La Isla

My thoughts lately have been drifting away from our pumpkin house farm, and toward the Dominican Republic. Even as I continue in my kefiry, sourdoughy endeavors, and even as the sun breaks through the clouds to welcome a tentative spring, I'm daydreaming of where I hope to be next winter.

This is still related to the theme of finding home, and here's why: I have a second home, one that I haven't visited in several years, but a second home nonetheless.

The last time I visited Rio Limpio was the Christmas before last. I was welcomed back into the family that had first hosted me when I was sixteen and speechless, delivered by an international volunteer program to their doorstep. Reunited, we caught up on what had been going on in each others' lives since my last visit. My host brother had married, had a child, divorced and most recently been almost killed in a truck accident. My host sister, who is studying to be a doctor, was nursing him back to health while continuing to be active in her church. She was also phone-dating an Ecuadorian man who lived in the United States; they were star-crossed lovers, since as an undocumented immigrant he could not leave the US, and my host sister had little desire to go there, and no means of getting a visa anyway. Apart from worrying about her son's injury and her own evolving health problems, my host mother was the only one whose life remained mainly the same. She maintained her complaints about her husband's debt, absence and infidelity, while he maintained his distance and ignored his wife as much as possible.

Funny how when you don't see people for a while, their lives become distilled into a two-dimensional gossip column. But it was so good to see these people, and to have our lives intersect again.

The other news I got caught up on was the news of the town, Rio Limpio. Where there used to be only sporadic electricity, now the government had installed solar panels on all the roofs. Now you could do laundry whenever you wanted . . . while your husband and his friends watched American television. There was also increasing talk of paving the hazardously muddy road into town. There has always been such talk, but with the rate of change in Rio Limpio, now I was starting to believe it.

A paved road would make life better in many ways. It would buy critical hours of travel time, allowing sick and injured people to reach city health care facilities. It would make it easier to visit family in the city, and vice versa. It would indirectly bring all kinds of employment opportunities to a depressed little mountain town.

But people in Rio Limpio complain about the traffic and crime problems in the city, and they lament the loss of time to enjoy life. That's what keeps them in Rio Limpio despite the poverty and struggles of hard manual labor: the chance to sit and talk over coffee with family and friends, to walk across town to call on a sick neighbor or a grieving relative, or to play dominoes in the backyard amidst clucking hens and the blaring of bachata music on a distant radio station.

I'm in no place to judge development in Rio Limpio; I may call it home but I don't live there. I can only look on in wonder as these changes come to pass. Still, I was heartened to find that CREAR, the local school for organic agriculture, had regained its funding and was thriving more than ever. I was also excited to speak with the father-in-law of my host brother, who was working with the eco-tourism office in Rio Limpio, and who was thinking critically about sustainable development and was actively working to guide the town's progress in a way that would be healthy for everyone.

Most of all I was excited to visit a biodynamic farm that I had heard about previously but never actually been to. On the edge of a national park, the farm blended into the forest except that it was brimming with food -- grapefruit, oranges, cacao, coffee, and ginger were all intermixed in what seemed to be a kind of Eden, a magic food forest. At the time, I daydreamed about going back for a longer period of time to do some kind of internship at the farm and nursery, helping with translation if it were needed, and learning about sustainable agriculture in the tropics. Now as I write about it, I'm getting excited about that idea again. I googled it and found that Rio Limpio now has a slick tourism website. It's bizarre to see the people and places I know, who have always seemed a world away, within such an easy reach through cyberspace.

But what does this mean for my oekoseeking here? How can I board a plane and ditch all the things I've been working on? Would they still be here when I got back?

Most of all, do I lose integrity by spreading myself across so much space? Feeling proud as I ride my bike to work, but happily boarding a plane to burn fossil fuels for 3,000+ miles and then talk about "sustainability?"

Chicks' first day in the sun

The other day I brought the chickabiddies outside for the first time.

Let me first just say that I don't consider myself to be a sentimental chicken owner. Chickens are fascinating creatures in their funny way, and I respect their expert scratching in the dirt for food, their crazy dinosaur noises and their cruel but straightforward pecking orders. Most of all I respect them for their ability to convert seeds, worms and grubs ('Gross!' says Chris) into delicious eggs and eventually meat. But I don't think they love me, and I don't love them -- at least not in the same way I would love a cat or dog. I feel responsible for protecting them and caring for them, but it's not like they're cuddly.

That said, it was something to see them blink in the sun for the first time. Inside their cardboard box, they look huge. But outside they were barely taller than the grass, and they stayed right next to me for the first five minutes, peering up at me as though I might offer some guidance. So without thinking about it I started roughing up the dirt with a stick, and eventually they followed suit, scratching and pecking.

I had planned on patching my bike tire while they were exploring the wide world, but they were much too distracting and the whole process took me ages. It was just too entertaining to watch them pick their way through the grass. They weren't very good at it yet; they mostly ate dirt.

Not to mention the fuss Swinkles and Turnip were making. Enclosed in their coop, they ruffled their feathers and made so many weird barking noises that I was worried the neighbors would complain. I think they would have eaten Penguin and Dundee alive if we'd let them. It will be no easy chore to create a harmonious flock out of these warring dinos.

After about half an hour I brought the chicks back inside though; it was enough excitement for a day. The next step will be making a safe enclosure to use in transitioning them outside.

More kefir cheese madness

I've been having so much fun with kefir that I decided to do some more research about it. I won't re-write all I learned; a simple google search will tell you more than you ever wanted about kefir. But to summarize: kefir is a cultured milk beverage that, like yogurt, originated in the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, crossing the borders of Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbiajan. According to the computerized cosmos, kefir has 5 times the beneficial microflora that yoghurt does and has helped treat everything from indigestion to tuberculosis. It also has lots of good vitamins, minerals and enzymes. I like it because it's delicious and easy to make.

We drink kefir every morning with breakfast, and in the past I've strained it into a thicker, more yogurty cream for serving with rice and beans. But now I'm going crazy with kefir cheese.

Here is some kefir hanging in a towel so that the whey is strained out of it. Last time I didn't hang it, I just set it in a towel in a strainer, and it worked all right but the kefir cheese was a bit wet. I think gravity will be more on my side this way, for a drier cheese that stays in ball-form instead of disintegrating in the jar of olive oil.

It seemed to work pretty well: here are the kefir balls preserved in olive oil. The only issue now is that the kefir floats to the top, instead of staying submerged in olive oil. So I have to swish it around occasionally to make sure the cheese stays oil-coated and unexposed to air.

I also didn't have enough olive oil to cover all the kefir, so I tried a makeshift cheese press to see how the rest of the kefir would work as a hard cheese. It came out looking and feeling a bit like queso fresco, so at first I hoped it would work well with our usual rice and bean staples.

Which would be wonderful, since cheese is currently our chief food budgeting woe -- there seems to be no affordable way to get enough organic cheese for our pizza and taco needs. (We settle for Tillamook cheese because although it's not organic, at least it is labelled 'no-rBGH.')

But on second thought, after eating more than a small taste I realized I don't really like the taste of the dry kefir cheese. So I dipped it in beeswax to preserve it and see if it mellows with age. Dipping it in beeswax turned out to be a really fun process, so I hope the cheese ends up tasting good.

This cheese-aging thing was slotted to be my next experiment anyway, because I saw it on a website with many other kefir cheese variations. Dom's (very eccentric!) kefir website is an awesome resource. If you want to be overwhelmed with kefir possibilities, this is the place to go! http://users.sa.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html

Kefir cheese after being pressed.

Kefir cheese dipped in beeswax.

I like making kefir cheese because there's no fussing with heating milk, using the dairy thermometer, or praying that the rennet will do its magic curdling. Also, I find my stomach does better with dairy when I'm drinking kefir. I do want to make real cheese one of these days, but for now this is where I get my kicks.