La Grecia Service Visit — Mary

We rode a chicken bus for about 30 minutes along a bumpy road to the community of La Grecia just outside San Ramon, Matagalpa to visit Mary.  Mary is working with Vicente Padilla (not the baseball player) on his organic farm.  You may remember Vicente’s farm from an earlier visit by the entire group in May.  She has experienced a wide variety of tasks and every day does something different.  She is learning about coffee, bananas, and other crops.  She eats a lot of fresh bananas and other foods from the farm.  She also has helped fix a lean-to, milked the family cow, weeded the garden, cleaned out the earthworm compost, cleared walking paths, watched her host sister’s folk dances, helped build a small cement pool to help in sorting coffee beans, and she still finds time to nap every afternoon! Mary has embraced working with the land and alongside her host father and brothers.  Every day has a new adventure and story to tell.