It’s harvest time here in Temux Grande. Our host family knows that we like to help with whatever they’re up to, so this afternoon they invited us to help them harvest corn. It’s all done hy hand, the way the Mayans have done it for thousands of years. Machine harvesting wouldn’t work here anyways; there are no rows, since it’s planted by hand. Also, the cornfields are all on mountainsides that no wheeled vehicle could possibly climb.

The corn here is very rich and tasty, unlike the industrial corn we have in the US. They aren’t nearly as effcient, though: most of their plants only bear one, sometimes two, ears. What they lack in quantity, they make up for in quality. Their corn also spradically produces cool colors. I made such a big deal about how pretty the corn was that they gave me a few of the more colorful ears to keep. They are now hanging from our rafters for good luck.

The harvesting process is pretty simple: we walk through the fields with tubs, pulling off ears. When we havea big mound of them, everyone sits around and shucks them. The largest, healthiest ones are kept separate to make seed for the next planting. All the rest get hauled away on people’s backs in 150-pound sacks to a storage location, I think in Nas Palas’s attic (not joking).

Below, we have a picture of our nightbors/ host family. They are all related, though the subtleties of of their ties often escape me. From left to right, they are: Masha, Lina, Emily, Alberto, Hela, a cousin I don’t know, Lucia, Jaime, Galindo, another cousin I don’t know, Lina (the elder one), Nas Palas, and Reina. Note that this was taken in the milpa (cornfield) down hill from our clubhouse; you can see it in the upper right corner of the picture (the green bit).