I love cows! They are so beautiful, full of personality, and they never forget. Today, instead of working with a coffee farmer (who never showed up), I ended up meeting a cow farmer on the road home. It felt like it was meant to be. He was smart, kind, and full of stories, and I am grateful we crossed paths—especially since reaching him was no easy task.

Glad we met him, because getting there is not easy. Below are pictures of what we drove through on a moped–yep a moped. Getting there meant riding through rough roads on a moped. A few days ago, my translator and I had a motorcycle wreck on the way to the palm oil plantation. In the video, he is in front of us on his dirt bike (his tires are not made for this kind of riding). (Daddy–if you read this, Yoga was driving the motorcycle when we wrecked. He is the man who came to the house, you gave him honey, and his baby really likes it. Hope you remember.) Now, I ride with my local guide, who has more experience navigating these trails. Below are some pictures of what we drove through—it was an adventure!

He told me that keeping cows is like money in the bank. When people see you have cows, they know you have value and are willing to loan you money. The cows serve as collateral, so he can always borrow when needed. Smart man. He knows how to make his farm work for him.

As we stood among his cows, I asked him, “If all the people were gone, would the rainforest return? Would the plants and animals come back?”
He smiled and answered, “You can make rice into porridge, but you cannot make porridge into rice.”
I will let you sit with that for a moment. His comment says everything.

He showed me how he manages his herd. He tied up the mother cow, but left the others free, because they will follow her.

This is a video of going to the farm and the farmer with his cows. ~2 minutes.

That was the morning. In the afternoon, I worked on another vegetable farm. My first job was plucking the tops off the cassava plants. Cassava is an edible root vegetable. Reminds me of potatoes, but harder. It is high carbohydrates and can hand harsh conditions. The peeling contains toxic cyanide compounds. It must be cooked really well before eating. My local guide showed me how to pluck the young shoots from the top. I know cassava as a root crop, but here the leaves are just as important. They use them in curry, and the flavor is rich and slightly bitter. I was careful to break the stems just below the young leaves.

The farmer taught me how to harvest water spinach. That was second job. Water spinach grows fast and spreads easily. The green stems are crisp and tender. Collecting cassava and water spinach does not take a lot of time, but it is hot in the sun!

Farming here is not easy because the soil needs more fertilizer now, hotter now than it was, water is short supply (yep in the rainforest). Farming is also about pests. Here the pests can be monkeys. They had gotten into her peanuts. They pull them up just before they are ready to eat. Much like the squirrels at my house that eat my apples, figs, and tomatoes just before they are ready. She told me they love peanuts. Because the forest is shrinking and food is scarce, sometimes the monkeys now raid the farms. The monkeys did the same at the rice paddy. It is a reminder of how closely farmers and wildlife live side by side, and how both struggle when the forest changes.

I thought she was picking peas for dinner, but I was wrong. Instead, she was pinching the tender tops off the pea plants. The young shoots are an additional food source. They sauté them like spinach. I ate some raw peas, but I did not try the leaves. Might do that with my peas next year.

When the sun got hot, we stopped. Her lean-to sat crooked in the field, patched and leaning. Looks like it is ready to fall down, but it is sturdy. In the middle of the afternoon when it is so hot and you wear the humidity like a blanket of Vaseline, the lean-to looks like a castle. We sat in the shade, while she lit a small fire to chase away the mosquitoes. Smoke curled around us while we rested and talked. It was a nice pause in the middle of the work.

If a video is more your thing, then this a video of the experience.