farm life

we decided to stay at la stala till the 11th of november which would make it a month of working and living with the erquiagas. life here has finally become less intimidating on an everyday basis and more routine. i understand basic things like ´did you sleep ok?´, ´would you like more food?´ and ´what did you do!?´. the last one is more of an ongoing joke.

this weekend, i had karate chopped lunch. the family raises rabbits for consumption and the easiest way to slaughter them is apparently to karate chop them in the back of their heads and quickly clean up with a very sharp knife. it wasn´t disturbing but i won´t be raising rabbits in my home. they´re not worth the work. and also, the idea of rabbit feet for luck has become a little bit morbid for me.

we got baby pigs! on the 27th and 28th. we had been waiting for them for a week or so and then they finally arrived. it was like a real life discovery channel documentary. apparently pigs just poop out their little ones which makes human births seem so much more complicated than they need to be. so far 3 pigs have given birth to a total of 28 piglets (i think they have designated sex days here). there were a total of 32 piglets but some of them got aplastado which is castellano for ´plastered´ which also means they got sat on by their mothers and died. they´re way cute. not the dead ones. pictures to follow.

we cleaned out the bunny and chicken houses today which isn´t the most glamorous of tasks. i wear boots of the rubber variety and rake out poop and other unwanted materials. katherine awaits with a shovel to transfer waste material into a cart headed for the compost heap. we´ve done this once before and that time would have been worse if i didn´t get pelted in the face with rabbit pee today. i´m not sure how it happened but i thought i was going to die. emotionally. good thing it was only a single drop otherwise i really would have died.

learning more spanish in the meantime and thinking of heading off the farm in november to tour the country.