Nicaragua Farming through the eyes of a teenager.
Devon participated in the farming project trip in June. His first hand experience brings the need and the isolation of the communities alive.
When we left for Somoto I was already amazed that they let their cows and horses roam the ditches and they wouldn't get hit by a car. The first farm we went to was Carbonaro. When I was looking at the size of the field and I was amazed that they hand planted every seed and still plowed with oxen. They also didn't have their irrigation project done so the field wasn't irrigated. The next day we went to Felipe's farm right away in the morning. They had a little over one mansana of land that was irrigated and two more mansanas non-irrigated. Felipe has eight solar panels that power a water pump that brings up water from a well that is 200+ feet deep to a tank on top of a hill nearby.The irrigated land is split in half and each day one side gets irrigated.
Once we got done at Felipe's we decided to go ahead and go to another farm nearby. This farm had the most land being farmed and he didn't have a irrigation project started. He had three separate fields, they all were planted at a different time. They also had two baby pigs that I kept feeding grass.
The next morning we are heading to Gandy's farm. His farm was the closest to Somoto so they had electricity. They had two separate fields and one currently had irrigation on it. The other field's irrigation was moved when a large amount of rain came and the stream near bye diverted and went through the field. So they picked all the hose up and planted large plants along the fence where the water came in and dug a channel between the fields for the water to flow. After we were done checking out the fields Claudia (Gandy's wife) made a feast for us and the workers on her farm. Once we were done eating lunch we left for somotillo.
When we finally got to our hotel in Somotillo we sat down for some drinks and a boy my age was serving them to us and when we were done we gave him a 30 Cordoba tip (Little over 1 US dollar) his eyes immediately lit up and thanked us. The next morning we went to a farm where there were chickens running all over the place and one hen had 7 baby chicks following her. The farm had just put in a well and was looking for advice on where to put the tank and it was very controversial until we finally came to an agreement.
So once we were done there we left for the final farm to visit for the trip. We took a road that soon came to a dead end because the road went across a river and they just had a lot of rain so we had to go somewhere else. As we were turning around there was this oxen and carriage crossing with a dirt bike that decided to cross behind them. The water was up to the top of the wheels and there was white smoke everywhere but somehow he made it across. So we had to take a different route to the middle of nowhere. We could barely fit our full size SUV down the path but somehow we made it. When we got there I immediately noticed a chicken coop, so I had to check that out. After that I went out to the field where it was just made. There was burnt tree stumps littering the field and tree leaves all over the ground. I saw this tree with a ladder next to it so I climbed it and went pulled myself up higher than the ladder went.
After I got down I went over to the group where they were talking about this white piece of corn, and there it was, an albino corn. My grandpa was touching it and they were very tense because they didn't want it to die. (If you pull/step on one piece of corn they will get mad) So we took off back to the hotel to get our things at head back to Managua. I decided to research the white corn only to find out that the corn will not produce chlorophyll because it is white so it can't make glucose to grow and live so it was just living off the energy from the seed and will die around 20 days. I told my grandpa that and he said that when it dies they will think he caused it to die.
So in conclusion, meeting new people and going to different farms to see how they were doing with their fields was my favorite thing.
