Life on the Finca

I spent my last three weeks interning at Reserva Pambiliño, an organic farm located in the Choco-bioregion of Ecuador (or also known as Mosquito heaven).  Pambiliño focuses on conservation and ecological restoration. Two brothers with their families started the reserve five years ago when much of their land was pasture or monoculture.  Today, diverse plants, trees, and forest cover much of their land.  80% of the land has been left completely untouched to help restore the natural forest succession. Unlike many other ecosystems and places where this process may take 50-100 years, in Pambiliño everything grows extremely fast.  I quickly found out why because every morning it is hot, sunny, and humid, and every afternoon it rains for hours!

Pambiliño has also set aside a lot of their land as analog forest.  The goal of an analog forest is to reestablish the primary forest that was once there, but through human planting. Additionally, other sustainable plants are added that can be used for people.  In their analog forests they have cocoa plants, coffee plants, palms (for hearts of palm), papaya, and so much more!

While there, I helped out with different day-to-day tasks and also worked on a few specific projects. There are now two families who live there both with two children under the age of three, which always made it a lively atmosphere.  We would all work in the field, cook, and clean together! We also had no wifi and very limited phone service, which was definitely a unique experience that allowed us to disconnect and just be surrounded by nature.

The food was absolutely unbelievable and a vegetarian’s dream.  They use a combination of their own produce and also other fresh produce that they buy in a nearby town.  I think I ate more vegetables there then I have in all my time in Ecuador.  We had quinoa pasta with roasted vegetables, yuka soup, mahado (plaintains mashed up with onions and other veggies mixed in), the best hot chocolate in the world made from our cocoa trees, and lentils with fresh veggies. 

Harvesting the Café

Aside from eating a lot of great food, I also worked hard on different projects for the farm. I spent my first week helping to rehabilitate their coffee plantation.  That involved applying organic fertilizer (which means it used to be human poop) to every plant, chopping up banana leaves and banana trunks with a machete to lie on top, and harvesting the ripe coffee.  It definitely gave me a new appreciation for organic coffee, where the coffee needs to be picked every two weeks, peeled, dried, peeled again, ground, and then finally it is ready for drinking!

Cutting down bamboo for the Coast

In my second week we worked with the reserve nearby and the pueblo of Mashpi (a super small town with only 100 people) to aid in the earthquake relief.  We cut down around 1000 bamboo trunks and loaded them up into trucks to go to four different towns affected by the earthquake.  This was a really awesome experience because it involved everyone coming together, taking days off of work to help the people in the coast build back better.  Bamboo is extremely flexible and strong and thus great for building and it also grows back fairly quickly!

During my third week I worked in the Vivero (Green House) helping to create a database of all the different plants that are there and deciding where could be the best places to plant them.  It was cool to see the plants when they were so small and then look around the area to see what they will eventually become! One day we went to the nearby school and actually used our plants to help make a community garden for the children. 

Willy Wonka and the Fruit Factory

Some other highlights and funny experiences from my time on the finca (farm) were playing soccer in the pueblo, swimming in the river, changing the dry toilet, which is a bathroom without a flush which is then used to make soil and fertilizer, eating more than 10 bananas a day, and visiting a nearby fruit farm.  At the fruit farm they grow over 600 different types of fruit and taking the tour there was like a scene from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory, only with fruit instead of chocolate.  We tried fruit I had never seen or heard of before and everything was either more sweet or sour than usual fruits.  Some examples include: Chicle, Araza, Mangostin, Champadek, Cocoa, Borojo, Salak, and probably 25 more that we tasted!

Overall my internship was a great experience and I definitely learned a lot about life on a farm. I also learned how to effectively conserve land, while also providing human benefits.  I hope to return to Pambiliño some day and see how my plants are doing!

Now, I am back in Quito for the last three days of our program.  Here, we have one last paper to write and a presentation to give and then the semester is officially over.  It is crazy to think how quickly my time spent in the middle of the earth has gone. I am still amazed everyday by the fantastic and diverse ecosystems that are all around in such short distances from one another.  I am so appreciative for all the time I have spent in Ecuador and all of the amazing people I met.  

Luckily for me, the end of the semester program does not mean the end of my time in South America.   Following the end of the program, I am headed to Peru with a friend to explore and climb Machu Pichu and then to Columbia where more adventures await with my sister Elana!

Chau y nos vemos!

Pambiliño Family