Prices slashed on all vegetables in the greenhouse! Act now! Melons are FREE!  

Ok, actually, that is only half true. The only thing slashed is the back wall of the greenhouse, and the melons are free because they can now be stolen through the new entrance. This is what we found when we returned to our village yesterday. Really, I am not terribly annoyed because it’s easy to fix; I think Chalio and Nas Palas were more upset about it than I was. The dumb thing is, whoever took my melon isn’t even going to enjoy it; it was WAY too small to be ripe yet.

There is good news, however. Our salad greens are doing really well, and there are three new melons on the vine to replace the stolen one. But my one big pumpkin rotted out and is a total loss. 🙁 The Mayan Gods of Agriculture giveth, and taketh away. It’s probably because Chalio doesn’t know to leave the greenhouse open, and a lot of humidity built up in the week I was gone. I will have to mention it to him. He DID do a good job keeping it watered, however, so everything yet lives. He took me for an inspection tour when I got back.

“I gave some cucumbers to my mom, and Anix told people I was stealing them,” he frowned as we surveyed the greenery.

“But that is what I told you to do,” I reassured him. “You’re the greenhouse boss (I promoted him to that position several weeks ago); you can do what you want. And it’s better than leaving them to rot, right? Look how many there are here!” There were still a half-dozen very ripe ones left, which I immediately gave him and his brother to take home.

Anix, by the way, is the sister of Ingrid, who I caught stealing a cucumber a few weeks ago. I heard kids playing in the greenhouse, so I went down to investigate. I don’t mind them in there, but I like them to ask first, so I can supervise and prevent them trampling all the seedlings. Thinking to suprise them, I sneaked down and stuck my head in the door. Little Ingrid was talking to two other kids, holding a cucumber in her hand. She saw me, then stood up straight and tossed it backwards into the plants, pretending like she never had it.

This anoyed me, as I don’t like being lied to. I went over and grabbed the cucumber, and shooed them all out of the greenhouse. Scolding her was pointless; she’s young enough that she doesn’t understand Spanish. So I invited her mother Celia over to the house, and told her what happened.

Celia looked upset at the news, but I reassured her that I wasn’t mad. I just wanted her to talk to Ingrid, so she knew that it was wrong to steal (Ingrid is REALLY young, maybe 4 or 5) and if she was really hungry, she should just come and ask me. To show there were no hard feelings, I gave Celia the cucumber in question plus a few extras.

Our adventures as agricultors continue. Last month, Emily and I noticed that a lot of our young seedlings were dying off due to gallina ciega, a gross grub that eats the root systems of young plants.

We read up on the issue and consulted with the ag specialist at Peace Corps, who suggested we mix up a batch of “fire water”, an all-natural organic pesticide. The directions are simple: mash up 25 stong chili peppers, boil them for an hour with a few heads of garlic, then squirt the juice directly on the affected garden.

This is good because we are really interested in organic, chemical-free farming. I’ve mentioned before that we want to start a sustainable agriculture coop when we get back, so all this work is a good learning experience for us and will have direct application when we get back to the US. But we also want to share this informtaion with Nas Palas and the locals, to help them reduce their dependence on chemicals.

“I am interesetd in that,” Nas explained. “But you you might want to test it on some plants first, in case it’s too strong and it burns them.” He’s a pretty sensible guy, so that is what we did. But first, we needed the peppers.

I didn’t want to go to the market, but I saw Galindo walk by in his best clothes. That can only mean one thing: going to town. “Can you pick me up 25 really hot peppers?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he replied. Neither of us had change, so I gave him a 100q bill. Hot peppers cost about half a quetzal apiece.

A few hours later, his brother Rigo appeared at our door with a bag. “Here’s your peppers,” he said. “Galindo bumped into me in town, and had to run, so he gave me the job.” He then got a funny look on his face. “Um, we have a problem.”

At that point, his mother Lina showed up, and called Emily outside for a conference. Apparently, at some point the message got scrambled, and Rigo bought SWEET peppers. Galindo saw him with them later, but it was too late to get the vendor to trade back. And no big suprise; sweet peppers cost four times what hot ones do, so we were now out 50q instead of 12.50q. And we also had a giant bag of bell peppers to get rid of. This really annoyed Emily; what a waste of money and food. And Rigo never offered to take the peppers himself, even though it was his fault. But we can’t really complain; he was doing us a “favor.”

“It just reaffirms my opinion that men here are totally irresponsible,” Emily grumbled. She had originally wanted to ask Reyna to do it, and I picked Galindo because he was convenient. Reyna would have have done it right.

The day wasn’t wasted, though. Once the mistake was discovered, they had bought the hot peppers as well. We swallowed our losses and I started cooking the organic pesticide. Hours of chopping and boiling later, we had a 2-liter bottle full of what looked like Orange Crush, but would probably give you heart failure if you took a swig. It is HOT! I washed my hands with soap five times after I was done cooking, and I still managed to get a chemical burn on my face when I bathed that evening.

We applied the persticide the next day, and I am pleased to report that it has no ill effects on the plants whatsoever. It also seems to be keeping the pests away, but we’ll see how long that lasts.