro. But they have many other projects in the works, possibly with selling their lambs, selling Tamworth piglets, geese, ducks, ect, that may become lucrative in the future. They have had their place here for about 5 years and only began accepting wwoofers last August. We are here for a little under a month through April 14th along with Kim, a native Chicagoan who is here for 5 months before she starts grad school, another girl Anna from Portland, newly moved to San Francisco for art school. Then there are the pair of friends Ariel and Corinne. All nice people.

We have found ourselves quite busier than at the other farm. We start our day around 8 with breakfast all together and a discussion of what projects need to be done. Then it’s outside to let the chickens out and the gaggle of geese and Muscovy ducks. Then we feed and water all the nesting mothers. There are currently three (soon to be 4) nesting geese and another 3 nesting ducks. We shall soon see at least 2 batches hatch, which we are very excited about! Then we make sure the super cute batch of ducklings are fed their special food as is the orphaned and very spoiled gosling aptly named Peep-peep. He was apparently abandoned by his mother and taken under the wing of a mother duck. He gets lots of attention. Then…pigs. Oh yes, pigs. Tamworth pigs to be exact, an old breed specifically bred for bacon……that’s right…bacon. Allie is the 250 lb sow, Bertie is her brother (soon to be going on his final journey in April) who is about 200 lbs and then there is little Jacoui. At only a month old, he is just about about 35 lbs but he is the little Houdini of the bunch. He gets out at any and every opportunity, and he is fast. I shall get back to the pigs with a good story later. We feed them a cooked slop consisting of ground corn, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, and a bunch of other stuff they get for free which we have to sort, cut up and cook over a fire every day. All three green houses also get opened so the stuff inside them doesn’t cook. Because we are at a rather high elevation, the sun can get rather intense, so we wear hats all day and make sure to cover up as much as possible.

In the afternoons we attend to various tasks like weeding, planting, ect. Tomorrow we are going to have a “duck rodeo” where basically we have to hunt down every duck AND goose, flip them over and sex them, band them, clip their wing feathers and write down all their pertinent info. That should be quite an experience. I am sure we will get a good story out of that one. Then it's lunch, a bit of a break time, garbage sorting and pig slop making, then the closing duties where we feed everyone dinner and pen up the geese and ducks, put up the hens and close all the greenhouses. We haven’t been doing near as hard labor as the other farm, but there seem to be a lot more tasks to be accomplished, the list seems to grow longer every day. But that’s good, and the days sure seem to fly by because of it.

OK so back to the pig story. On Wednesday Ian and Lisa had to go into Guadalajara for the day, leaving us alone at the house to fend for ourselves. After lunch Philip and Kim wanted to go into town for a beer run. One of had to stay behind so I volunteer, happy to lay out on the lawn and read a book for a while. So after about 45 minutes or so I decide its time to buckle down and finish my organizing job in the tool shed. So I walk out the gate and there's Allie…obviously enjoying herself and SO obviously not in her pen. My stomach just drops and I feel the panic begin to trickle down my spine. The other pigs…what about the two others? Indeed…they are out and about rooting up the duck yard, but thankfully they are at least in a place where I can lock them into the duck corral. But that leaves the 250lb sow out and about. I have no clue whether she’ll keep to the house or go galivanting off to her freedom into the ravine and out into the forest never to be seen again. I stupidly grabbed a bamboo pole to see if I could herd her back into the corral at least. Ha. She even seemed to look at me in that way that said “I weigh 250 lbs and I can do whatever the hell I want”. I remembered that Lisa once mentioned that the way to control a pig is to pick up their back legs and wheelbarrow them to where you want to go. I can only pick up one of her legs, which she kicks like the devil was in her. At the same time all this is happening, I hear the dogs start going nuts down the driveway. I run to check on them, because apparently they have rather crazy neighbors who want to try and kill their dogs. We were specifically asked to keep an ear out should they start barking. I run down to check on them and indeed there was a woman with blond curly hair doing something with two of the dogs. I screamed at them to come back, which they didn’t seem to care much about. But thankfully the woman stood up and went away. And the dogs come slinking back. It’s about this time that they discover Allie munching and rooting to her hearts content and they go nuts, which of course drives Allie nuts, and causes her to trample a poor duck in her retreat and eventual escape behind the chicken coop. It really hits me how alone I am and how much I wish they were back. I call out into the forest hoping that maybe they’re on their way back. Nothing. I come to realize that the only thing I can do is to keep an eye on Allie and wait. About 15 minutes later I hear some talking in the woods and I cry out for Philip. An answer! I almost wept in relief…seriously. I yell that the pigs are out and I hear Kim gasp and they run to my aid. About 20 minutes and a crushed thumb later all the pigs are back in the pen. Thanks mostly to Philip’s biceps. We immediately set to tacking barbed wire along the bottom of the pen where they had gotten out. With the dry season still very much upon us, the dirt of the pig pen is basically a fine powder which is nothing for their powerful snouts to dig up, and the fence was so rickety that it was nothing for them to push back a slab of wood and burst into freedom. The next day Philip also added hogwire to the bottom of the rickety fence and they have not escaped since.

Apart from that exciting day, it’s been rather quiet here at Ranch Agua Zarca. I am sure we will enjoy ourselves here. However, I am definitely starting to feel the tug of home. I miss my own space and the freedom to make my own decisions about my time. I miss regular food, a wardrobe consisting of more than 4 shirts, a car, knowing where the heck I am and freedom to do as I please. And the whole having-no-income thing is getting a little old. J So I think that our time here will be finished after this stay, so are looking at being home just around Easter. Its time to go and visit his grandparents and start this next chapter of our lives away from Austin and out in the real world. All that being said, I am still very much enjoying myself and hoping to learn a little about this particularly beautiful part of Mexico while we are here.

Much love to everyone and sorry we won’t be able to post as much as normal. We only get one day off a week and it is at our discretion which one we take off, and we will try and work around what is happening at the farm, so our post won’t be on the same day every week. Just fyi.

Anyways…happy Spring equinox and a very happy 22nd anniversary to my mom and dad.

Love you and miss you all very much,
Julia Olson-Lorenz

P.S. from Philip -- I am in a music video currently airing in Austin (and in LA soon, I believe). It's really slick. Check it out at http://philipnolson.blogspot.com/ . Cheers!