Lamas and the farm

29/09/2013 Life in this farm is very pleasant. We are in the cloud forest, this means that the vegetation here is quite different from the selva. Till few years ago in this area the main cultivation was the coca trees, but the government gave some incentives to the population in order to begin cultivating cacao, banana, cafe and other plants. The farm where I'm living now is located in Huapo, a little village near Lamas. The farm is quite new, but it has a big variety of different fruits (about 40), even if the main cultivation is cacao, cafe and banana, papaya and yucca. Since when we arrived here we got spoiled with the best fruits and food: ananas, papaya, avocado, banana, cacao, cafe, pancakes, home made bread, salads etc. Like I always says, Frenches have lot of defects ;-), but they know how to cook! Roman took us to visit his land and I must say that I falled in love immediately. Besides the cultivated part, in his land there are also a river and a waterfall. Near the cacao trees he built a beautiful and rustic house, with a great view on his land. No other houses in the proximity, very silent. Yesterday we took a day off and we went to visit Lamas . It's about 8 km from Huapo and you can take a collettivo car or just going by foot. Lamas is a really nice village: it divided into two areas, one newer, and another more traditional and simple (the most beautiful part of the city in my opinion). Besides this, it hosts also a castle. 7 years ago an Italian man (I would like to know him to ask him some questions) decided to build a castle on the top of the city and the castle became a museum and an attractions for tourists. Building a castle in 2006 is a very uncommon idea, not very attractive, no magical atmosphere, so we just decided to skip the visit. Because in Huapo many products are unavailable, we bought some food for the week. Couple of days ago we worked in the cacao plantation. It's amazing how I can be ignorant about one of the product I love the most : chocolate. I had no idea how the fruit looked like, even the taste is completely different from what I imagined. The fruit has a hard cortex, with different colors. When it reaches the yellow/red color it means it's mature and it can be collected. To open it you need a machete (of course I left this job to someone else, I don't even know where is the nearest hospital) and inside there are the cacao seeds, surrounded by a white pulp. This pulp can be eaten and its taste reminds me about the Lichee fruits, very tasty. We placed the seeds in 2 big bags (about 40 kg) where they will remain for at least 4 days before drying them under the sun. After one hour we collected about 5 litre of juice :  the most tasty juice I've ever drunk in all my life! It's very dense and sweet (almost like a syrup), and a Lichee flavour. After 1 or 2 days this juice becomes very alcoholic because of the fermentation process. From the juice you can be also obtain honey, cooking it for some hours on the fire. The strange thing is that all the other farmers just throw away the juice. What a waste....

The farm 

 

Lamas