Last season we had a great bounty of delicious potatoes, the season before it was cabbage.Now the fields just got plowed and we are back to zucchinis and another type of squash.
I couldn't resist taking this picture since it is not always that you see plowing behind a team of horses.
About a week ago the local tractor guy, came by and tilled the previously planted ground which had laid unused for a few months after removing the crop of spuds.
He unearthed about a bushel of real mature potatoes that we had failed to find in the last go around.
Once the heavy tractor uproots all the weeds and stuff, a week later the furrows are put in.
For that you need man power, plus two horses.
The only hassle is that there is a lot of fine powdery dust on the road. The road stretches from the lower entrance to our property to the house. The first 100 meters or so, is next to this hunk of land.
Every clean car or truck that passes the area where the tractor or plow was started gets covered in this fine almost talcum powdered sheen of dirt. So until the daily rains kick in, we have given up on clean vehicles. At least there are easy to rinse off, but why bother they will just get covered the next pass through.
In the last two weeks we have only had one small rain shower. A few nights ago it rained for about 15 minutes, a light covering that was all dry by sun up. So we will wait a little before the ground is moist and settles the dust down.
The contract tiller and horses tilled and put in the nice furrows in about an hour. Going rate was about 100 pesos plus a propina for some refrescos. Cheaper and better than the tractor guy who charged more than triple that and did it in half the time....gas is more expensive that horse feed.
Days are long, sun is out, temperature up here is perfect, warmer when you shimmy down the mountain for a visit into town which we may do later today.
6 comments:
How about watermelons?
Hard for me to imagine Tancho the gentleman farmer. I know he exists ;-)
wow, that shot of horse drawn farming is way cool. i feel much better knowing that locals still use horse power to work. that means hay and grain for our horses. can't wait. great post.
-ac-
We bought a half a watermelon yesterday on the side of the highway that goes past Tzurumutaro toward Tzintzuntzan. It wasn't half bad, but at $60 pesos, I think that we paid too much. I don't know where it was grown.
Tancho; what variety of potatoes do you grow?
Saludos,
Don Cuevas
Jerry, Watermelons need a lot of heat, we unfortunately or fortunately don't have that sustained heat that places like Uruapan which is 15 minutes away from us down the mountain dropping 2 to 3 thousand feet do...until we have some real global climate warming up here, we are destined to cooler crops.
Calypso, I'm not sure about that gentleman prefix is justified....
Anthony, slowly we are losing the charm of old fashioned way of doing things, however I believe that they will return from necessity. There is just something strange about seeing a group of workers using weedeaters when 5 years ago they heralded machetes.
Sr, Cuevas, for some reason watermelons still command a premium price around here. Usually they are a little cheaper, but when you purchase anything during Semana Santa, I am sure that you wind up paying a holy premium....
I'll let you know the name of the variety, but they are very similar to the Yukon Gold.
Great post! Love that you farm and especially have horses and plow make the furrows.
I'd sure love to have some of those potatoes here, if they're like YG's, you could sell tons of them here.
Feliz Pascua, Sr y Sra Tancho
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