What a State We're In!

The republic of Mexico, officially titled Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the United Mexican States), consists of 31 states as well as a federal district with the nation's capital Mexico City.

We live in the state of San Luis Potosí. It is named after our state capital, a town that was founded in 1592 as San Luis in honor of King Louis IX, the only French monarch to be made a saint. When silver was soon discovered nearby, the name Potosí was added, in reference to the rich silver mines of Potosí, Bolivia.

Roughly just north of the geographical center of Mexico, our state is ranked 15th in size and 16th in population. In a nation of 31 states, it's hard to be more average than that.

But for budding geographers who like to pore over political maps, there are a couple of special, not-so-average things about our state. One is that it holds the distinction of bordering more states than any other in Mexico. In the USA, it's Missouri and Tennessee that hold the record for each bordering eight other states, but San Luis Potosí is the winner by touching nine neighbors. (Padre Salvador, one of the priests in Ciudad del Maíz, was in an expansive mood recently and sang us a song about San Luis Potosí and its ten neighbors, but the lyrics included a state that is only nearby and doesn't actually share a border. So we're sticking with nine as the official count.)

The other geographical oddity that makes San Luis Potosí famous is its shape. There's no denying the state outline looks like a Scottish Terrier. With its oversize ears pointing north and its furry nose headed toward the west, the state just about jumps off the map and onto your lap. (Incidentally, here in Papagayos we're on the doggie's back. Think of our location as a flea.)

So my brother Warren was recently making friends with a stranger in Virginia. When he found out the stranger was Mexican, Warren casually mentioned that he has a brother (that's me) living in Mexico. "Oh, in what state?" the stranger asked. Warren couldn't remember the name San Luis Potosí, but he did remember enough to describe it. "Well, on the map it looks like a Scottie Dog."

"I'm from San Luis Potosí too!" the stranger exclaimed. "That's my state!"

Playing God and Creating Soil

Gardening has always been a key part of my life and sometimes it makes me feel like God. So far I have had twelve different gardens; all but three of them I started, literally, from the weedy ground up.

In 1999 while living in Guilford, Vermont and gardening a patch that had been gardened for at least 40 years, our rototiller broke permanently. I was tired of the noisy gas-guzzler and ready to take a new route to gardening. A trip to the public library rewarded me with a copy of John Jeavons' book "How to Grow More Vegetables and Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine." He is the director of the GROW BIOINTENSIVE Mini-Farming program for Ecology Action. (See our link at the bottom of this blog.) My gardening life has never been the same since.

There are many parts to his ideas about gardening that excite me. One of them is the idea that you can actively grow soil. Not just use it or prevent it from eroding, but build on what you have. Help Mother Nature to nurture you. I liked the idea.

Since that year I have been growing compost crops. For example, I grow grains that can be harvested for the cereal, of course, but grown mostly to build compost piles to later feed back to the soil. My crop rotation now includes about 60% of the garden area for compost crops.

As I see it, I'm growing feed for my livestock - the microorganisms in the soil who do all the real work around here to cook up food for my vegetable plants. When my cattle are happy, I'm happy.

So, I've been playing God lately. Perhaps it would be fairer to say I've been imitating Mother Nature. I have been creating soil.

Of course, each of us has to start right where we are with what we have. In my case, this land came with a deep fertile fine-textured clay soil. This is a good soil to start from, but it means that water does not drain well. We had standing water in our first garden bed during rainy season and all the plants drowned. When it is wet we can't walk two steps without getting huge clumps of mud collected under foot. When it is dry the ground is hard as a brick, literally. And it has a dense covering of crabgrass - a plant that wants to become the king of the plant kingdom by rooting at every node and with the ability to grow six feet a week in rainy season. My hands ache from trying to keep it pulled from around the garden edges.

My goal is to grow soil that is ideal for pampered vegetable and grain crops planted in the limited area of our greenhouse and intensive garden beds. I want soil that is easy for me to work and weed. (In my past I've gardened in natural sandy loam soils and hardly knew what a treasure I had in terms of soil texture and tilth!) Here I want to develop a soil that tender baby roots can penetrate and make good contact with to find all the water, nutrients, air, and warmth that they need to grow without restrictions.

So, while playing God, I stripped the crabgrass, roots and all, off the garden beds, surrounding walkways, and from the soil under the greenhouse. I loosened all the topsoil that I could from the roots and saved it for my soil concocting. Using a wire mesh screen with one centimeter openings, I sifted rocks out of many cubic yards of river sand. I spent hours under the oaks trees in the local forest stealing their supply of leaf mold and soil to bring back to my mixing area. When I didn't have compost ready to add, I raked up dry manure from our neighbor's horse corral to contribute the organic matter needed in the mix for my garden.

With all the ingredients ready I measured carefully by the shovelful equal parts of topsoil, sand, leaf mold, and organic matter and put it all in the wheelbarrow. This was my mixing bowl and I used a trusty hoe instead of a big wooden spoon to thoroughly blend the combination. Adding rainwater from the barrel waiting under our eaves, I gave it enough moisture to change the colors dark and the smell to a rich forest flavor. Not so much water that it dripped and oozed, but just enough to settle the dust and bring it all together into a loose dough.

While I played God, Steve was hard at work, too. With a garden fork he opened the clay as deep as the tines would go, working in a cross hatch pattern so it was all as loose as possible. He added more sifted sand, letting it flow around the fork and down to form drainage paths for the water and roots to follow.

Then I wheeled the soil-feast into the greenhouse or to the garden bed. One shovelful at a time I filled the raised beds with my approximation of sandy loam soil. Then raked it level and watered it in to place.

In a few years I hope to grow the best soil possible. So, last of all I invited all the magical microscopic life to come live here, to make these raw ingredients into real soil.

It is clear that I'm not God yet, but I know I'm helping Mother Nature by creating a seed bed ready for planting.

Bursting with Life

In our corner of Mexico the weather is lovely in February and March. We have blue skies and sunshine with tee-shirt-wearing temperatures during the day and it's cool enough to rest well at night. Perfect. Having no rain for weeks means that watering the garden is a daily joy.

Last week the clouds, coming inland from the Gulf of Mexico, started to bunch up around the east side of the Gran Sierra. The view got hazy. I started to notice the humidity of the air I breathed during my morning walks.

Wednesday evening there was a fine mist in the breeze. It felt like rain, but we didn't even get a brief shower. In the morning Chuy told me he had dreamed of a beautiful rain that watered his father's recently planted corn and beans fields. All the farmers in the village must have shared his hopes for a good soaking rain. We waited under a solid cloud cover.

As Steve finished doing the dinner dishes that evening we heard the swish of the storm's approach. Then the first tapping on the sheet metal roof began. Soon the gutters collected a steady fine stream of water to drop into the rain barrel.

We got a glorious, slow rain timed so the soil could drink up every drop. Friday morning the hill sides were puffing and sighing with satisfaction. A maze of cloud shreds still draped the folds and twirled over the high ridge tops. The sun, peeking out for the first time in several days, spotlighted the newly unfurled lime colored leaves on the white oaks putting them in sharp contrast with the tender ruddy-brown of the red oaks' new growth on the slopes above the village. All of them were bursting with new life. Perfect.

Some Thoughts on Immigration

A friend forwarded an e-mail to us recently. She had received an opinion piece about Mexican immigration in the United States and wanted to know what we thought. As I read it over, it struck me that it wasn't so much the content of the piece that bothered me, but the tone of the writing that made me sad. It was mean-spirited.

I have a lot of trouble with the term "illegal alien." I think of an alien as a creature from outer space, not another human being who happened to be born on the other side of an artificial line called a border. And while an action might be illegal, I can't accept the notion that a person can be illegal. To my thinking, laws should be made to protect and serve people. If a law classifies whole groups of people as illegal, if the law strips people of their dignity and human rights, perhaps there is something wrong with the law and not with the people. (For a more in-depth look at border issues, use the link at the bottom of our blog for Border Network for Human Rights.)

To me, the whole idea of national boundaries is questionable. Throughout history, land has been claimed by whoever was most powerful and richest at the time. Laws are passed, soldiers are mustered, people are killed - all so that someone can claim the right to resources and deny those resources to others less fortunate. Much of the land that we call the United States of America has been taken away from the people who happened to be living on it when richer, more powerful strangers arrived and claimed it. This includes much of the land now called Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, which used to be part of Mexico until the first half of the nineteenth century.

For a variety of reasons, most of our neighbors here in Mexico are poor. Almost every family in Papagayos includes someone who is working in the United States, either legally or illegally. These families depend in part on the income that can be sent home from the workers who have gone north to find jobs. As a US citizen, I can't justify denying these workers jobs just because my ancestors arrived in the United States first. Even the first "native people" who crossed the ice bridge from Asia onto this continent were immigrants. And every immigrant since then, including each of my ancestors, has either been welcomed or despised. For my part, I choose to welcome others rather than turn them away.

To me it's ironic that the essay our friend sent us ends with the phrase "In God We Trust." I can't imagine that God wants us to draw boundary lines across this beautiful earth, to build fences and pass laws to keep others out. As I understand the will of God, it is that we should treat our fellow humans as our brothers and sisters, to consider them to be children of God just as we are, and to share our resources with them. The Biblical injunction to love our neighbors as ourselves means to me that we should welcome all kinds of refugees (including economic refugees) into our land and into our lives.

My nation, the United States of America, was built in part upon might and greed, land grabs and slavery. But my nation was also founded upon ideals of liberty and justice. I try to remember those ideals and let them inspire me to show compassion and fairness.

Under the Palapa

In the heat of the afternoon I sat with Chayo under their palapa (a circular, palm thatched, open air sitting room.) There was a slight breeze. We were cool and comfortable sitting in plastic patio chairs listening to the dry palm leaves rattling in the wind. Just breathing was enough. It felt good to be alive.

Every few minutes one of us would think of a comment. A slow conversation, kind of lazy, that was not in any kind of hurry.

"That hen had fourteen chicks, but now only four are left, " she said as she scooped a little ball of fluff into her hand. She stroked its head a moment to calm it before setting it back on the dirt near its mother.

"It's Elsa's birthday today," was my comment as I watched the household across the street preparing for a party. Then my eyes shifted to the clouds building around the Grand Sierra mountain in the distance beyond the house. I sighed with pleasure.

"The weather is changing. The clouds will bring cold. Tonight or tomorrow," Chayo informed me. She is always teaching me the basics, like how to forecast the weather, from her wealth of life experience.

Next, my eye swept the inside of the palapa. Wedged above the beam and below the palm roofing were a dozen books. Chayo followed my gaze.

"There are a lot of books."

"Have you read them all?" I queried.

"All the ones outside the box."

"And the ones inside?"

"I haven't taken the time, yet. I'd rather do my sewing."

We took the box down from the place where it has been gathering dust.

The box of books was from the Mexican government. Inside there were readers about adult health issues and self care; there were related workbooks with questions and blank lines for short answers; there was an atlas of the human body with maps of the nerves, blood vessels, bones and muscles; and also a guide to first aid.

Chayo is in an adult literacy program. She has been slowly adding to the education she got in her two years of schooling as a child. Now she gets the boxes of books and a visit once in a while from a tutor. But reading and writing is hard work for her.

I read and write for fun. I have a pile of books I can't wait to get to read. Ideas for writing are always stewing in the back of my mind. A day doesn't go by when I don't pull a gardening reference, cookbook, or dictionary off the shelf. The next carpentry project will be a bookshelf to contain the tomes that are now stacking up on top of the ones already in the existing shelves of our house. There will be a section of children's books, too, set low and within reach of our young friends. In our village books are a luxury. In our house they are everywhere.

We thumbed through each of the books in her collection. There were lots of colorful pictures, large print, and open space on each page. They looked like second or third grade readers to me. To my friend, they looked impossible.

Maybe I can sit with her, under the palapa, and together we will read.