I decided to leave the tilapias after a few weeks but was enjoying the lifestyle and surroundings so I spent a further couple of weeks at an organic farm along the same road. I met Leonardo a week earlier and he was happy to have me spend some time at his ranch. The ranch belonged to an upper class Mexican family from the nearby city who have owned the land for many generations. It started out as a tomato plantation until it no longer became viable to grow tomatoes when ketchup began production in Mexico, driving down the price of tomatoes and has since been used to cultivate the more reliable sugar cane and keep farm animals. The popular restaurant was set up a couple of years ago and Leo, a trained chef manages it along with his mother serving upmarket modern Mexican fare. The future ambitions is for the land to produce all the ingredients for the restaurant, much like the agriturismi found scattered throughout the Italian countryside. Currently ducks, chickens and turkeys are used in the restaurant along with eggs, herbs and some vegetables. I spent some quality time here and gained a valuable insight into the Mexican way, how manana will always be manana and that ideas will always be simpler than aiming to manage a process from start to finish. I also appreciated spending time with Leo and Maria and learnt from their motivation to be organic, more self-sufficient and their attempts to live and work as sustainably as possible.
The land here is quite rich and the ranch has many people working on it, equipped with a house, function area for hire, pool, barn and acres of sugar cane. I got involved with feeding the animals, general grounds maintenance, starting a greenhouse, cleaning the barn and building a new area for the animals before finishing some afternoons in the non-chlorinated pool or relaxing in the high treehouse with views across valley.
Being a carnivore my entire life and being detached from the life cycle of my meat plate, a valued experience was being asked to find a healthy looking turkey to be prepared for a private function that evening. With Carlos' help I managed to catch the lucky turkey, calm it down and hold it tight as it's body slowly came to rest once killed, then plucked and cleaned it and passed on to the ladies in the kitchen. It was later served in fried tacos with mole sauce.
Patti, Leo and Maria with warm and welcoming Mexican hospitality. Both my farming experiences have been very worthwhile, to take a break from the road, to relate more to the earth and what it provides us, to get to know a local family, to see how a business operates in Mexico, the work ethic, finding peace in manual labour and eating healthy.
Jenny, Nate and Abbey arrived at the farm on summer uni breaks who were enjoyable company and easy to get along with. Nate, an impressive guitarist kept us entertained when chilling out.
