September 24, 2022 to October 22, 2022
Repeating parts of TEMBR to head to Ruben's farm
Today, I re-rode 30 miles of TEMBR but in the opposite direction as I wanted to follow my heart.
I got back to Ruben's farm and spent a month learning life skills. Every day, I got to see how hardworking farmers are and how labor intensive their lives are.
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Regardless of how cold, rainy or cloudy the mornings on this farm at some 11,700 feet were, both Ruben and Nube would get to milking the 8 cows sometimes as early as 6-630am. This process would get repeated in the evening again regardless of the weather.
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After milking the cows, the other farm or miscellaneous work would begin. Other work could be moving the cows to another pasture where there's more grass, bringing them water, weeding the little potato patch they had or planting native plants. Watering the cows was the hardest as many a times it involved carrying buckets of water up mountainsides and repeating it until the cow's satiated.
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The other work could be digging trenches along the road so that rainwater doesn't wash the road away. And then sometimes, Ruben and I worked on renovating their farmhouse.
Their 2 kids ( 9 and 5-year olds) usually got out of school by noon and once home, they also got to farm work regardless of how bad the weather was. Because I was a guest or someone who's still learning things, I don't get pulled into all the outside work. One day, I had to water the cows and I probably got some 1000-1500 feet elevation gain in a matter of hour or so.
One of the cows was sick and the vet recommended a medicine. After a week of waiting period, the milk from that cow was mixed along with rest as per recommendation. Unfortunately the medicine was still being detected in the milk and all that 160 litres of milk was unusable.
One weekend, fortunately I went with Ruben even though I wanted to stay back and study. Once at the other farm, I realized that we were at his dad's farm, farmhouse which now mostly stood abandoned, falling apart after his dad passed away some 5 years ago. It was like travelling back into time as Ruben showed the paper tree (polylepsis) he grew up climbing and the school he went to as a kid.
In a way, I have been fortune to have encountered Ruben on my ride down this mountain. If it wasn't for this chance meeting, I would have been just a traveller passing through this community, seeing the beautiful scenery of mountains, farms, farm fences made of local plants, shrubs without realizing the true cost, sweat and lives behind the beauty.
Yes, when we visited Ruben's dad's farm we picked up some seedlings of that paper tree and other native trees so that we could plant them on Ruben's farm.
Ruben never stops working as he's working on multiple projects or starts a new one as he's about to complete another. One day, we started renovating kitchen and living room. All the carpentry, masonry, electrical work is done by him. In parallel, he's working on some farm projects such as hiring a crane to dig up a pond to grow trucha or level the dirt road. That evening, Ruben, his 5-year old and I planted saplings of native plants around the newly dug trucha pond.
The works never ending and I always had something to learn.
But after spending a month on the farm, I finally felt a bit satiated and wanted to hit the road again to experience more adventures, meet new people.
So, on October 21st I hit the road again. This time I didn't want to walk my bike on TEMBR for the 3rd time. So chickened out by riding through Azugues and then Pan-Americana. I got to Cuenca in some 4 hours instead of the usual 6-7 hours ride/walk through mountains.
Today's ride: 60 miles (97 km)
Total: 1,581 miles (2,544 km)
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