dirty fingernails

Welcome to Caleu

Caleu is a tiny community of small farms, a chapel, and general store nestled in the dusty hills that surround metropolitan Santiago. Along the one rocky road that strings them all together, hang wooden signs that advertise the home-made and home-grown. "Hay Pan"(We have bread), "Se Vende Queso"(Cheese sold here), "Lechuga Fresca"(fresh lettuce), and the a few parcels of land up for sale. Chirping birds, a few rooster crows, and the occasional crunching of tires over uneven dirt roads dominate the Caleu soundscape. Everywhere smells like hot dirt.

The editor of The Santiago Times (where I intern), owns a few acres here where he and his family also live. I help out in the organic gardens, watering, weeding, feeding chickens, and other light farm work. In exchange, I get to live (humbly, which is the only way really) in their garden shed and get fed three meals a day. A good 80 percent of the meal is straight up vegetables. Though technically this is also a "gardening internship", I still can't believe I get to live and eat here for basically a couple hours a day of gardening and dish-washing at meals. It's a great set up, but will I be able to handle four months of it? Will the routine, physical labor under the mid-day heat, and distance from the city lose it's rustic charm and make me yearn for the madness of living in a concrete jungle? Will I ever write a lead story? Will I ever work up the courage to call sources and confirm facts...in Spanish? Guess we'll see. But oh man, thank god there's internet out here.

What do we grow in the gardens you ask? Well let's take a peek...

Daily weeding ensures a constant layer of earth packed into the crevices around my fingernails. Surely I won't spend hours picking the dirt out of them, just to have them muddied up the next day. Quick fix solution? A bright red nail polish that not only effectively masks the hygiene faux pas, but also allows me to garden in style. Where does my genius come from?

Arugula. One of my favorite vegetables, and they have too much of it. For that, my strangely massive appetite is useful.

Around the farm...

Rosita hangs laundry

Some of my roommates. They're pretty chill, not too neurotic about the cleaning. Though I kind of wish I had roommates who didn't nap ALL DAY or run away when I try to high-five them.

A typical Anderson family meal. The healthiest I've ever eaten in my life.