Finca days

The finca -- or family farm -- is the center of smallholder farming in rural Ecuador. These are plots of land that support a family with a mixture of cash crops and subsistence farming. Our neighbors trek to their fincas each morning to milk their cows, harvest bananas, plant yuca and corn, tend to pigs and chickens. They return in the afternoon to weed around fruit trees, combat pests, and repair fences. But, despite the finca being a place of boundless toil and labor, our Ecuadorian family -- even Lucia's mother, the 74-year old matriarch, who hikes to her property at least three times a day to check on her chickens and convene with her cacao trees-- loves to spend chunks of leisure time in the finca.

It is hard to describe these leisure days at the finca. There are scenes that come to mind from literature -- picnic scenes like Anne of Green Gables' first taste of ice cream, a morning of bird-watching in the Secret Garden with Mary and Dickon, or a County Fair Day with the Ingalls family in Little House on the Prairie. But these are leisure days of literature, and finca days are not the same as the leisure days of literature.

For our Ecuadorian family, finca days are absolutely treasured and lovingly curated. Menus are planned, chickens are slaughtered, transportation arranged. But by far, the most important ingredient is family -- an often messy multi-generational mix of family, including in-laws and god-children, grandkids, great grandkids, and everyone in between. Finca days typically occur when kids are off school and adult children are home on national or sanctioned holidays. Because the children are on break this month, these finca days are happening more frequently. This week alone, we had a special lunch at Inez' finca, one river fishing day at the finca, and a rainy finca day at Mirian's property in the hills high above La Josefina.

On finca days, there is no domestic or hireling to pass out cups of iced tea or to dish up bowls of freshly cut fruit. There are no chaise lounges or swimming pools to dip ones feet in. But, there is a unique version of indulgence, a sense of slowing down, of experiencing ones surroundings with attention. There is always plentiful fruit, hanging from trees -- as long as you have remembered to bring a gancho (a hook, often attached to a long branch, which is the tool used to pick fruit) and a machete to acquire and cut them. There are hammocks to sit in, though you may have to repair them before you sit for a few minutes. There are rivers to dip your toes into. There are fish to be caught, but no fishing poles or lines, just ground up venomous leaves and plastic bags and quick hands. There are chickens to be plucked, homemade charcoal to be lit, yuca to be peeled, huge blackened pots to be set aboil. There are oranges to be picked and peeled. Cacao to be cracked open. Trees to be climbed.

There is all of this and more.

It is sometimes hard to figure out where to insert oneself -- I cannot adeptly defeather a chicken or even peel an orange. I am not a farmer. I do not feel an inherited attachment to the plants or the dirt. But those who invited us do not require our labor or our skills or even our adoration-- they invite us for company and to share in their joy of their surroundings. To simply be. In the finca. And to eat, of course.

Yesterday, during our day at Mirian's finca, I took a walk with Señora Inez, the grand matriarch I mentioned above. Inez grabbed a machete and said to me, conspiringly, "Let's go, let's go see what we can find." As we ambled around the property, she swung her machete; she made a gancho for Jonah, dug up native roots for fishing, pruned bananas, and talked to me about her life -- about her seven adult children and frustrations with some of them: about her daughter who refuses to leave a loveless marriage, a granddaughter in Spain, upset she was not pleased with the new refrigerator she gifted her, another daughter with lupus in love with a man with quadriplegia. As we stopped to pull roots together, I listened.

Meanwhile, my children participated contentedly in the day: Dillon peeled orange after orange, Jonah climbed trees and practiced his machete skills, Brynna played with Alice and her new gancho, then stopped to watch as a group of kids played cards inside the partially finished house. Paul, who was not feeling well, observed at a distance from a hammock. My kids have learned patience, I found myself thinking. They have learned to appreciate something they did not even know existed nine months ago. They understand this place and this land and this world in a way that is difficult for me to put into words.

After a few hours, we were called to eat together, sitting on rustic benches around a common table-- plátano maduro, chicken and yuca with rice and creamy avocados -- delicious fresh food that came together not magically but with the diligence of several hard-working women who had been tending to the food and fire all day, as is the custom and habit here. We ate. Brynna loved the salad. Jonah the rice. Dillon found the chicken less chewy than is usual. I personally loved the yuca.

We chatted. And giggled. We washed our dishes in a bucket. We played a few raucous rounds of Uno Flip, Slapzi, and Spot It, which I had thankfully tucked into our backpack at the last minute. And then we huddled together under a plastic tarp that protected us from a tropical downpour. Once we realized that the rain was unlikely to stop any time soon, we all piled into a pick-up truck, twenty of us by my count, and headed home to the great city of La Josefina. A little soggy, bellies full, quite content. A good finca day.