Visit to Oklahoma in the Fall, 2012

Richard composts all leftover food scraps from his grocery store and his cafe, the Earth Natural Foods and the Earth Cafe, respectively.  One week of juicing vegetables and making sandwiches and soups will fill up all these buckets in the back of the truck.  And then Richard drives the scraps to the country just outside Norman where he mixes leaves into a large compost pile.   

Richard then flips the compost pile with a tractor to aerate it.

Meanwhile, Brian puts wheatgrass juice from the Earth in his ears to cleanse his ear passages.  

And in Eastern Oklahoma at Grand Lake, we cruised around in Pop's boat. 

Ollie & Phoenix

Minnie's Farm

Minnie's beautiful cottage. Minnie's farm is in some hills outside of Dehra Dun.

A view down the terraced fields

Minnie and Peter, a volunteer from Germany, spreading compost.

Minnie's jeep, which transported us back and forth to her family home in the city where we often stayed. Dehra Dun might possibly have the most boarding schools per capita of any city in the world.

Ripening grapes

I was able to practice tabla while staying there.

Ripening bananas

Monkey skull! Peter and I went for a walk in the hills above the farm and came upon a monkey carcass. (We smelled it before we saw it. And then the dog started to chew on its hand.) Pretty gross.

One kind of many types of bamboo that Minnie had planted

Niramayam Farm

Upon arriving, one must cross the River Gagj...

...to arrive at Ramesh's Niramayam Farm, outside of Dharamshala in the Himachal Pradesh region of India...

view of the Himalayas up on the valley

Raman, up on the hillside where there are lots of new trees planted.

typical lunch

Masala!

Desraj, scooping out the finished cow dung compost to take to spread on some new vegetable beds

Mastram, master gardener

Telak

One of the huge trucks of straw that came from Punjab. After finally finding a crew plus truck that were honest, the farm workers purchased 2 tons of straw for the cows, which should last them until April.

Prakash, the cook

a saturday afternoon at Don Jorge´s

compost.

this blissful day ended with watching the full moon rise over a lake and orange mountains at sunset. Then George and I sat in the most beautiful concert room I have ever seen with glass walls looking out over the slapping waves of the lake with mountains and the full moon beyond. It was the home and studio of the virtuoso violonist Joaquin Bello and the concert was divine: visceral and full.

Matias's Place

In Metri outside Puerto Montt

Matias's house where the volunteers hang and sleep

me gusta leche de cabra

Ximena and Arnaud...on top of a rock with an amazing view. Many sunsets were watched from here. The consecutive pics are all from this rock lined with murtas (delicious wild berries that taste like cherry limeade).

Arnaud, Marian & Tessa

Daniella & Tessa

squash and corn

beans and peas with a view of the ocean

some beds I dug. I dug trenches and put in 2 layers of straw, basically making a compost pile underneath the topsoil of the lettuce bed.

Tessa, Allison and Daniella mixing cement for a lil wall.