Well, we survived a week on the farm. I have nothing to compare it to, as I've only been on short visits to other farms (and am always anxious to leave), but all in all, it was a good experience. Nothing like my romanticized vision of leisurely harvesting vegetables and canning them, but an experience nonetheless.
We arrived last Monday at lunchtime and following the afternoon siesta we were set to work. Much to my dismay, we would not be tending to the garden and learning how to plant and grow. We would be building a fence. A fence to keep out "intruders." There was an existing fence that was just not doing the trick; it needed to be higher. Sound familiar? Our first task was to cut down some trees (we referred to this as "thinning") with machetés and make a pile of them. We did that for an afternoon with one other volunteer. Dave had a ball with the macheté; I stuck to pruning and making the pile. The following day we went through a field, found old fallen trees, and pruned and piled those as well (a rational person would have found the dead trees first...). When we had enough we brought the logs 200 meters to the start of the fence and started constructing. This was our task for the week.
Most of our days were spent working on the "cerco" (fence). One afternoon, however, all the volunteers were assigned to a different task. We would be recycling old horse manure into a building material. That's right, horse shit. We would then use the shit as plaster for the walls of a newly constructed dorm (this is sort of adobe). It was mixed with hay and sawdust and probably some other stuff, I stopped paying attention after horse shit. Before it was ready to be plopped on the walls it needed to be mixed. It would be literal to say we were knee deep in shit. Just like the Italians used to stomp the juice out of grapes, we stomped the shit out of that shit. And honestly, it wasn´t that bad. I particularly enjoyed slapping it onto the walls. I always liked ceramics, and this was just like working with clay. Well, kinda. It didn't smell all that bad, but every once and awhile you'd remember your hands were full of shit. The puns that afternoon were flying, and indeed intended.
The food at the farm was good, lots of onion and garlic, even for me (that means a ton!). We drank a lot of tea and played some epic games of rummy. All the people were great, and on our next trip we think we will try to do this farming thing again. It saves a ton of money...and it's good shit!