Leaving Enca

We got to try our hand at roasting coffee last week. They have roasted
coffee here at Enca for years. Grandma Cosalan is the official coffee
roaster of the family. She hand roasts every batch and considering she
is in her eighties she roasts an impressive amount of coffee. In a
local taste test the hand roasted coffee faired better then the coffee
roasted by the roasting machine. So we followed tradition and built a
fire where they have used rebar to make a grill to fit a large wok.













In this wok we placed the unroasted coffee beans and stirred constantly
for about one hour until the coffee looked finished. During the
roasting the coffee lost about twenty five percent of its original
weight and it smelled very good by the time it was finished. Olive
told us that when she was a child she could smell the coffee being
roasted as she came home from school. Occasionally she would mix up
the smell of roasting peanuts with the coffee roasting and be
disappointed when she arrived at home because she thought she would
eat an after school snack of peanuts. We also roasted some peanuts and
they do make a nice snack still warm with some raisins. As I am
writing this post we are getting ready to leave Enca. It has been a
very nice place to spend six weeks. It has been nice to stay in one
place for a while and watch the changing of seasons. When we arrived
it was the end of the dry season and we are now heading into rainy
season. This has made significant changes at the farm. Flowers and
trees have gone into full bloom and the corn we planted at the
beginning of our stay is now above waist height.













We also are making plans to walk to Acop from the farm earlier in the day as the
rain which usually comes in the afternoon can make for some interesting
river crossings. Last week we had to balance a tree across the river
in order to pass. One of the brothers Bob Cosalan makes the trip down
to the farm most days and sometimes after a good rain we joke he's
going to have to swim to get back home. I'm really not sure how he
makes it home. We are grateful for the hospitality of the Cosalan
family especially Olive and Marilyn. They have included us in the
family celebrations that have taken place here during our stay and
helped us find our way around the area. It will be sad to leave but we
are looking forward to seeing some other places in the Philippines
before our visas expire.

Bamboo shoots

It is the beginning of the rainy season. When we first arrived at Enca farm five weeks ago, almost every day was hot and sunny. We are in the Cordillera Mountains in North Luzon: the place with the coolest weather in the Philippines, so daytime highs were only around thirty degrees. During our stay the weather has changed. Now most mornings are sunny and hot, but in the afternoon clouds usually roll in and the temperature drops a few degrees. Many days it rains during the afternoon or night. When it rains it rains very heavily. I bet that the amount of rain that has come down here over the last five weeks is more precipitation than Calgary gets over an entire year. I'm sure that the rain gets heavier and more frequent over the next few weeks.

All this rain means that it is getting very green. Plants seem to spring up when you turn your back. In the last couple weeks we have sometimes walked through a part of the farm where we have walked many times in the past and it is so changed that I wonder if I have taken a wrong turn somewhere because nothing looks familiar. In the midst of all this growth, bamboo shoots are coming up all over the place. Bamboo plants grow in groves. It looks like many trees all clustered together, but underground it is one giant plant. Well when it starts to rain the bamboo plants send up new shoots. The size of the shoots can vary a lot and is dependent on the variety of bamboo. You likely have enjoyed eating bamboo shoots as a part of a stir fried dish at a Chinese restaurant. They are delicious. A few days ago we went over to Olive's house and found a giant funny looking thing on her table where she usually keeps some vegetables. We soon found out that this monstrosity was a bamboo shoot that had grown just outside Olive's backdoor. We are told that Bamboo is very strong: Olive had to cut off a second shoot from her plant because it lifted her table off the ground overnight.

The next day Olive showed us how to prepare bamboo shoots. When we touched to shoot it surprised us by having a fuzzy, velvety exterior. I don't know if most varieties feel like this or not. Olive took a giant knife to the shoot to peel off the outside, then she sliced the flesh into very thin disks. She told us that at this stage the bamboo was very bitter and not yet good to eat, so we tried a bite. It's true. Raw bamboo is very bitter and not good to eat. Olive put the bamboo in a pot of water and brought it to a boil then drained off the water and rinsed the bamboo. A taste test indicated that it would require a second boiling. Olive told us that some varieties of bamboo will be sweet after being boiled only once, but this one went back into the pot. After a second rinse the bamboo was sauteed with garlic and ginger and attacked along with a pot of rice and some chicken. Yum.

The scariest pest

When we were still in Calgary planning this trip I wondered if we
would come across any critters or insects during our travels that
would really freak me out. Well, we have seen many things. We have
seen rats. A highlight were two giant fat rats frolicking in the lobby
of our hotel right by the restaurant. We have seen lizards, but we
think they are cute. We have seen giant spiders, cockroaches, brightly
coloured caterpillars, clouds of tiny moths that all seem to want to
go up my nose, and many mosquitoes. We have seen bugs that we could not
identify. We have seen snakes - the cobra was pretty scary. After
reading this list, you might be surprised to know that the scariest
pest of all is ants. Ants are small. I often don't even see them
before I find that there are approximately forty-five ants up the legs
of my pants biting me everywhere. One of the major problems with finding
that ants are the scariest pest I have encountered is that I know I will still
find them sneaking around trying to get a bite of me when I return to Calgary.
Yipes!

Coffee

One of the crops at the farm we are staying at is arabica coffee.
While we stay here we are drinking the organic coffee from last year's
harvest. It is very good. Last week the trees bloomed. It only lasted
three days, but it was stunning. Tiny, beautiful flowers lined every
branch. The whole valley was filled with the fragrance of coffee
blossoms: a floral mix of gardenia and jasmine. Thousands of bees
descended on the trees until the whole area hummed with their song.
Olive tells us that the coffee berries will not be ready for harvest
until December. It will be Enca farm's second harvest of coffee beans.
David and I hope that before we leave here we will have the chance to
help roast some of the coffee beans. They roast the beans by hand in a
giant wok over the fire. It takes around an hour. We think it would be
a great project for a rainy afternoon.

Steaming crap for my birthday

David and I decided to go out to celebrate my birthday a few days
early while we were in Baguio. We went to an excellent restaurant that
serves local, organic foods. The meal was amazing. On the
recommendation of Greg, who writes for Lonely Planet Philippines, and
who visited the farm we are staying at to check out Enca farm and
Wwoofing, we decided to try a local specialty with our desserts: civet
cat coffee. Civet cats are a kind of wild cat that lives in this area.
They like to eat coffee beans. I don't know who discovered this in the
first place, but if you take the coffee beans that have been digested
by the civet cat and roast then brew them they make what is considered
one of the best coffees in the world. Greg told us that it would cost
$50 to try civet cat coffee in London but only 150 pesos (around $3)
to try it here. A three dollar coffee is pretty extravagant in Baguio,
but we thought it would be a fun splurge. The coffee was very good,
but I found it strange to get my mind around the fact that I was
sipping a hot mug of poop.

We spent the actual day of my birthday in Acop. We skyped with family
members and enjoyed the chance to catch up. David baked a chocolate
cake and served it with whipped cream and fresh mangoes. We shared
dinner and cake with the family who owns the farm we are volunteering
at.

Routine

Sometimes it seems that time moves more quickly when I settle into a
routine. The days melt into one another, and time passes while I don't
notice it. We wanted to spend a longer time in one place so we made
plans to stay at Enca Farm for six weeks. Suddenly over two weeks have
passed and we are more than a third through our time here. I wonder if
the rest of our stay will pass just as rapidly.

Each morning we get up at around seven o'clock and get ready for the
day. We only spend around six hours a day working on the farm, but we
work hard during that time. We dig, weed, haul, make compost, plant,
find dead fall for fire wood, or do other tasks. I think that David
finds the work easier than I do, but sometimes that just means that he
does more of it. By the end of the day we are both pretty tired, and
we sleep well at night. We prepare most of our own meals. We walk over
to Olive's house to get ingredients for our meal, then we come back
and cook in our cabin. We have a one-burner propane stove and a clay
stove. The clay stove is a clay stand that holds a pot above a bowl
where you build a small fire. We have been trying to get the hang of
it because it is neat and because firewood is free here (we just have
to collect it from the forest), but propane is expensive. There is a
steep twenty to thirty minute walk from the closest place that it is
possible to drive to, so I also feel bad for the person who has to
haul in a full propane tank, so I don't want to make them do that more
often than necessary. We both enjoy cooking and we have not often been
able to cook on our trip, so we like having the chance to cook. It
lets us eat the foods we prefer (i.e. less meat than locals eat) and
sometimes, when we can find all the ingredients, we can make comfort
foods from home. Cooking three meals a day does, however, take a lot
of energy when we are also working hard on the farm. Sometimes Olive
makes a big pot of something yummy and we share a meal with her. When
she does this we appreciate the break and enjoy the Filipino food. So
far it seems that the favourite foods here are rice, meat, and sweets.
We bought a jar of peanut butter (homemade locally) so sweet that we
think it would be a very sugary icing. By the time that we finish
cooking dinner it is usually dark and we eat by candle light. After
dinner we read for a while using candles for light, then we go to bed
early so we will be ready for the next day's work. Life here quickly
falls in to a quiet, comfortable routine that we are enjoying. Most
Filipinos are Christian, so we get Sundays off each week. This weekend
we will be in Baguio, the nearest city to the farm. We will stay until
Tuesday because we need to extend our visas. On Tuesday we will head
back to the farm and back to our routine.