Our neighbor Lina was rummaging around under our house today. I asked her what she was up to, and she held up a small, dried-up potatoe. “Vamos a sembrar papas,” she said, and invited me to join them in planting potatos. Aha, that explains the colllection of inedible-looking potatos that’s been lurking under our house since we got here.

So, I futhered my agricultural education today. First, I had to carry a big tub of potatos half-way up the mountainside to their potato field. When i arrived, i had to take a breather. Galindo and Lucia were almost finished with the first step: digging the rows in which we would plant the potatos. This is done in a 2-person team: one with a pick to break the soil, the other with a giant hoe to open up the row.

Once done, we then placed the seed  potatos into the trench, about 6 inches apart. Lina explained to me that if the potato has no eyes, it needs to be placed next to one that does, to act as food for the other. After I’d done about half a row, she came over to check my work. “You need to turn them, so the sprout is facing downhill,” she said as she turned a few around to meet this extra criteria. I am not really sure what that does, but I am game. It’s their crop.

After we had a fair amount of potato starts in place, Lina stopped planting and came in behind me with the chemical fertilizer, sprinkling the labratory granules into the trench on top of the seeds. When I asked them why they used that instead of the poop from the sheep pen about 50 yards down the hill, they explained that the poop was too wet. ¿Huh? Oh well, at least I did my part to plug for organic fertilizer.

When we were about half done, Lucia showed up with a metal bucket of earthy-looking, decomposed sheep poop. Aha! Here is the natural fertilizer I was talking about. She started sprinkling it in the trench on top of everything else. I have a sneaking suspicion they just aded it to make the gringo happy. Sigh.    

About this time, the snacks for the break showed up. Guatemalans working in the field always take a break for a snack, a tradition that I highly approve of. It was a somewhat typical refación of sweet rolls and soda. Today was my lucky day; real Coke instead of generic. Yum! “Do you want any?” they asked, remembering all the health talks we’ve given. “Are you kidding? Sure!” I replied. “Emily isn’t here, so I can drink this stuff.” Hilarity ensued.

The last step of the process was Galindo following everyone else with the mega-hoe to fill the trenches back in. “You wanna do it?” he asked. “No, it looks like a lot of work,” I replied. When he was almost done, I finally asked to try it, that way I wouldn’t have to do too much work. They thought that was pretty funny, too.

If this keeps up, when I get back to the United States in 2010 I will be ready to start a farm.