A Visit to Aprovecho: Learning How to Live Our Life in A Sustainable Manner
by
Rachel Tennant

Before my trip to Oregon, I completed three years of undergraduate study with a strong focus on environmental issues. So it might seem funny when I admit that before my trip to Oregon, I had never propagated a seed, or planted a tree. In fact, before my trip to Oregon I never took the time to admire the mangoes growing in my neighbor's backyard. Instead, I plotted to cut parts of the tree down so that the leaves would stop piling up in our yard. Oh how things have changed!

For five weeks this summer I lived on a community farm called Aprovecho (known as Apro to residents). The word aprovecho means, "to make the best use of" in Spanish. Personally, I think this term is an understatement given all the work Apro puts toward living more sustainably. But how should I describe what could be written as a book, into a four to five page summary? After giving this plenty of thought, I've decided the best way to share my experience is by starting at the beginning.

I wasn't sure what to expect as I exited the plane in the Eugene, Oregon airport. I knew some people would be waiting to pick me up, but I didn't know who and I had no idea what they looked like. Walking down the stairs toward the luggage pick-up, I saw a group of three people - the three people I'd be driving to Apro with. One boy was wearing torn overalls with his long brown unbrushed hair setting on his shoulders. The girl next to him was wearing torn jeans with dirt in her fingernails and a nose ring that reminded me of the nose rings a stadium bull might have. The third person, a boy named Dan, was another intern who flew in from Boston.

On the way to Apro we stopped at a natural foods store to pick up some avocados. Before we reached the natural foods store, the boy in overalls saw a homeless man in the street that needed shoes. At a red light, the boy in overalls brought the homeless man the shoes off his own feet. Later, in the parking lot of the natural foods store, the boy in overalls met another homeless man who goes by the name of Superman. They talked for almost fifteen minutes. And it was this day that I knew Apro would be a life changing experience for me.

For the next five weeks I was reconnected with nature in a way that I didn't know I longed for. When I was younger, my family used to go camping and spend time in creeks and mountains. These days I'm so busy reading textbooks and driving to school or work that I don't have time to realize my own desires. But at Apro things slowed down and I was able to catch up with the reality of why I've chosen to study the environmental cause.

The internship program was organized into four subjects - introductions, water resources, appropriate technology, and waste. Monday through Thursday there was class from 9am to 12pm and then again from 1:30pm to 4:30pm. Classes were taught by various staff at Aprovecho depending upon the topic of the day or week. Sometimes classes were given in a lecture format with worksheets or PowerPoint. Other times, classes were more hands on with students chopping wood or maintaining solar panels and more. Fridays were field trips to different local farms and facilities that were generally related to the topic of the week.

Through the classes I learned a lot about the formalities and implications of large-scale sustainability. I was also introduced to leaders and concepts that I'd never heard of before - such as Bill Mollison and permaculture. But I want everyone to know that whereas the classes were informative, the lifestyle was what brought about this fire in me to change.

Hitchhiking is legal in Oregon. During the group's first trip to Cottage Grove, one of the work traders at Apro hitchhiked back to campus rather than walking the six miles. Another day, when I was riding to the Eugene Farmer's Market with one of the Apro staff, we stopped to pick up a hitchhiker. As it turned out, this man was hitchhiking to get back to the Obama headquarters in Eugene. We dropped him off at the headquarters and then went on our way to the Farmer's Market, only two minutes away. Hitchhiking is foreign to me because it's illegal in Florida (as far as I know). It seems dangerous and unreliable (people are afraid to pick hitchhikers up). But in Oregon, with the residents of Aprovecho, it was a common way to get around. In fact, one of the residents at Apro was originally from Florida and spent many of her younger years hitching on trains cross-country. At least that's the story told by other residents of Apro. I never asked her.

Another interesting aspect of Apro living was chores. We were living in a community - and to be in a community you must share chores. My favorite chore was cooking. Each of us had breakfast duty for one week during the internship. Since we were cooking for about ten people in the morning, oats (steel cut or rolled oats) were usually the breakfast of choice. I made it a point to make natural (homemade) cinnamon buns during my week. Since we were in class, the Aprovecho staff always managed lunch duty. Finally, each intern was responsible for dinner one night a week (Monday through Thursday). Weekend meals were not assigned but community members were encouraged to work together when cooking so that we didn't waste wood for a stove fire.

Cooking was an interesting chore because each night we were responsible to cook for about 22 people. Most importantly, though, cooking was interesting because of the ingredients we had to work with. For about three weeks out of the internship, we were running out of ingredients. Apples went first. Then onions. Then potatoes. By the third week of diminishing supply, cooking became a test of your creative abilities. And there was a lot of math. If you need brown sugar, try adding molasses and sugar together. But if you don't have granulated sugar, you can use honey. But you should only use half the amount of honey because it's sweeter than sugar. How much molasses should you use? We worked together and succeeded.

Aprovecho has a two-acre garden where they grow almost half of their food. The other half is purchased through local farms and manufacturers. Some of the things purchased include sugar, honey, rice, spices, and oats. It was a strange time to visit Aprovecho because their garden was very much out of season. Some of the things growing were mint, carrots, garlic, and a lot of lettuces. Later in the year Aprovecho will have a more plentiful garden from which they will be getting most of their food. In fact, starting in September Aprovecho is hosting a six week local-foods internship focused on the 100-mile diet.

Oregon weather is another mystery to me. When I arrived at the end of May, there was rain-snow. The temperature was about 60F on average. Then out of the blue there was a day of above 100F weather. Then back to 60F. By the time I left Oregon in June, it was the end of a weeklong period of gray skies, rain, and mud. We were seeing blue skies for the first time in a week! Normally I wouldn't pay much attention to the weather because there's always the option of hiding indoors. But at Apro, where straw bales and newspaper insulate the main house, the weather matters. In fact, the weather affects your cooking. On days when it was cold outside, we cooked on the indoor wood stove to help heat the main house. On days when it was warmer outside, we cooked in the outdoor kitchen.

The outdoor kitchen deserves its own paragraph. It is a kitchen made up of rocket stoves, ovens made out of cob, and very sooty pots. In fact, the pots are so sooty that you're not allowed to bring them indoors. But it's a great experience. I had never been so attentive to my food before cooking in the outdoor kitchen. The wood used to keep the outdoor stoves burning is about the size of two Jenga blocks put together. As you can imagine, keeping these fires going is a job in itself because it doesn't take much for the wood to burn out.

Finally, I want to talk about Apro's composting system. Before Aprovecho, I never questioned where my garbage ended up. I just took it for granted that I put it in the dumpster and the garbage men picked it up. One of the topics at Apro was waste. During the week about waste, I felt myself beginning to understand. Our waste is immense. We throw things away because we can - and because we know there is more out there to be bought. But where is it going, and why is it going there if it doesn't need to? Aprovecho has a system of using all of their food scraps in compost piles that sit for about six months to a year before they are used as soil (described as "black gold" by the head gardener at Apro). They also compost their own humanure. They are searching for more responsible ways to compost humanure because they want to implement practices that can be mimicked without causing danger to people or the environment. To compost the humanure, they must collect it. To collect it, we all used buckets as our toilets. Instead of flushing water, we used sawdust to help "dilute" or break down the feces. And when the bucket was full, we emptied it into a pile of humanure and sawdust that had already begun composting

.
And that was my experience in Oregon. I am proud to say that since my return from Oregon I've started propagating seeds in any backyard I have access to. I am hoping to have a pizza garden by the end of the summer so that my brother and I can have an organic pizza party. Everything I propagate is edible because I've discovered a feeling of pride in being able to sustain for my family and myself. And I am recycling more than ever. There are neighbors that don't want their mangoes and coconuts, which are sharing them with me so that I can attempt to eat locally. And I am in the process of planning the 100-mile diet for myself because I want to commit to a month of local foods, much like Apro has done. I didn't know I could make a difference - and now I get it. I'll do what I can until I can't do anything anymore. Hopefully by that time I will have taught others to do what they can until they can't anymore. Because it matters.

This visit was supported by the FIU Agroecology Program and the USDA CSREES HSI Higher Education Grant Program (USDA-CSREES Grant Number 2005-36422-15940).