Many New Projects

Great day! I woke at 4:30 am to do a little yoga in the observation tower at 5 am with Gustavo, our agriculture intern who I’ve recently turned onto yoga. At 5:30 am we descended from the tower and made ourselves a breakfast of farm fresh scrambled eggs and toast with a hot cup of coffee. At six, which is when everyone starts work on the farm, I went out to collect sap from the Sangre de Drago (dragon’s blood) tree. After hearing how dragon’s blood sap is a great way to treat botfly wounds, and after discovering that many of our livestock suffer from such wounds, I decided to try a little experiment and help out the animals. Dragon’s blood sap is a deep crimson color, and as I hacked a V shape into the tree with a knife, it looked like the tree was bleeding. After collecting a bit of the sap, I donned a pair of rubber boots and hiked out to the dairy where the water buffalo are being milked. Since Julie, our mother water buffalo, is a new mother and being milked, I decided to treat her first. I couldn’t find a documented procedure for using the sap to treat the wounds, so I am just trying an undiluted application directly onto the wounds.

On my way back to the lodge, I ran into Steven who was on his way to check out the ginger plants. I accompanied him out into the field and we talked about trying to make ginger candy. Young ginger roots, around 4-5 months old, are best for making candy because they are less fibrous and spicy than mature ginger. After the short hike, I rushed back to the lodge to research ginger candy recipes and to answer a few reservation inquiries.

During lunch I began researching cow milking videos on YouTube for another project I am starting to pursue—videotaping buffalo milking and other happenings on the farm. Rocio, curious about what I was doing, asked how I was able to find so many different videos. She had never heard of YouTube and after a short introduction became an immediate fan. In no time she discovered music videos and even a few karaoke music videos, and by the end of lunch she had me and all the girls singing along to ranchero karaoke.

After lunch I pursued ginger candy making. I had about 3 different recipes to try and Rocio and Ana each had one. To practice my videotaping skills, I filmed Ana and Rocio making their candy recipes. Ana’s ginger taffy recipe didn’t work out because we were using the wrong sugar and the fresh ginger we used added too much water. Rocio’s first attempt ended up burning, but her second attempt was great. After dinner I tried some of my recipes out. One was a really spicy one that I used with just a tiny amount of sugar, the other didn’t turn out like I thought it would, but it was gooey, pink (colored with rosa de Jamaica tea), and just delicious! I then experimented by dipping the various pieces in molten dark chocolate. Tomorrow Ana is going to try a second attempt at ginger taffy and I’m going to up early again to film buffalo milking.