Work day 1, or is it play?

For those of you who don't like long winded blogging, feel free to skip this entry.  There will not be a quiz at the end.  Otherwise, continue on.  Today was day 1 of seriously what we came here to do.  Early this morning, we drove another windy road to Coope Tarrazu, the coffee coop in San Marcos. We went to the Earthwatch lab and were introduced to the equipment we would be using and offered big rubber waders to wear in the field, an offer I was kind of hoping for.  We then drove to farm "G-11" where we would spend the morning and early afternoon gathering data from specific coffee trees that are part of Sebastian's experiment, or investigacion de la cultura de coffee.  Some examples of our data are height of main branch, # of productive branches, and # of beans/branch.  It may seem like (and admittedly it originally sounded like) this would be a bit tedious, but it turned out not only to be satisfying, but quite interesting and, of course, for an amazing cause.  We will return to this farm to finish up tomorrow, and continue our data collection at 4 other farms the rest of this week.  Sebastian will use the data to see if his hypothesis about fertilizer impact on production levels in coffee farms is correct (fertilizer being bad of course.)  I should mention that I have in fact been using my Spanish and it is getting better!  I say I need to learn my Spanish and I keep being told that I know Spanish!  Cool.  A lot is coming back to me anyway.

We returned to the lab for more excellent food and also met Nataila, another native from where we are staying who has chosen to work for Earthwatch.  Next, instead of what will generally be lab time, we went on a tour of a coffee production plant, part of the Copa Dota.  Copa Dota is amazingly eco-friendly, as in 0 carbon emissions.  Our tour was with a large group of student missionaries from New York City...?  Aside from a batch of coffee beans starting on fire, I'm assuming lit by hell, it was an amazing tour.  We got to see how coffee is made from beginning to end, and now we even know how it grows.  It is so cool.  Really.  Plus, I look good in a hard hat.  Who would have known?  We also saw where some of the byproducts of the coffee making process are utilized, many at a local high school farm.  Hello?  Can I teach there?  They have cows and goats and, well, you all know me. 

 

I should mention that as I type, it is pouring rain outside.  A good old tropical rain shower.  Interestingly enough, this rain did not start until the exact moment that we were done in the field.  Sweet!  Later tonight, there is a major futbal game between Costa Rica and Brazil that many of us may go out and watch.  Turns out Sebastian is as in to futbal as I am with football.  I can respect that.   More tomorrow!