July 22

July 22 Farmland mapping and Pico Papagaio

Three different groups set out in jeeps to plot the land and interview farmers in the mountains surrounding Triunfo. Once arrived at the decide site, our group split up into two to save some time. I was in the group that got to walk downhill towards a floodplain, an area thAt was shared by two farms. 

The daughter of the farm (maybe in her early20s) took me along and showed me all the fields and subsistence gardens that the farm had. We also were allowed to enter the farm proper: The house had several rooms overall, one enters through the kitchen where two pots were boiling away on a wood-fed fire (there was a gas stove nearby but propane is probably difficult to transport). The kitchen opened to a room furnished with a table and chairs, another room with table and chairs and one  big refridgerator was adjacent to this room. From here one could enter the living room that sported two red couches. Off these rooms there were bedrooms behind  curtains most of which furnished with several bed stands and nothing much else. Overall there were 11 people living at this house! There was one bathroom and a functioning cistern outside that provided running water. One daughter of the farm actually lived in Germany for a while but is now in Sao Paulo with her three children. Many of the men work in the sugar cane fields of larger plantations further south--so clearly the farm does not feed all.

The farm produced a mix of cash crops which is sold in the local market and multiple-crop gardens for personal use. 

In the afternoon our jeeps brought us up the mountains to the highest peak of Perenumbuco, the Pico do Papageio. On the way up we stopped several times to see various solutions to the water availability problem on these mountains. One farm had a 50m deep well from where they pumped out their drinking water; the actual water table could be accessed through steps dug in a tunnel. Bats were inhabiting this cave-like feature. In another instance thee was a perched water table located high above the farmland in a cavemwhich then provided the water. On the hike up to the cave we passed agave plants 1 1/2 the size of humans.