I am sit­ting at the kitchen table, sip­ping a cup of fresh mint tea. Through the win­dow I see the clouds fly by; the wind is often very strong. I look out over the val­ley, with the city of Coy­haique down below. In the dis­tance you can see the snowy moun­tains of Patag­o­nia. On the oth­er side of the house, steep rocky slopes climb up to the sky.

A lit­tle kit­ten climbs up my leg and finds a good spot on my lap. Thanks to the wood stove, it is nice and warm in the kitchen. This is where we eat three times a day with the own­ers and two oth­er volunteers.

The house is small, but there is all the more space out­side. Hors­es, chick­ens, dogs and cats for­age, frol­ic and stroll around the grounds. The hors­es bring in mon­ey because tourists reg­u­lar­ly come for a ride. Fred­dy has gone along once. It is inter­est­ing to learn some­thing about train­ing hors­es. I work a lot in the veg­etable gar­den and I pick daisies in the graz­ing pas­tures, because they are very invasive.

I enjoy being out­side so much and hav­ing a lot of ani­mals around me. From what I can see, most of the ani­mals here are rea­son­ably free to exhib­it their nat­ur­al behav­iour. On the oth­er hand, every so often some of them get killed and eat­en. We always get nice plant based meals by the way, no one makes a fuss about that.

My tea is fin­ished, time to go into the gar­den. I keep think­ing about the song of the Entwives, the female Ents from Lord of the Rings who, unlike their male coun­ter­parts, chose agri­cul­ture over the wilder­ness. Here is the part about spring (which only lasts a few days longer here):

Ent:
When Spring unfolds the beechen leaf, and sap is in the bough;
When light is on the wild-wood stream, and wind is on the brow;
When stride is long, and breath is deep, and keen the mountain-air,
Come back to me! Come back to me, and say my land is fair!

Entwife:
When Spring is come to garth and field, and corn is in the blade;
When blos­som like a shin­ing snow is on the orchard laid;
When show­er and Sun upon the Earth with fra­grance fill the air,
I’ll linger here, and will not come, because my land is fair.