Workin hard or hardly workin

I know I always post a lot of pictures of fun stuff, but I SWEAR I am actually here to volunteer my time working on the farm at Hacienda Tranquila. It is hard to believe that I have already been here for 4 weeks, and my time is almost up! The work we have been doing has been tough at times, almost always dirty, mostly fun, and always rewarding. Almost every day we do something different, so it is always exciting, and the daily activities are always written on the board in Spanish, so its usually a total surprise to me haha.

Our main activity is chopping down the invasive Guava trees with machetes. It is actually really fun to machete chop stuff and its one of my favourite jobs. It is so satisfying to chop down a big evil invasive tree with just muscle power and a giant super sharp knife!

Machete weilding! This day we were chopping down the baby Guava trees. Die invasive trees, die!!

Today we cleared a field of old half burned wood (from a lightning strike!), in the rain, and got pretty dirty in the process!

The farm is also really involved with helping out the local community in so many ways. One day, we were tasked with the interesting job of cleaning out the community water source, which was a big algae filled pool in the forest.

Shoveling the sludge out of the community water supply, this is done every 6 months.

We also run a hippotherapy program for local kids with special needs. Studies have shown that these kids benefit immensley from riding horses because it relaxes their muscles and helps them connect with animals that they wouldnt normally see. Twice a week the local kids come to the farm and we help them ride the horses. Their huge smiles make it clear that they really love it!!

Our horses, Ferrari and Suco, ready for duty

One of our favourite kids, Christopher. He is likely to try for a boob grab and/or swear constantly, but he makes it interesting!

We let the kids ride in different positions for fun

Another big part of our project is growing native plants and planting them in areas that have been cleared of the invasive species. But this also involves the worst job we do, digging holes! We all dread hole digging day with a passion. But this week we finally filled in our holes with a native grass that the Giant Tortoises love to eat, so we really felt that we were making some progress on the conservation front. In other good news, there have been 2 tortoise sightings in the area near the farm, so it seems to be working!

I dug this hole!

Our new field of native grasses

The greenhouse and garden where the seedlings grow up

We do tons of other stuff as well, like making fruit juice, milking cows, making coffee, making cheese, having pizza day and movie night, napping in the hammocks, and cleaning the house. Everything we do at the Hacienda is done by hand with no machinery to reduce our CO2 emissions, which is pretty cool if you ask me. We have about 14 volunteers at the Hacienda now, from all over the world. So we also spend a lot of time chatting about our lives at home and what life is like in different countries. It is pretty cool!

Pepe, taking time to smell the flowers... and that big white one is supposedly a drug kinda like shrooms, that Pepe has obviously been smelling a little too often haha!

Pizza day! We have a brick oven that makes yummy yummy pizzas!

Grinding the freshly roasted coffee beans!

Everyone enjoying the coffee!

We beat our previous record of 11 people (and a surfboard) in a taxi today... we had 14 people, plus 4 banana trees!

We "picked" these papayas by shaking the really tall trees they grow on until they fall down, and we try to catch them out of the air football style. Sometimes they fall directly on your head and smash though!! (Scott hehe)

Tomatoes in the garden almost ready for picking

Chillin out after a hard days work.