My final week doing field work at Tierra del Sol felt like a 7 day sprint. After overcoming the challenges last week, I had five days left to complete all the tests, collect and compile all the data, and prepare for my departure. This week tested my stamina, with farmwork in the morning and intensive data collection alongside Richard and our new partner Leonie, who had a more scientific background in sustainable agriculture and was helping us with testing development. We worked every day from early morning into the evenings collecting and labeling samples, timing infiltration tests, and dodging afternoon thunderstorms until, finally, we had a full spreadsheet of our data ready for analysis.
My final weekend at Tierra del Sol was the first time I was able to pause and reflect on my time. Everything had felt like such a whirlwind, I had been taking it one day at a time as plans continued to change and change again. Finally, with the end in sight, I could take a minute to look around.
During the third week, I asked Richard if we could include interviews with the workers at Tierra del Sol to get a more comprehensive view of the work they did and how the organization functioned, and completing these ended up being my favorite part of my time at Tierra del Sol. I learned about the beliefs behind the agricultural practices they used, how they had developed the land over the last 20 years to cover several acres with biological health and diversity, and how they had continued adapting their practices to be tailored specifically to Oaxaca’s climate, soil, and history. As a politics student, the quantitative data collection and scientific field work was all new to me, and while I thoroughly enjoyed this new exploration, I immediately felt comfortable doing the interviews. I realized this was what I was most interested in: how the project Richard’s organization was working on reflected the beliefs and history of the people that would someday take part in it.