Farmer-to-Farmer Program: Day 12-14 Selva Negra, Matagalpa, and Managua (Nicaragua)

The final days of my assignment were spent taking in more of Nicaragua's sights and doing administrative work.

Selva Negra is a private reserve in the cloud forests. You can enjoy the walking trails, try the delightful assortment of cakes in the restaurant, and visit the coffee farm. The term "coffee farm" should only lightly be applied. In addition to organic shade-grown coffee production and processing, Selva Negra also maintains horticulture greenhouses, fruit trees, composting and bio-gas facilities, a cheese-making dairy, and an abundance of livestock (cow, sheep, goat, chicken, duck, and quail for starters). Most of the products and produce get used in the restaurant or by the farm workers, but through a partnership with the Rainforest Alliance, you might find their coffee being sold in your local Whole Foods. My overnight visit was a good chance to see another dimension of Nicaragua's agriculture.

Our return trip was not without its own excitement. President Daniel Ortega, whose face and logos and slogans are all over billboards, bus stops, and bumper stickers in Nicaragua (elections are later this year), was giving a speech in Matagalpa. It seemed like everyone in the highlands was turning out to see him. The roads were packed with caravan after caravan of wildly hootin' and hollerin' supporters. Then, we even passed the president's own car!

Our arrival into Managua itself was more subdued. I did finally have a chance to taste that traditional weekend Nicaraguan treat - the nacatamale. On the outskirts of the city, we drove into an unremarkable residential neighborhood. We stopped outside a house with a tiny handwritten sign ("Hay nacatamales") and shouted through the gated door how many we wanted. The lady of the house came out to hand us the steaming bundles in plastic bags. Slow-cooked, spiced pork was encased in masa (corn meal dough) mixed with potato chunks, peppers, and onions. The sizeable mass - roughly 2-4 times the size of any Mexican tamale I've ever had - was topped with a slice of tomato (and possibly a grape leaf) and then wrapped in a giant plantain leaf to steam. It all made for a greasy, spicy, porky bundle of absolute deliciousness.

We headed back into the office for my final work day, exchanging pictures and checking paperwork. I continued to work on the report, the single most important document for a Farmer-to-Farmer program volunteer's assignment. Aside from chronicling our activities, it also details all the recommendations I made to growers, the Farmer-to-Farmer program itself, and even future volunteers. My assignment was part of a larger, ongoing horticulture project in the Nicaragua Farmer-to-Farmer program so it was also interesting to observe any changes made based on previous volunteers' suggestions and document them.

Farmer-to-Farmer Program: Day 5 - 9 Granada, Managua, Matagalpa, and Estelí

At 6 am, we caught the local bus from Granada to Managua. There were no chickens on board, but the guy drumming up business on the door did his best to keep it packed with fares. The constant stopping and starting nearly doubled the time, but at 20 córdobas (~ 90 cents) a ride, they had to line their pockets somehow.

In Managua, we got into the truck and straight back onto the road, heading to the main potato-growing region. While the highlands of Nicaragua are gorgeously pastoral and green, it can be rough going from a farmer's point of view. Since other pursuits like drying coffee and growing rice occupy the ideal land in the valleys, the steep and rocky slopes make manual and animal labor the norm for potatoes. Potatoes in Nicaragua are grown mainly for consumption. Some are used for seed, but not enough to meet demand, so much gets imported from as far as away as Europe. Very little goes for processing although french fries (chips) are on many menus, and chips (crisps) are also becoming more popular.

In Matagalpa and Estelí we met with members of potato growers' cooperatives. In the fields I saw plenty of familiar faces from my past, that is, of the insect and disease kind (e.g. leaf beetles, leafhoppers, whiteflies, white grubs, late blight, and Erwinia spp.). Growers were also worried about the newer guys as there are a couple of serious, emerging problems in Nicaragua. While there was plenty to chat about in the fields, we did formal training sessions, too. Sometimes in the most unlikely places. One was a tin-roofed, dirt-floored shack in the middle of a nature reserve, where the solar panel eeked out just enough juice to fly through one presentation and a couple videos. The ensuing discussions - almost in the dark - though were some of the most dynamic, which just goes to show that you don't always need the technology.

Visiting a warehouse gave us insight into post-harvest practices, and some suggestions were made for improving sanitation and storage. We also got better informed about the resources available by trotting around to several agricultural supply shops in town. We had to go incognito, posing as interested buyers. Apparently, the clerks in general in Nicaragua tend to deliver death stares to the shopper who dares to tell them, "I'm just looking."