Finca de la Huella

I spent a little over two weeks WWOOFing in Finca de la Huella (way and footprint) of Olga, Jan, Inti, Tane and Teo. They live in Vaqueros in the province of Salta in the Northwest of Argentina close to Bolivia and Chile. They were very generous giving me my own room in the downstairs of their house. The weather was really nice - like summer - and their fresh goat yogurt was the best I´ve ever had. Jan was from New Zealand and Olga from Buenos Aires. They lived together in Chile including on Easter Island before settling down and buying land north of the city of Salta.

Olga, Jan, Teo, Tani: One morning there was no gas and so we made a fire outside to heat up the necessary morning maté.

a mural outside their home on the wall of the rain-collecting cistern

Jan built their beautiful home from adobe and wood. The silver box on the left is a solar oven.

Jan with his long kiwi legs was always walking faster than me even when carrying the daily bucket of milk (or in this photo, whey).

Teo, the cute 4 year old. I read him kids´stories and my third day in his house he asked me if I could stay forever.

There were lots of cute cabritas that were only a few weeks old on the farm. I think there were over 30 goats on the farm, but Jan said it was bad luck to count them.

Most of the animals mixed together in the barnyard: goats, chickens, geese, ducks, sheep, and roosters

I plucked chickens (roosters) for the first time in my life on this finca. Jan held the birds upside down and pulled on their heads to kill them and then we stripped them of their feathers. Here Jan is showing me how it is done.

una papa de aire (potato of the air)

School children from the region came on educational field trips to visit the farm and learn about animals, utilizing natural resources, recycling, growing vegetables and making bread. The kids on the farm were homeschooled (which is illegal in Argentina); Jan and Olga believe strongly in the importance of educating children about the environment and their spiritual selves. They are proud of their 16 year old Tani who is in his 3rd year of studying Physics at the local university. Inti (not pictured in any of these photos) prefers basketball over futbol, though all of the boys each support an Argentine club soccer team.

The kids were eager to peek in on the bunnies. The bunnies are not pictured; I guess I wasn´t motivated to photograph them after spending the first few day cleaning the stinky crap out of their cages.

Horses by moonlight...There were over 20 horses on the farm of other owners who paid Jan and Olga to pasture their animals there.

the full moon rising with horses in a pasture in the foreground

Andreas comes to Buenos Aires

Andreas came to Buenos Aires from NYC for his spring break. So I hopped on a plane from Chile to BA to celebrate with Dre, Smiley and Gabe for Dre's week in in the southern hemisphere. These shots are all from Smiley's terrace at Pasco.

He had been working out and it showed.

in smiley's room

dre and andy

pictures after sunrise...

Tigre

singing Weezer?

and dre leaves....

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.

El Molle

One evening, I hiked to the top of a hill above George´s place for the sunset in the Valle Elqui.

one of George´s sculptures in his orchard bordered by peach and quince trees

the same sculpture from the side

In addition to a ton of grapes, George had over 100 trees: almond, walnut, citrus, apple, persimmon, citrus, peach, pear, apricot, quince and olive trees.

La Señora Flora was very agile for a 74 year old. She comes to George´s twice a week to irrigate the orchard and help with the harvests and weeds. She lives down the road from George, has over 25 grandkids and dug all the irrigation ditches.

Vicuña

George, (or Don Jorge as the locals call him), was kind enough to let me come stay at his home in El Molle, a tiny town in between La Serena and Vicuña. Many days we drove into Vicuña where George is working on a sculpture of a dead pink pepper tree in the town´s main square representing an old indigeneous myth of the area.

George was born in Hungary, spent his adolescence in Chile, passed 11 years in Ibiza, Spain and has lived the last 25 years in Manhattan working as a math professor and a sculptor. We passed many days harvesting grapes, smashing them and making wine in his house. In the evenings, we made food and shared his last season´s wine.


these grapes were in the backyard of Osvaldo´s pastelleria in Vicuña.