Good morning everyone! Tanto tiempo, verdad? Yes indeed, time is flying by. I can’t believe months have passed since my last entry here. Lots has happened, but day to day it seems to be the same old same old.
I suppose the biggest news is that the big agroforestry project with yerba mate has started! I’ve visited house to house (for the 4th time) in my community to discuss the project and find out who wants to receive yerba mate plants for free, and not surprisngly about 90% want them. The required trainings started last Saturday and despite a rainy start to the day the training took place, though an hour and a half later than proposed. I suppose it went pretty well and the next one is scheduled for this Saturday focusing on agroforestry and the issues with agrochemicals in the area. These two topics aren’t necessarily obviously related, but it worked out that way since a tecnico was available and wanting to do a presentation here on the topic so we’re fitting it in because it is a pretty big issue here. Nearly everyone uses the chemicals (pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers etc.) in some form on their fields as well as the large farmers that surround the community. Not everyone uses them in the safest manner so it is definitely useful to talk about it. The majority of the small farmers use a backpack sprayer and walk along through their fields spraying away without any respiratory protection, and often are in their flip-flops or barefoot, shorts, t-shirt, and a hat to protect from the sun at least. There are also legally supposed to be wind-breaks around the large farm to protect overspray from reaching the houses (like mine) that are right next to the large mechanized farms, however, these are only present in about 2% of the farms I see here.
Anyways, I’m hoping that the trainings will continue to be useful and appreciated here by the community. I’ve already seen a pleasant result from the first training that talked about reforestation and the importance of forests for protecting watersheds and such. The people who live along the river are already talking about wanting to plant a lot more trees this year in order to protect it. I gotta say I was pretty pleased when I heard these talks and people started asking me if they could increase their numbers of native trees to be received through this project!
In other not so work-related news, my well is still dry since early February… I’ve been taking my two buckets a day from the neighbors house about 100 yards away and rinsing out my laundry on their lawn every week. Sadly, this also has prevented me from gardening so far this fall. I’ve pretty much given up on my well, since I’ve worked on it at least 10 times over the last year and it just doesn’t want to work for me. It’s also down to 45 degrees F at night now, so it’s a bit chilly to be hanging out down there digging away as the water starts to fill up. When I went down there in August under similar conditions by the time I climbed back out I was shaking so badly I was pretty nervous that I would slip and fall back down the 35 feet to the bottom! But, there is a project going through here to bring running water to the community and the most optimistic estimates are that we’ll have it by July. I’ll be surprised if I see it before I leave in December.
So, yes, winter is coming on quickly. Over the last week it was a pretty significant change from 60′s at night to mid 40′s. I had to dig out the winter clothes from the dresser and found what the rats/mice had been doing since I put them away last September. A couple of holes and lots of funky smells. Had to load up the backpack and take ‘em to the laundry place in Encarnacion earlier this week to clean them up quickly as it takes soooo much longer for those things to dry with shorter days, not to mention how much I hate doing my heavy laundry loads by hand when the water is this cold!
And yes, with the recent harvest of the soy, and the return of the chilly temps, the rats and mice have returned to find homes in the shacks. The poison has resulted in 4 of them dead in the last week, but on the upside so far they’ve all died in obvious places and I didn’t have to search for ‘the smell’. Or at least I’ve found 4 obvious ones, we’ll see how many more are in hiding…
Not much else to report on at the moment. sorry there are no pictures this time, I’m at home and the internet is a bit too slow to try to upload them. I’m heading in to Asuncion next week to celebrate Paraguay’s 200th anniversary of independece and will (hopefully) update again and put some pics up. At least this update will serve to prove I’m alive and kickin despite lack of correspondence over the last months.
Hope this finds you all well and good and enjoying some cinco de mayo festivities. Till next time

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