Looking at Dirt

Sometimes you just got to get out of the City and head to the Country...

One day, we took a drive to San Joaquin with our friends Barbara and Howard...  it was time to look at some dirt!  Sometimes you just can't take the Country out of the City folks.  We 4 still have some Country in our blood...  we love the City, but we guess we're still farmers in our hearts.

Clean, fresh air and crops and dirt!  Many of these crops are sold at the Co-op and Ferie Libre (huge people's market) in Cuenca.  Good, black,volcanic dirt!

We saw some ladies getting crops in for the market for the following day.  We bought some 'just out of the dirt' produce for practically a song.  One of the ladies had just picked and washed the carrots and beets. 

Here is a picture of our kitchen sink, loaded with our bounty!


  Not having much confidence in the river water the women were washing in, we soaked the veggies in apple cider vinegar and peeled them before roasting them in  the oven.  We cooked the beet greens, too.  All Excellent!

We split the original bounty 3 ways...so, this amount was less than $2.

Fascinating animals!  There were goats, as we know them, and some new-to-us African sheep, raised for meat.  Their fleece is more like hair.  We thought they were goats at first until they turned around and we saw sheep heads!

(This pic is a goat.)







We didn't get good pictures on this trip to share of the African sheep, but you can read and see them here:

http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/sheep/westafricandwarf/index.htm

Another horse picture for our country friends in Oregon...looks familiar...

We enjoyed lunch at a trout farm, at 10,500 ft up in the Andes. 

Happy to report that we didn't have any altitude problems, like our first visit 2 years ago.  Here is a picture of our first trip which was during our first couple months in Ecuador and we were still adjusting to the altitude.  We were a little woozey.  Not this time!  We didn't even notice.

The trout farm/restaurant is called 'Dos Chorreras', meaning 2 waterfalls.  We could see the waterfalls up in the mountains from the restaurant.  Food was delicious!  Nothing like fresh trout right out of the water.

Here we are, warming up next to a roaring fire.  It's cold at this altitude!













Another day we went with Jason and Donna to check out some new construction.  The dirt was RED!

Here we are, admiring the progress, with Maria and her Dad.

Gorgeous setting, surrounded by the mountains.

Red bricks stacked for the job.

We went back to the trout restaurant and a walk in the Cajas yesterday for Nancy's birthday.

We'll post those fun pictures tomorrow.