Andy and Cassie: Bees, cats, apple cider, cross-dressers! A photo review of the first half of the year.

Here are some things we’ve been up to so far this year:

First, to continue combatting our blog’s tendency to make our life look like a long string of parties and vacations, let us recognize that we have worked this year. Our team has dwindled to three people, with just the two of us in Moro Moro, and our coordinator, Patrocinio, directing and supporting projects from eight hours away in Santa Cruz. We’ve dedicated most of our time this year to latrine construction, basic sanitation training, and supporting local officials in their efforts in building and maintaining potable water systems.

Our latest rural programs team photo. I’m sure it was Andy’s idea to sit on the toilets. But really, toilets are our life, so it’s fitting.

A boy and his pick-up. Since we do more coordinating than physical construction these days, we spend a lot of time driving around in our shiny truck delivering materials and tools so that contractors can keep working. Not bad work, if you can get it.

On a recent campo visit, Andy saw this lovely arrangement of campo accessories (machete, yarn, and a homemade broom) and took this picture.

Since work continues to slow down, we have more and more time to stop and smell the roses. Fortunately, we don’t have to go far. Some previous inhabitant of our house planted several rose bushes on our patio, and we just have to step out of our bedroom door to sniff them.

Our friend and co-worker, Camille, came to visit us in April. We dragged her all over the countryside, and she took some nice pictures of us:

A lovely day for a visit to turtle rock, Moro Moro’s tourist attraction.

Luke and Priscilla, friends who live and work in Santa Cruz, visited Moro Moro in May. They were enthusiastic about bees, so we took them to harvest a little honey from our hive.

Priscilla and me, ready for some action. (Yes, my mask consists of a pillow case with window screen sewn onto the front. What of it?)

Success! We removed just a few frames, but they were loaded with over 7 quarts of honey. We lack the proper equipment for extracting honey from the comb, so in this photo we’re rigging up a filter.

Our neighbor, Matilde, taught Andy to make watilla, a sweet stringy mushy treat made from a squash that grows like a weed around here.

Another season of cider making came and went. Drought kept apple production low this year, so we only got to make cider a few times. For those who have seen the cider press before, notice that Andy made some serious improvements to the machine this year. We used to have to catch the pulp in a bucket, and then transfer it to a separate machine for pressing. With a little inventiveness, a lot of sitting around staring at the thing, and some welding, he got the two steps into one machine, reducing the processing time by about half. In case you haven’t seen it before, here is our cider-making process, step-by-step:

Get your apples ready. Cut out the bad parts. Wash and disinfect them.

Load the prepared apples into the grinder and watch them turn to pulp.

Using a sophisticated machine called a car jack, apply pressure to the pulp to squeeze out the juice.

Final steps: watch the cider flow. Drink.

And then this happened…

A couple months ago, a couple high school kids stopped by our house and asked a question we have become accustomed to: “We’re having a xxxxx (words we don’t understand) event at the high school, and we were wondering if you could be judges.” For once, we agreed. We figured it was our civic duty. We later found out that the event was called the “Crowning of the Buffa.” The closest translation we could find for the word buffa was buffoon, so we were a bit confused, until we arrived and discovered that we were to judge a cross-dressing competition!