In Loving Memory

This Sunday morning, on May 5, Pedro Lopez, my wife's maternal grandfather, passed away at the age of 89.

Matias Pedro Lopez Jaimes, Feb. 24, 1924 - May 5, 2013, requiescat en pace

Please take a moment and say a prayer for him.

Eternal memory. Eternal memory. Grant to your servant, O Lord, blessed repose and eternal memory.

 
He lived a long life of good health and great enthusiasm. Last time I saw him, a bit more than a year ago, he complained that he could walk only 3 or 4 kilometers (about 2 or 3 miles) without his walking stick.  As I told everyone then, this was still healthier than most young people I know; yet, he said he felt weakened.  It was only the last 2 months of his life that he was ill and needed a wheelchair to get around in.

His only illness was that his body was worn out from old age and a life of very hard work.

I am glad that at the moment he died, 4 of his 5 children were at his side, as well as his brother Palemon.  From the account I heard, he ended his life pleasantly and in comfort.

My wife misses him greatly since she spent most of her childhood summers on his farm.

To see all posts related to my wife's dear Grandpa, click here.  It gives a very, very small glimpse of the rich life he lived.

Family Planning, the Other Way Around

Generally, when we say "family planning" we mean limiting the size of our families.  Just recently, it occurred to me that many people who have very large families actually plan to do so - it's not just an accident.  They're "planning their families" too, but simply planning to have lots of children.

This weekend we visited my wife's grandpa's farm again.  One evening we were sitting in the house for the evening snack, and my wife's great uncle showed up.  As with everyone else, we told him the exciting news that we were expecting our third child.  Like everyone else, he was very happy to hear the news.

"That's wonderful," he said.  "It's a good start.  There are people out there these days who don't want to have any babies."  He shook his head in disapproval. "We need to have children.  There's always enough work for everyone." (On the farm, they always end their day without finishing the many tasks that could be done.)

Great-Uncle Palemon, Proud of Our Good Start

He then went on to tell various stories of couples he knew of who had had 15, 20 and even 30 children.  My wife simply nodded as though she agreed this sounded like a good idea, not daring to argue.  Her great aunt stood by listening, nodding in real, heartfelt approval of these wonderful stories.

My wife's grandpa had also given another perspective; "The more children we have, the more we have.  We all work hard together and share, and that way no body is ever lacking anything."  (By "we" he meant the extended family and even the community as a whole - not one isolated family.)  More children is a form of stability and a guarantee that there are always people to help each other.  For my wife's grandpa, this point was especially important, since he is now older and unable to manage his farm alone, and is becoming more and more dependent on his children and grandchildren. There's also a social importance - the simple love of being around family (in their view) makes it good and pleasant to be around many children and grandchildren and have their company.

These three elderly people believe in family planning.  Not in the sense of actively limiting your family size as we use the phrase now, but rather planning to have as many children as possible. Having more children is a good thing all senses - morally, economically, socially, etc.  So you plan to have many.

(It's important to note that these people aren't Catholic - in fact, there quite aggressively anti-Catholic.  This is simply a matter of traditional values.  They also aren't rich or even average in wealth - even by the standards of the impoverished countryside where they live, they are among the poorest.  But again, lots of kids is an economic support as well, besides being morally correct and more pleasant.)

As a disclaimer on behalf of my wife's beloved family members, they weren't spitting out babies once a year for several decades.  One of them had 6 children and the other had 7 - far from the 15 and 20 of her uncle's wonderful stories.  This was as many children as they could physically have.  Back in their days, they didn't have access to baby formula or bottles, meaning the babies were breastfed as long as they needed milk and couldn't drink out of a cup.  This was an obstacle to their having more babies, not a method of avoiding babies.  So instead of having babies every year, they would have a baby every 3 or 4 years.

(On the farm, entire families share one bedroom - although I don't really know, I'm guessing this factor also created certain practical limitations on parts of the process.)

So my wife's great uncles and aunts didn't have 15 or 20 children. They wish they could've.  But they couldn't.  It simply didn't happen.  One thing is for sure - they weren't trying to prevent it.  They were trying to have as many as possible.  That was their plan.

I was talking to my brother-in-law about this on the drive home.  We realized the gigantic families of 15 - 20 are not a product of old-fashioned ideas, but rather of modernism getting mixed up with old-fashioned ideas;  when innovations from the modern world remove the natural obstacles to having children, suddenly people who want to have as many children as possible can have 15, 20 or even more.  Those who don't want this many children need to find artificial (or natural) ways to prevent it.

Thus, in the past family planning meant planning to have as many kids as you could.  You wanted 15; if you were lucky you'd get 7.  An "accident" (e.g. the wife got sick and couldn't have kids for a while) meant you didn't get as many kids as you wanted. Now, family planning means you plan to prevent having kids, whether it be artificially or naturally.  You want one or two children.  An "accident" means you have a second or third that you weren't planning on.  To most of our generation it's absurd to think that a third child could actually be a part of a plan of any sort.

The phrase "family planning," wouldn't necessarily have to mean limiting family size.  We simply assume that it does. It's incredible how things change.

Growing Up in Story Book

When my wife first got to know me, to her I looked like Tom Sawyer – or at least the way she imagined Tom Sawyer.  I think she imagined me as a boy, running around in a picturesque little town, barefoot wearing denim overalls and messy, curly red hair - like in story book.

Visiting, and now living, in Canada has only confirmed her imagination.  Seeing the Mennonites’ horses and buggies, rustic bicycles with large baskets leaning up against old, red-brick store buildings (without locks) and the little red-haired, freckled children (to her, we all look like we have red or blond hair) run around in the large, open, fence-less grassy spaces of our village has made her more convinced than ever that I grew up in a story book.  I didn’t grow in the village where we live now, but my hometown (Elmira) is still small, and to her still looks like it’s from a story book.

When I tell her that this is just normal life in these towns (until the kids become teens), and those who live here find nothing romantic about it, it again reinforces her suspicions; only those who grew up in a story book wouldn’t find it romantic - just like her grandparents, aunts and uncles find nothing romantic about growing up in an adobe house with a mud floor in Mexico’s isolated hills.  As you can tell from my blog posts (see “Grandpa”), I also think that their life was charming.

I haven’t yet been able to convince my wife that I wasn’t Tom Sawyer at some point during my childhood.

Looking for a pot of Gold? Perhaps a heart of Gold? Grandpa Pedro, Part 2

Don Pedro (centre) and his sister and brother - about 6 years ago

We all know legends about leprechauns and rainbows and pirates sailing the Caribbean in search of a hidden treasure, but have you ever met anyone who is really looking for hidden gold?  And I don't mean collectors who use metal detectors to find the next coin or artifact, I mean someone who really wants to find a real chest of gold and get rich from it.

Grandpa Pedro is one of those people.  He is authentically convinced that somewhere in the steep, narrow valley owns and lives in there is gold that was hidden during the Mexican Revolution, which began exactly 100 years ago.  Pockets of the revolution were still going on when he was born, but I guess by the time he was a child, legends of the recent Revolution and its upheaval were fresh in everyone's mind.  I can't comment on the plausibility of a rich estate owner coming to hide their gold in this very isolated  valley in the hills, but he is convinced that there is gold hidden there, and has searched all over for it.  From what I understand, many people in countryside areas used to hold similar hopes.

Grandpa Pedro's Work

My wife's grandfather is a very hardworking man.  As I said in the last post about him, from what I understand, there hasn't been a day in his life that he woke up later than 6 in the morning.  His entire life, he has raised animals - cows, chickens, turkeys, goats, pigs among others - and grown crops including corn, beans and squash (a tradition that seems to be as old as the western world itself, and shared by native people throughout North America.)  He also has an orchard of plums, peaches, guavas and a number of other fruit which I have never seen in Canada, I wouldn't be able name.

My wife remembers him making her swing in the trees of the orchard, which had the added thrill of swinging out over a steeper drop! (Pretty much everything there is a hillside.)  She spend most of her childhood summer vacations at the farm, and would climb up into the trees to eat the fruit.  These memories of the time with her grandpa are among her fondest.

He also cares for the home's water supply, which is captured from rainwater in the concrete cistern which I mentioned in the post about homes in this valley, or brought through a hose from a nearby stream.

A Young Pedro Lopez, During His Military Service

I remember on my first visit, I was determined to help him with some of his work, so I joined him to walk out to spring the water was fed into a hose.  I was entirely useless.  Any kind of job on that farm are jobs that people are never taught; they learn them as children watching and participating.  Having to deal with an adult who would need to be "taught" these things was probably just absurd to him.  (It's like making "mole," a very delicious and traditional dish - all the old ladies know how to do it, but they wouldn't be able to produce a recipe; it's something they learned growing up in that setting.)  But Grandpa Pedro didn't seem to be bothered, and simply went about his business fixing something that he had fixed a thousand times before, telling me some stories about the farm along the way.  Once when I asked how I could help, he just kept explaining whatever it was he was explaining and finished the job.  It didn't look difficult, but I'm sure experience made it look easier than it was.

I would love to go during harvest or seeding time some time to work with him, but I would probably have to be insistent in having him show me how to do it.  The unfortunate part is that he does all of this alone, and right now he's getting to old to finish it all by himself.  In our modern society, people retire 25 years younger than he is right now.

Grandpa Pedro's Family

Why does he do it all alone?  Something that struck me about the place, only at the end of my second visit, is that there are no young men.  There are children, there are women of all ages, and there are old men, but there are very few males between the ages of 15 and 60.

At the end of my second visit, my wife and I stopped by her great aunt's house.  Her grandson was there working on the house.  I chatted with him in English, because he had been in Texas for the last 2 years, and for 4 years before that.  He had come back to see his wife, his 2 year-old daughter who he had never seen before, and to do some work on the house.  He was heading back again in 2 months.  I can't confirm, but I guess his wife would have been expecting again by the time he left.  That is where the young men are; in Texas, California and other parts of the U.S., working.

The young women have their children back in the village.  The one's who are lucky, get cheques sent in the mail. The one's who are luckier (in their own perspective) get to join their husbands in the U.S.

(Meeting these people first hand, knowing their history, and seeing their homes, I realize that U.S. policy makers, conservative and liberals alike, are 100% disconnected with the reality of these people, and are therefore incompetent to solve the problem of illegal immigration, which WILL continue despite any wall, despite Arizona's new, strict measures.  But I'll save the political commentary for another post.)

One unfortunate young lady, a great niece of Granda Pedro, who used to live on his farm and take care of both the old men (her grandfather and great uncle), was abandoned by her husband.  Later she had 3 other children by other men, but never again managed to find a stable relationship.  From what I understand, this kind of situation happens all to often.

This second cousin of my wife and her four daughters, who were the only rays of youth on this farm, have now left and live in the town.  The wife of the other cousin - the young man who works in Texas - also left for town with her child, leaving the great aunt alone.  The great aunt, who couldn't take care of herself alone, moved down into the valley so her two brother could take care of her.  This is Grandpa Pedro's family now - his brother and his sister, all three of them getting up their in years.  So, the crop usually gets left at least partly unharvested, and it becomes more and more difficult for them to manage.


As I mentioned the last post, when I heard about the pleasure Grandpa Pedro had in buying a new turkey, and taking care of the recently hatched chicks, I can see that the joy of life hasn't left him.  I'm also amazed that he is putting the effort to care for his aging sister when he himself needs care, or at least help in getting the work done.  I'm amazed by how much passion he has for life at his age.

For the moment, that's all I have to write.  My wife could write a book, I'm sure.  And I'm sure I'll think of more with time.  In April, we want to go visit again.  We're both eager to go back.

Don Pedro Lopez - Grandpa Himself

Don Pedro Lopez, My Wife's Grandfather

In my recent series of blogs about my wife's Grandpa's farm, I realized that I hadn't introduced one important person; her grandpa.  Of course, this man, the owner of the valley where he lives, who has never been farther than Cuernavaca, but boldly walks the streets of Mexico City with no fear of getting lost, is central to everything about that place.  He's someone I admire, so, here's some of the few things I know about him.


Grandpa's Religion

Unlike my wife and mother-in-law (his daughter) her Grandpa, whose name is Pedro, is Evangelical.  My mother-in-law had left the valley to work in the cities (first Ixtapan de la Sal, then Toluca, then Mexico City) before the Evangelical missionaries showed up, and so she has remained a faithful follower of the Catholic faith for all of her life, a dedication which she has passed on to my wife to some extent.  Grandpa Pedro, however, enthusiastically embraced the newcomers, and has become passionately opposed to Catholic beliefs. While he unquestioningly excepts my mother-in-law and my wife, he spends hours trying to convince them that they too should follow his steps.

I clearly remember one morning getting up and going to his house (we had been staying at the home of his brother about 200 meters away), entering his yard, then his porch to find him there sitting on his chair, with a pensive look upon his face, reading his Bible - I believe he learned to read only for this purpose.  He immediately invited me to sit down with him, began reading a passage to me, and explaining little bits of the sermon he had heard last Sunday.  I wish I could remember which passage it was, and what he told me about the pastor's words, but I can't.  I do remember, however, that each point returned to the fact that Catholics were on the wrong track.

Making a Strong Point

(Concerning this point, I made a few observations in that village as well as other places, concluding some points both in favor and against both the Evangelicals and Catholics in Mexico, but those belong to another post.)

I listened carefully, and asked him a question now and then, careful not to agree or disagree on any points about Catholics, since I knew that this could cost my mother-in-law hours of debate.

What amazes me about Grandpa Pedro, though, is that despite his passionate disapproval of Catholics, this in no way influenced his treatment of Catholic people.  He accepts my mother-in-law and my wife whole-heartedly to an extent that I have rarely seen among a family where one member makes a controversial religious choice (in this case to remain Catholic; all her brothers and sisters are solidly Evangelical, since they lived in the valley or nearby village when the missionaries arrived.)  As far as I know, not all of my wife's aunts and uncles are quite as accepting as Grandpa Pedro.

It is also worth noting that he hold some beliefs which seem to be outside of his religion.  Once a large beautiful rooster appeared by his house. It was around for a few days, and refused to eat, and no other animals would go near it.  One day the rooster began to crow horribly and loud, and disappeared.  His explanation was that the rooster was from the devil.  There are other stories of such animals. Although I've never seen anything that could make these seem plausible, I'm not making fun of this belief; my personal experience has led me to accept the possibility of many things I would have reject before, at least until I find some good evidence either in favor or against them.


Grandpa's Health

For the past few decades, apparently, he has had a hernia, and for this reason he would strap a small board to his belly to prevent the pain - I'm not sure how this concept works, but apparently it helped him avoid going to a hospital for these decades. The most recent news I have of him is that he was in the hospital for that hernia.  Only days after the operation, my mother-in-law complained that he refused to follow doctor's orders, and was out and about; he bought a turkey, which laid eggs.  He was excited that the eggs had hatched and was dedicating a good deal of effort to care for this turkey and the new offspring.  My wife observed that it would be next to impossible to restrict a man to his bed who has probably never in his life slept past 6 am.

Once he was stung by a scorpion, for which he went for a shot at a nearby clinic - I'm not sure exactly what is meant by "clinic;" this could be someone's living room.

Other than this, as far as my wife knows, his health has been perfect for the 30 years she can remember.

Grandpa's House - I described this in another post. Click Here to read it.

Well, I'm out of time to write today, but I'll definitely add a second part, discussing items such as Grandpa Pedro's work, his family, and his continuous, but unsuccessful search for a hidden treasure (which comprises of gold lost during the Mexican Revolution.)

To read all the stories I've written so far about my experience on Grandpa Pedro's farm, Click Here.

Grandpa's Farm in the Hills – Part 3 – The Homes

This is the third part of a series describing some of the great experiences I had visiting my wife's grandpa's farm. Part 1 was about the trip out to the hills (click here to read), Part 2 was about the food (click here to read.)



Grandpa's Adobe house

 In the valley where my wife's grandpa's farm is located, and the nearby village, virtually all homes are made of adobe. If you don't know what that is, it's a type of brick made of mud, stones some other ingredients. I'm sure a large book could be written about the variations of adobe homes. I've come across at least a complete magazine, and personally seen a dozen variations through various parts of central Mexico.

In the cities, adobe is a luxury for the rich, who pay double or more than the cost of a concrete construction to have the few craftsmen who still know the technique make the bricks and build their home.

In the isolated hills, its the building material for the poor who can't afford to have the luxury of concrete imported from the city.

It's this latter type that is important for Grandpa's farm. His two houses down in the valley that I mentioned in Part 1 were originally small but well-built adobe homes with dirt floors and red clay tile roofs. Arriving to grandpa's home, where he lives alone, we went through a tall, narrow wooden gate, and along a walkway whichh led to his patio, which was a long rectangle of about 2 meters by 10. On one side of the patio was a cistern (the one luxury item he had built out of concrete!) and on the other side were two doors, entering to the bedrooms. At the end was the kitchen.

Visitors are received on the patio, where there are a few wooden chairs, and a short wall wide enough to sit on. Meals are eaten in the kitchen, where in one corner is a table for grinding corn, and also the stove, which has a space for fire below it (the gas stove you see in the picture here is not connected and doesn't work.)



In the Kitchen (the gas stove is just ornamental)



Time has take its toll on the two homes, and now some of the bricks are cracked, and most of them have become quite worn down. Usually a clear sort of varnish is used to protect them, but since the only two men living on the farm are my wife's grandpa and great uncle, who are both getting up there in years, maintenance becomes ever more difficult.



The clay tiles on the roof are held up by a wooden framework. Some of the tiles were also in need of repair. In some parts of the house, paper or other materials are used to section of the living area from "attic." If not, you can see straight up to the clay tiles. Dry corn is also stored in this area. Sometimes roosters stay up there; I remember on my second visit that a rooster woke us up at about 5 am crowing directly above our heads!

Washrooms are any of the fields around the house – whichever one you feel most comfortable going to.



Adobe is comfortable, keeping a house cool during the heat of the day, and warm during the chilly nights. During the day, small, high windows let in some light, and at night candles and gas lamps were the main source of light. (He also had a flashlight which he lent us at night.)



I felt very relaxed in Grandpa's home; the only difficult part for me was at night when he took some blankets out of storage for us; since they hadn't been used in a long time, he shook the dust out – in the bedroom! Since I have allergies, I didn't react too well to this, but I knew his intentions were the best, so I did my best to block the sneezes.



My wife's great aunt, who we visited both times I went to the famr, lives nearby in a house higher up on the hill, closer to the road. Her home had been renovated by a grandson who works in the U.S. It was also adobe, but with pained, plastered walls, nice wooden window frames with shutters (no glass) and a well kept-up roof, fully closed off. This home had electricity, connected from the road, and electric lights. The basic structure was the same, but it had a larger line of bedrooms. One of the bedrooms had a large T.V. The kitchen pictured in Part 2 is in this house.

Up on the hillside next to the town's access road, those who have the money are now building concrete homes with glass windows – as I said above, this is a luxury. The grandson mentioned in the last paragraph, who renovated and paid for the renovation of the great aunt's home, worked in construction in the U.S. and spoke English OK. He complained that he would rather have a concrete home, or even better, one like they build in Texas. This, however, would have cost a fortune in that village, bringing all the materials from a city hours away; even in the city those kinds of materials are not common.



My wife and I have considered building a home in Cuernavaca (1 hr south of Mexico City) with the first floor constructed with stone, and the second out of adobe – we had seen one built this way in a nearby town. When we told her grandpa, uncles and cousins about the plan, they couldn't, for the life of them, understand why someone would pay to have a house made of adobe and stone; you only use these materials when you have no money for something better (according to them.)

We dream of living in an adobe home someday, or even out on her grandpa's farm. I don't think modern life will present an excuse to do this. It's one of those things where we'll just have to make up our mind and do it.

More to come ...

(Pictures will come later tonight)





Grandpa's Farm in the Hills - Part 2 - The Food

In Part 1 of this blog (click here to read) I described my first trip out to my wife's grandpa's farm in the isolated hills near the border of Mexico State and Guerrero State.

Two Women Making Tortillas (in a different house)

One of the items which stands out most in my memory about our visit was the food.  The food was very simple.  I believe the ingredients used for everything could be listed on half a page (corn, beef, squash, beans, onions and habanero peppers showed up regularly); yet it was some of the most delicious food that I have ever tried.

To start off, on my wife's advice based on past family visits, we bought a few kilos of dough to make tortillas from a tortilla shop in the last town.  This had been made from commercially produced corn flour.  When dinner time came, the women set the dough aside and started using a hand mill to grind corn from the farm that had been soaking in warm water during the afternoon, which they ground on a flat slab made of volcanic stone and another round tool made of the same stone - like a mortar and pestle, but different shapes.  The resulting paste was pressed into a round flat tortilla in a standard tortilla press (two flat metal or wooden plates with handle attached to one to make it easy to press down), and cooked on a hot griddle.

When they took out our commercially produced dough and tasted it, then made one tortilla, and tasted it, they made some doubtful facial expressions and told us that it was no good.  I may be that it had actually gone bad, but if after I tried their homemade tortillas made from the farm's corn, I realized that even if it had been good (which it may have been) it wouldn't have lived up to their standards.

These tortillas were amazing.

One of the Girls Grinding Corn

With the tortillas we had some strips of grilled beef, beans, which had been cooked in a clay pot, and a sauce made of onions, lime juice and habanero peppers.  (I put a few drops of the sauce one taco and realized that more than one drop was too much  for me.)  While the meal sounds simple, I can't remember having many meals that were better!  It was absolutely delicious.

Later that evening we had a drink called "atole" which is made of a very fine rice or corn flour with cinnamon and sweetened.  Everyone was trying to decide who should go up to the village to buy bread (baking is not a standard part of most Mexican household cooking habits, traditional or modern.)  In the end no one went, because they realized we would have finished the atole before the person got back.  After a repetition of virtually the same situation - concerning the tortilla dough - the following visit, we realized that the food to bring to her grandpa's house was bread, not tortilla dough.  "Bread" actually refers to Mexican sweet bread which includes sugar coated rolls and pastries.  For our next visit, we will bring bread.

Another part of this food experience was that they let me help in the kitchen, grinding the corn and making the paste.  Normally, only women work in the kitchen, but since I love cooking and learning new things about any kitchen or cooking style, I couldn't resist asking.  They were all to happy to see me try to make tortillas for a few minutes.  Of course, they did it all about 10 times as fast, but it was fun.

I love coffee, and we had the pleasure of drinking coffee made from home-grown and home-roasted beans.  It was delicious, but since I love coffee so much, I'll save that for another post.

They're probably be a few more coming up about Grandpa's farm.

For Part 3, which is about the homes, click here.

Grandpa's Farm in The Isolated Hills of Mexico State - Part 1, The First Visit

The Valley Where Grandpa's Farm is Located

My wife's grandpa lives on his farm isolated in the rugged, hilly countryside on the border of the State of Mexico and the State of Guerrero, a few hours southwest of Mexico City.  They say "rancho" in Spanish, but what we call a "ranch" in English has virtually nothing to with the kind of place where my wife's grandpa lives - except that neither are urban.  Imagine an old adobe hut nestled in the bottom of a valley, surrounded by patches of cornfields and woodland.  No electricity, no paved roads, no phones. Up on one of the wooded hillsides you can the town, which is about 100 houses, and the tall catholic church standing out at the center.

The first time I visited, we took a bus from Cuernavaca to Ixtapan de la Sal, a small town which draws a handful of tourists from Mexico City to its outdoor swimming parks, but is pretty much just a little town in the hills, with a picturesque old town centre, focused around a lively town square full of market booths and a nicely kept up, traditionally white painted church.  None of this, however, seems very touristy, but rather very practical for the day to day needs of the people who lived there.  Some of the stands on one of the newer, wider roads sell nick-nacks and handicrafts for visitors.  On our second visit, an old lady selling stuff was so impressed by my one-year-old son, that she gave him a rattle.  He loved it.  (The first time our son wasn't in the picture yet.)

Grandpa

Leaving Ixtapan de la Sal, we took another bus to a smaller town an hour or so down the road, where we got off at a bus station.  From there we walked a short distance to catch a "collective taxi" - a taxi that works pretty much like a bus along a designated route with set fares, where there aren't enough passengers to justify a bus.  When a passenger needs a ride, however, the taxi drivers will fit up to 8 people into a small Nissan!  This is both out of respect for the passengers, who might be waiting a while before the next taxi comes by, and for better income for the driver.  Mexicans are small, but not that small.

The taxi dropped us off at an intersection in the middle of the woods, where the countryside had become very hilly, and the roads very winding.  Everything up to this point had been paved, but this new road was dirt - not gravel, just dirt.  We were lucky enough to catch a pick-up going by.  The driver gave us ride in the back, and hung on for an bumpy ride.  I can't remember the details exactly, but at some point the pick-up dropped us off at another intersection, which was our final road.

This new road curved around a hill, which, as my wife explained, used to be home to her grandpa.  Her family used to climb up the hill from this point, her dad carrying a bag of dried tortillas (which used to be cheap enough, even for the poorest of families, to just toss left overs into sack to give to farmers for their animals) an my wife's younger brother.  This was when he used to own the hill and have his house at the top.  Some time ago, as he got older and couldn't manage the land anymore, he sold the hill and moved his primary residence into the bottom of the valley, where the other half of his land was.

Our final road led around this hill, opening onto the side of the somewhat narrow and deep valley.  As we were walking, a little old pick up, coloured red, with a speaker strapped to the top, drive by announcing the ice cream the driver was selling.  He picked us up, and gave us a ride, explaining that ice cream was a decent business even in these isolated hills where money is hard to come by.  Working men, stopped and came out of their little fields to buy, and children came running, apparently out of nowhere; so far there were no houses to be seen.

The Cousin, 4 Daughters, Great-Uncle and Me (back center)

My wife finally recognized the point where we needed to head down into valley.  We walked down a walkway, sometimes zigzagging along the hillside, other times just heading strait down, until we came to two little adobe houses, one of them fenced off with a wooden gate.  This was (and still is) grandpa's house.  It's old, the adobe is cracked and falling apart in some places, and some of the clay tiles on the roof were missing.

Entering through the gate, we were greeted by some barking dogs, and then a young woman - my wife's cousin or second cousin, I'm not sure - and her 3 daughters (by visit #2, there were 4, as you can see in the picture).  A bit later, her grandpa arrived from the fields, and we met her great uncles as well.  This family - the grandpa, great uncle, cousin and daughters - lived together in these two adobe homes.

Something seemed to be missing in the picture.  I knew that my wife's grandma had passed away many years ago, and that her great aunts lived either up along the main road, and one of them in Mexico City.  But it didn't occur to me until we were leaving after our second visit a year and a half later that there were very few young men.  There were a number of old men, and more young women, with many small children; most of the fathers of these small children were off in the United States.  The event that drew this to my attention belongs to later part of this story.

This was my first impression of Grandpa's farm.  The sights, the food, the people and the way of life all impressed me.

But since this story will probably go on for a while, I'll continue in part 2, tomorrow.