A Marvelous Day at the Farm

Day 20: Saturday, January 25^th

Today was my first full day with my homestay family. It was the best day in Brazil by far! Luckily, Débora let me sleep in until 9:30 – that’s pretty close to a 12-hour night, and I could have slept longer. I felt much better but my body is still recovering from sleep deprivation and a cold.

We ate bread with cheese on cheese for breakfast. That’s right, first you spread the creamy white cheese sauce, called requeijão, and then you add a slice of firm, fresh, white cheese called queijo branco. It was pretty good! Then we added slices of ham and toasted the cheesy sandwiches, and I was happy.

Sejal, Erin, and their host mom paid a visit, which was short but very nice. I learned that Sejal and Erin were planning to spend the day walking to the river and the market, and tomorrow they’re going to their family’s farm.

My farm trip was planned for today. Débora and I left right after breakfast. I loved riding shotgun with the window down in the building heat. We passed an enormous estate in Débora's neighborhood. It stretched for blocks and blocks, and I could see tropical trees poking over the high concrete wall. Débora said it’s a private property that she’s always wanted to see, but she’s never been inside. I’m imagining a gigantic secret garden full of gnomes and fairies.

It took only a couple minutes for us to leave the city. There were no suburbs – we were immediately surrounded by rolling hills of sugarcane and cattle pasture. The drive to the farm was wonderful! We bumped over rocks and ditches in dirt road. The radio played a mix of Brazilian and American music. One time, the beginning of one of my favorite songs began to play. I started singing the first verse, but the song was in Portuguese! I sang along to the whole song anyway, my English words matching up in places with the Portuguese ones.

That bumpy road.

I was reminded of the time in the art museum when we were looking at oil paintings of rural Brazil, and Logan had said, “This is where I thought we would be!” Well, here I was, right in the middle of one of those sweeping green landscapes.

The view out the car window.

The drive ended at medium white house. Three horses grazed in the yard, and an enthusiastic black dog greeted us with licks. “Barbie e muito amigo,” Débora explained.

House and horse.

Barbie, the dog friend!

I met Débora’s uncle, Octavio, and grandmother, Aracy, as well as the farm’s two caretakers, Isabel and Mauro, and lots of animals!

Grandmother Aracy, who cooked the most delicious meal I've had in Brazil.

We fed the chickens, but only Isabel’s blind rooster would let himself be held.

The skittish chickens were loving their open run full of fruit trees.

This rooster liked to be photographed.

 I photographed lots of birds and even startled one sparrow from its nest in the pasture.

The grassy road where we startled a ground-nesting sparrow.

We stumbled upon this marvelous nest in a clump of grass, right in the middle of the road.

Mama rufous-collared sparrow was not pleased.

This pair of red-legged seriemas ran like characters out of a Dr. Seuss book.

I loved these masked bandit birds.

Caracaras and vultures shared the cattle pasture.

This black vulture kept giving me the eye.

We picked corn, acerola berries, mangoes, starfruits, and bananas. To pick the mangoes, we used a homemade contraption – a long wooden stick with a wire basket mounted on the end. The family also raises lots of cattle, some with horns and some without. There were tons of big-eared calves! We threw mangoes to the cows and watched them gum the whole fruits in their mouths.

Débora showed me how to harvest acerola berries.

They tasted like strawberry kiwi cranberries, and looked like miniature sunsets.

I have never eaten so many incredible mangoes.

The tropical harvest of acerola, mango, and starfruit.

Lunch was the tastiest meal I have eaten in Brazil. The rice was moist and salty, like it was in Ecuador. We ate thin slices of beef, cooked zucchini, fresh corn, and grated carrots with lime juice. OH SO GOOD.

After lunch, Débora and I rode two of the family’s horses! I can’t believe I was so lucky.

My host dad, who turned out to be the president of the coop I twice visited, helped get the horses ready for us.

My horse, Prechinho, was incredibly well-mannered, far more so than the professional trail-ride horses I’m used to in the United States. The cows weren’t scared when we passed on horses, as they had been when we were on foot. When we got to the top of the hill, the view was breathtaking.

Our two wonderful mounts.

The sweet Brahman cattle whose pasture we traversed. The cows were skittish when we were on foot, but completely unfazed when we passed on horseback.

We meandered through the eucalyptus grove, which should be ready for harvest in a few years. The straight rows of trees contrasted with the uneven mottling of shade. It was cool and calm within the trees. I was dripping with sweat and my bare legs were stuck to my saddle like glue, but I was still sad when we turned back to the house.

I was already stuffed with good food, but before I left I had to try all four varieties of banana that grow on the farm.

What a great day with my host sister!

In the evening, my family met up with Erin and Sejal, who are staying at the same house one block away. We spent the night eating small pieces of the most delicious, salty, juicy beef at a friend’s birthday pool party. Even though we slept for twelve hours last night, we were still wiped out and fell asleep on the car ride home.

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Sleepy Tree Hugger

Day 19: Friday, January 24^th

We experienced our first class with Shirota today. It was awful.

Just kidding! I wasn’t sure what the class would be like – or how many beers would be promised for correct answers – but I was right in predicting that it would be a lot more engaging than our last classes. I had to fight the urge to sleep only once, and that was due to my lack of sleep, not the class itself. We talked about environmental issues, like Amazon deforestation and Piracicaba River pollution, which made a lot of people in the class happy (especially after the disappointing end of our last class.)

Early on, Shirota asked, “Nina, I have a hectare of Amazon rainforest. I can preserve it or cut it. What should I do?” Of course, the real answer depends on a lot of things, but I decided to give Shirota the answer he wanted. I said, “Preserve it.” Shirota shook his head and explained that tree huggers act through feelings, but it is better to act through thinking. The right answer would be, “It depends.” During our discussion, Shirota admitted that in an ideal world we should save the entire Amazon, but we can’t and won’t.

I understand Shirota’s position because of course, everything depends. If cutting that hectare of rainforest would save my mother’s life, I would do it in a moment.

Shirota’s description of tree huggers reminded me of a different debate in which environmentalists tend to use their hearts instead of their heads: nuclear energy. Given climate change and the current state of renewable fuels, I think we should give nuclear a chance, but lots of people (who Shirota would probably call tree huggers) refuse to think about the issue rationally.

With that in mind, I am happy to discuss Amazon deforestation. Obviously deforestation is going to happen, and we should work on policy and education which results in as much forest being saved as possible. If half of the pristine Amazon is saved forever, as Shirota suggested at Rabobank, I would be very happy because I think that’s truthfully an optimistic goal. My only disagreement with Shirota’s attitude is one I brought up in class: shifting baseline, the idea that each generation sees the current state of nature as close to the original, and accepts that conserving half of what is left is sufficient. Obviously, over several generations, the shifting baseline process results in nearly no conservation at all.

If, by cutting down half the Amazon Rainforest today, we were able to guarantee that the other half would be saved forever – well, I might agree to it. But the fact is, if we cut down half today, the people of the next generation will want to cut down half of what remains during their lifetimes too, and on and on. For this reason, I support the effort to preserve everything that is left. From a global and historical perspective, there isn’t much pristine nature left already.

After class, Shirota gave his feedback on our project proposals. His advice: “You can do whichever one you want.” We decided to work on Amazon deforestation, since all our ideas, including cattle and immigration, can be included within it. We will have to talk as a group to decide what the scope of our presentation will be. I hope we have time to work on it during the long trip!

We got out of class early so we would be ready for our homestay families to pick us up at 7:00pm. Debora and a friend took me straight to a barbeque in a frat house. We had beef and crusty rolls, and I had fun practicing Portuguese and English with all the guests. I was so dead tired that I started to nod off at the party, and someone offered me a bed which I gladly accepted. I slept for a solid three hours before Debora took me home and tucked me into my real bed. I was sorry I had fallen asleep during the party, but Debora understood, and I felt much better after the nap. I hope I catch up on a lot of sleep this weekend!

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