Biol

Biol is a liquid, organic fertilizer. This is basically how you make it:

Fill a 100-liter barrel about a third of the way with fresh horse manure (cow, chicken, pig, and guinea pig manures work, too). Mix in 2 liters of milk, 2 liters of molasses, some egg shells, some leaves from leguminous plants (beans, guaba, etc.), and maybe some potassium. Fill the rest of the barrel with water. Hook-up the barrel´s air-tight cap with a tube, and after fastening the cap to the barrel, place the tube´s end in a bottle of water. Wait sixty days.

This simple recipe could solve a lot of problems here for small-scale farmers. It´s an easy way to make a nitrogen-rich, organic fertilizer using materials that you can for the most part find in the home. During the sixty-day waiting period, the materials in the barrel ferment due to microbial activity causing anaerobic decomposition. While oxygen can leave the barrel through the tube, it can´t re-enter because the end of the tube is in the bottle of water creating a barrier. Since the process is anaerobic, it keeps the nitrogen in a form that’s usable by plants. We simply apply it to the crops by mixing the biol with water and using a backpack sprayer (bomba de mochila) to spray it. So, in essence, biol is a relatively cheap way for small-scale farmers to replenish the nitrogen in the soil and get a better crop yield. Since it isn´t realistic to make compost for vast acreages of crops, this type of fertilizer is about the best we can do to meet both the earth´s needs and the farmer´s needs.

We´re going to give it a shot on Saturday. A fellow from Recinto de Pasachoa named Alfredo wants assistance with a small plot that hasn´t been yielding much produce. We´re going to start a batch of biol but use some biol I helped make during training to get things started. Admittedly, I feel a little nervous about the trust he’s putting in me. But the desire to really earn that trust is fueling this vast amount of enthusiasm I feel for helping Alfredo accomplish something truly good for himself and his land.

Oh, another interesting thing. I´ve been hearing lots of blame being put on the rain for poor harvests, but I only recently realized why. It´s not so much that the plants are getting too much water (what I had thought) as the soil is getting eroded away. Pasachoa is a mountain, after all, and its slopes are particularly steep. So, it seems the problem of fertility is both a problem of soil erosion and of taking nutrients out of the soil (via crops) without replenishing them. Huh, who would’ve thunk?

So, My focus right now is learning as much as I can about biol and about soil erosion… oh, and about bees, too! Let’s see where this whole thing takes us.

Quick News Update

Things are getting busier, and I’m starting to feel settled in Amaguaña. The chance to start a project is also becoming more of a reality as I continue to meet more and more people in various communities. I have a couple of dates down to work with several small-scale farmers in San Antonio de Pasachoa (up on the mountain), and I was able to get a meeting for tomorrow with some folks from the municipal government who, like me, want to get some bee projects going in Recinto de Pasachoa (also on the mountain). So, more or less things are moving along, slowly but steadily. Patience and humility are important virtues for the volunteer. Also, if you smile a lot and make fun of yourself, man, people warm up real fast.

On the 28^th my supervisor from the PC Office in Quito comes down the Pan-American highway to visit my site and to make sure everything’s kosher in Amaguaña. Since all is well here, the visit will be more of a formality than anything else. But it’s also my chance to get housing approved so I can move into my own apartment. I started looking for a spot yesterday and found a really promising house in a family compound next to the house of an elderly couple. It’s in the center of town and doesn’t have a space for gardening, but other than that it’s really nice – clean, big, safe, quiet. Also, I got the monthly rent dropped significantly. I didn’t know it, but apparently I’m a good negotiator. Or, maybe it’s just that I’m not allowed to pay more than $80 per month in rent, so the fact that I couldn’t go above that helped me get the landlady, Anita, down to $80 from $120. She said it was because I’m in Peace Corps. Cool.

Things like finding an apartment are helping me see myself here over the next 22 months (no worries, I’m not counting down). It’s part of the place-making, sending-out-roots process. I’m like a plantula (¨seedling¨ – a maple or oak, maybe? Definitively not eucalyptus) who’s been transplanted and whose roots are getting used to the new soil. It’s an uncomfortable process, but it’s starting to feel better, little by little.