Before The Cabbages

When we first got to Bolson, we were staying in town in the tool shed of one Pastor Silvestre, who promulgates the practices revealed to some US American hippies during an acid trip in the seventies and now collected under the title The Chronicles of Enoch.  It's hilarious to hear and read corny new-age English phrasology as a sacred language, in fact I often cannot stiffle a laugh.

But despite his far-out-dude philosophy, Pastor (as all call him, I know it sounds freaky) is a remarkably down-to-earth guy, and by far the best patron we've yet encountered.  When we first arrived, he said something like, "Listen, I can't feed you because I have kids, and you are like big kids," which makes sense, because like so many folks on the organic farming list, he doesn´t have a farm; and it's expensive to feed people if you don't have surplus produce.  So we went to the grocery store and bought some potatoes and then proceeded to experience the most reasonable system for long-term, live-in volunteerism I've yet seen.

Every day, starting the very afternoon we arrived, we went somewhere to do some work and usually, while we were there, eat some food.  And sometimes we didn't go anywhere or do anything, in which case we made our own food; and nobody became slowly resentful of anybody else.  Pastor is at the center of an exceptional, diverse, urban community of landowners, volunteers, and artists, all with disparate living standards and arrangements but interested, broadly, in Permaculture. Dude himself is an artist who makes wind chimes to sell at the four-day-a-week art fair in the center of town; and we spent many hours in his workshop machining and assembling trade goods. But we also fixed roofs, including the living roof at Blanca Rosa's Hosteria de Permacultura, his mother's place. 

In spite of his feeding quip, Pastor did not treat us as kids, but recognized us as adults and was not surprised to find us pursuing our own projects and setting our own schedules as we came to know the area.  When we worked for him, he served us rice and sweet potatoes, and sometimes beef, with delicious home-cooked love; and when we found other roofs or other work, he was just as pleased.

Two weeks ago Pastor went to a trade show up north and we moved to Los Repollos.  Daniella and Marcello are much more peripherally invlolved in the Permaculture Posse; we met them through Blanca Rosa and are still happilly living in their attic, cutting wood and making trails.