Meredith's life as a Mariposa volunteer!

On Monday and Wednesday mornings I trek up the dirt hill from the Mariposa to the finca.  I turn left at the road with red flowers and Fanny’s Pulperia, then right at the 4-way stop in the pueblo 19 de Julio (which is like naming a town The Fourth of July).  Then I turn left at the white gate to arrive at the farm!   Most mornings we water all of the plants, and then I weed carrots and lettuce with Carlos.  We also clip the basil flowers so the plants will produce more leaves, and take off the diseased spinach leaves to save the good ones.  Noel prepares new rows for beets and more carrots, and we all get very dirty.  It’s incredibly satisfying to be planting and maintaining the vegetables I’ll be eating for lunch!  After I leave, they dry seeds and harvest the ripe fruits.  The cucumbers will be ready soon, and of course, more eggplant, which we’re overrun with at the moment!
Then today (Sunday) we drove a truckload of veggies to the Granada Finca Market.  A bunch of interesting sellers gather once a month in a fancy hotel’s courtyard.  We’re the only true farm, but there’s some really fun stuff (like guava-cheesecake-ice-cream).  We sold most of the spinach and carrots, all the okra and pineapples, and a lot of dragonfruit.  We managed to sell a half-crate of eggplant, and gave away even more to anyone who would take it.  Then at 12, when everyone’s packing up, the whole stand goes half-price.  Apparently, both weeks, a certain Hawaiian-Shirt-Guy has swooped in at that moment to buy his produce  🙂   Paulette and Guillermina went off to get Guillermina’s birthday present, and Alice and I bought ourselves some presents.  All in all we did pretty well- we made 2000 cordobas!  And got lots of good veggies out to people, which was the main goal.  So if you’re in Grenada on a second Sunday, stop by!

 
 
 
 
 
 
The above photo is of the finca and below you can see how wonderful the veggies and fruit are that we sell at the Granada Farmer’s market. Some of it is grown on our own (small) finca and some, especially the fruit comes from the community garden project that we support (financially and with seed donations) in the barrio of Santiago.

 
 
 
 
 
 
And just to show that the mariposa volunteers don’t work all the time, Meredith ziplining and at the top of the Mombacho volcano!!!