The Farm!

WOW! This does not look like your typical farm house, but it is a wonderful place to spend every weekend with your family on an enormous piece of land.

Just look at this view from their living room:

Our wonderful hostess Eugenia greeted us at the door and with a hug and insisted that this was “our house” and that we were welcome to do and have anything we wanted!  She proved that to be true as we were royally entertained with almost continual delicious and unusual, typically Colombian food.

 

You can’t imagine the fabulous food that came out of this white root (on the left) called Yuca and the delectable green and yellow plantains (look like bananas but must be cooked) on the right.  The Yuca must first be washed and peeled and then boiled and fried. Delicious!

Although the family lives in Bogota for school and work Monday to Friday, they travel to their farm every Friday night and stay until Sunday. Eugenia grew up on a farm and is gardener at heart. She is nurturing a fabulous garden complete with a green house where she is growing wonderful organic fruits and vegetables.

And these are here “babies” called LuLu fruit which has to be picked with heavy gloves because there is a fine fuzz that resembles fiberglass insulation that is itchy and miserable if you touch it. But the fruit inside…..to die for!

The farm also included around a hundred milk cows. Luckily they had help to milk the cows from 4:30-6:30 in the morning and about 3-5 in the afternoon. Seeing the milking process took me right back to my childhood where we were “married to cows”. Vacations were few and far between because there were always cows to milk twice a day. How do framers do that, year in and year out? Come to think of it, how do cows do that? Poor things!

 

The milk is gathered from the milkers and pumped into tubes that end up in two giant vats which are then emptied and the milk is picked up and sold. Oh if my mom and dad could see that they would be amazed. They spent their lives milking cows the old fashioned way!

 

There was not a lack of fun things to do on the farm. On warm days they take out their Mastercraft which is just a titch better looking than ours!

Because it was a cool day and since it’s always pretty cool up there in the mountains, the water wasn’t really conducive to water skiing. SO we took their other boat which was a delightful pontoon boat that held us all easily. We wished we could figure out how to get one at Bear Lake!

This family is truly stellar!

One evening we went visited our host’s cousin who had just finished a beautiful new home. His dad was an architect and he and his wife had designed a truly incredible home. It was nighttime so it was hard to get good pictures but this will give you a taste of what we saw:

One of the most interesting things about our weekend was the wonderful conversations that we had. These people are so bright and interesting, full of life and with fascinating stories. After our fabulous meals, we often sat and talked for two hours. The very best part of that is that the children were often there and joined the conversation.

The Colombians have a wonderful word for that: sobremesa which literally means…over the table. We think that our American families could learn a lot from that valuable tradition! What a delight it was to hear their thoughts and learn about their culture.

We talked about everything from religion to politics with relish. This is the end of one of our conversations which included fascinating neighbors who dropped by to share a traditional, spectacular Colombian soup with us. Note that the 16 year-old girl in the upper left who is an outstanding student and lovely person stayed and added some great insights to the conversation.

How lucky are we….to have spent these precious hours with such good people in such a beautiful setting and in the wonderful country of Colombia. The “in your face” cartels are pretty much a thing of the past and we felt as safe as we would in any big city. We would recommend a visit to this country to anybody who can get there!  Thanks to all these wonderful people, this is a weekend we’ll never forget!