Autumn Harvest and Nursery Doings

Dear all, Well, it certainly has been a little bit since I sat down to write y'all a little life update from the hills. As ever, much to report. The change of the seasons is upon us again! Nights turning crisp and cold, and stars overhead now exposed and gleaming, no more monsoon thunderclouds to hide them away. The harvest too has mightily begun. Whole rice paddies harvested in a fraction of the time it took to plant them, stalks laid out in the sun to dry before being carried dutifully home on villager backs. Kodo or millet also being picked, the tasseled heads cut first, the straw (winter food for the ruminants) soon after. Once the harvest is done, then begins the processing! Heating up - literally translated - the kodo by beating it with long sticks to loosen and liberate the seeds from the tasseled fibrous top. Stomping on it with feet (my favorite job and one didi now saves for me) to remove the chaff. I leave the winnowing to her though. Yes, plenty of work in the fields for the post festival season.

Dashain and Tihar have come and gone. The bursting marigolds in front of our house were sewed into garlands by didi and I in order to bless each other in the "tikka" (usually red paste or rice one gets on the forehead) ceremony that marks both these holidays. Unfortunately, tis the season not just for celebration, but for sickness! I was ill for both of these holidays, though I managed to prop myself up to bless and be blessed by the best of them.

When I last wrote we had planted one tunnel in the nursery with tomatoes and the other was recently dug by didi and I. It seems like ages ago thinking about the top tunnel being empty! How far we've come! We've been quite busy since that time. Didi and I proceed to prep, and bed up our tunnel and sew our first nursery beds for seedling production. To begin with, we planted mustard greens, broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage. Other beds we filled with cilantro, I of course had my experimental Ameriki saag bed as didi called it - my "American greens" - kale, mizuna, chard spinach etc. beds. A few beds we even left empty to see what would happen with sales, should we need to re-sew. As the starts continued to grow and grow and a handful customers dropped by our house to buy a bundle now and then, didi flashed on a great idea. We had to take our show on the road! There was no way we'd sell all the seedlings before they got too big to transplant! So, bundling up 20 baby plants at a time (for 50 rupees a piece - 50 cents USD) we headed out into Durlung to advertise. Visiting only a quarter of my village, during one afternoon (5 hours?) my didi made as much money as she would have working 5 full days in the rice/millet fields. (For 350 NPR or $3.5 USD a day). Goodness gracious. After this day of door to dooring, word got out (the village word of mouth system never ceases to astound!) and now the people are coming to us. Finishing one wave of winter crops, we again turned beds and planted another. The tomatoes in the tunnel below began blushing orangey-red (there is a silly habit of picking them before they are truly raato - red - here, but so goes) and to date around 7 kg's have been sold to neighbors and Durlung-ites. (We did end up upgrading our compost tea approach, however. Turns out the lore about not being able to grow tomatoes here without something synthetic certainly seems true to me now that I've tried. Without a little chemical love there's no way our plants wouldn't have been brutally bludgeoned by blight! I guess you could say I caved to the chemicals!) Overall, the nursery has taken off. I am stoked that more of my village will be growing diverse vegetables year round. Of course my didi is stoked to be developing her economic earning capacity and small business skills.

I am continually amazed at Kopila's initiative and leadership on this whole project. I recognize our symbiosis, as sisters, of course, but as co-workers too. It seems like the epitome of success as a volunteer to be able to fade into the background as Kopila shepherds people up to the tunnel to talk business, seedlings and planting practices with them. I am blessed to have found someone so willing and motivated to work with me. We are lucky to have the same eye for aesthetics and quality that make our brainstorming and work together so fruitful. A sweet anecdotal example of this: After we made out first 1000 rupees, I realized we needed a way to keep our accounting in order so didi and I got out a notebook and jotted down some rough tables documenting our purchases and our sales. Rudimentary accounting replete with scratch marks and line cross outs. After another week or so of sales, I returned home one day to find my didi re-making all the tables with a ruler - neat, organized and clear. My heart was singing! Now that the chilly nighttime winds are beginning to blow and the upper tunnel is in shadow for most of the day (no longer designated nursery space, it is full of our personal crop of winter veggies! A pleasant side effect of the nursery world - we always have plenty of seedlings at hand and so have become experts at planting a little cabbage there, or squeezing a broccoli - or 3 - into the border of another bed.) The lower tunnel is now being phased from tomatoes to onions, as we sew thick beds of onion seed for sale in about a month when they are sprouted. Onwards, onwards!

Other small (and big!) projects doing while the crops grow: trying my hand at growing some flowers. Wondering if it will get too cold, too fast for them to flower. Sewing some oyster mushrooms and seeing great result! Prepared by chopping up and steam-sanitizing rice straw, these shroomies sprout through the packed down paral - straw - that is placed in plastic bags with spore. Pretty cool. Now that the rice is out of the fields, straw is imminently available and so to experiment with a new mushroom method at home and with neighbors is fun work. Other work? Preparing and planning for the wedding! Nir and I are getting hitched on Nov. 20th in my village. We are estimating at least 200 folks total - including our families, other volunteers and Durlungites. Planned a menu and soliciting the help of friends to help orchestrate the event. So a bit of preparation on that front, but I think bholi/parsi (a Nepali phrase meaning tomorrow or the next day - but really meaning some day, whenever it happens) I shall send along pictures and write you all about wedding festivities,...hence I will save you the groan of reading about the hub-bub till we actually celebrate!

Yes, lots doing! (To say nothing of grad school applications, ruminations and the like!) Glad to soon see my family and get the opportunity to share my life in Nepali with loved ones. Glad to be recovering from illness. Glad the days are getting shorter and the hunkering down for plenty of sleep has begun. Glad to be in touch with all y'all and glad to send you my thoughts and warm wishes.

I just realized it's Halloween as I'm writing this! I hope you a festive and costumed and well fed on candy, punch and pumpkins all hallows eve! Love from Nepal, Aja