#3 - Less but better: our first real week in the farm
Jules, Ole, Tristan, Uta and Fred
After a first week in which we traveled a lot, the second week was for us the first real week of work and life on the farm. Filled with the sane fatigue that concludes the long days working outside, we have felt asleep early and happy every day of the week. We are starting the best way possible our discovery of agriculture.
Yet nothing extraordinary in our everyday life: no parties, no internet (except on Sundays), no movies, no music, no information continuously, no phone: in short, no entertainment. And no consumption either: it's been a week that we have not spent any money. This relative detachment helps us live more intensely our work and the simple moments that we share with our host family.
Where are we, in short? Wwoofing is a website that allows to connect farmers that require labor with individuals wishing to help in the fields in exchange for a bed and three meals a day. It is through this website that we got in touch with Fred and Uta, a couple of Germans who settled in Estación Atlantida in eastern Uruguay 6 years ago. Their daily life is to develop a permaculture project with the help of their children - only Ole, 13, still lives with them - and motivated volunteers. In addition to both of us, Ian and Sydney, an American couple from Seattle have been working in the farm for the last 4 months.
The farm seen from the fruit trees
Permaculture, which is the central idea of this first farm, is based on the idea of complementarity of cultures. It aims at planting on the same plot different species to create a viable ecosystem. Fred and Uta made for example the choice of planting acacias, olive and fruit trees in a row instead of rows of a single species.
This choice has several objectives: these species do not consume the same nutrients in the soil and do not reject the same residues. The association allows that each tree naturally finds in the land the nutrients it needs thanks to its neighbors and therefore greatly limits the use of chemical fertilizers. The other advantage is that eventually, this ecosystem functions autonomously and therefore requires less maintenance than a conventional agricultural system. In summary and ideally, permaculture is a lot of work early in order to "launch" ecosystems and less work then, once the systems are self-sustaining.
In their different systems, Fred and Uta grow grain (corn), vegetables (carrots, tomatoes, ocras, cucumber), fruits (lemons, bananas, watermelons, melons, grapes, apples, peaches, figs), herbs (basil, parsley, chives), olives, peppers ...
The farm, the windmill and the different rows of fruit trees
But for now, even after six years of hard work, Fred and Uta are still in the launching phase and must make great efforts so that their 47 hectares of plantations gain productivity.
Currently, they sell every Saturday morning their productions on the local market. Sure, living expenses are considerably reduced by permaculture (80% of the food comes from the farm, only a few ingredients and condiments from outside), but profitability is still complicated to achieve because of the heavy expenses in equipment they made to start cultures and because the systems are not yet mature all.
This is why Fred and Uta have - and require volunteers – an iron discipline in their work. Fred well said "Time is money, so do not waste time." Fred and Uta work hard, 70 hours a week, and ask us maximum efficiency from Monday to Friday from 6:55a.m to 2:30 p.m. Unlike the world of classical work, impossible to lie in agriculture: if you do not work, it does not grow. A beautiful Powerpoint presentation can hide a lack of substance in a meeting but nothing like that on the farm where we are.
Jules fighting against a bucket of water
At first, such difficult requirements scared us: after several hours on our knees tearing out the weeds in an acacia / lemon trees row or mechanically filling buckets of manure, we wondered what we were doing there. But as the days pass, we increasingly enjoy this work: we are in the fields, under the sun, often alone and concentrated on a few repetitive movements that give us time to think as much as we need.
Concretely, what do we do? It is much about taking care of existing plantations: watering, cutting, protecting, harvesting ... For example, we spent 5 hours to cut the branches of olive trees attacked by bacteria. An easy job, but which requires methodology and rigor when it comes to ten rows of trees each extending over approximately 500 meters. We also spent many hours to follow (or drive) a tractor moving at 1 kilometer / hour, a hose in the hand to water the fruit trees.
Tristan taking car of a young olive tree
Jules drives the tractor ... while Fred and Ian water
Another big part of our job is not happening in the fields, but in the kitchen. "What’s good is spending his life producing food if it is not to eat it? "Explains Uta. Each meal takes at least 45 minutes to prepare, and everyone is involved. But we will go back over these details next week.
This organization of time is remarkable after 5 hours in the fields and 2:30 hours preparing food and eating, it is 2:30 p.m. and we are free until the end of the day. But this is also where a new challenge begins. What to do with all this time when we do not have all the entertainment mentioned above?
An idea we often discuss is that of the domination of our time. Too often in our Parisian life, we feel like we are submitted to our time, we accumulate activities one after the other without savor, just to do more. And in the dead time, as for protection from boredom, we throw ourselves on our smartphones, spending time with incredible speed.
Here, we want to be masters of our time. We want to live all our activities without thinking about the next. We want to savor moments of activities as well as empty moments, with nothing to do. And we feel how difficult it is but we easily realize how much it makes us feel good.
After the work day we sit down and calmly discuss what we had done in the morning in the fields. During the hottest hours of the day, we take a lot of time to read and write. In the shade of pine trees, we also train ourselves with Ole to cross a "Slackline" (line stretched between two trees). And when the heat falls, we often run with Ian during more than one hour to the nearest beach. There, we see the sunset on the Rio de la Plata, applauded every time by all the people present on the beach.
In short, we have the feeling of living simply and lightly: less and better.
We’ll be back next Sunday for new adventures!
Bonus: Jules and Palo, the domestic sheep!