We arrived!!!

We arrived on Thursday 1 February 2024 to a whooping 30+°C. After some shopping we got to the farm and have been busy the last few days in getting settled. The farmhouse has not really been lived in for the past 13 years, pretty much since I went to Germany to get my PhD degree. My mom, myself and my brother and his family have been back here once in a while, but only for a few weeks or months of vacation. It is a very different thing to be here now, knowing that we are staying for over half a year. Also, since my father passed away pretty much exactly 3 years ago (on the 2^nd of February 2021) some of the things in the house and their placement feel obsolete – the plastic chair in the shower, the TV stand in the small room with the oven, … I am not much of a person to keep lots of things, I have moved too many times in my life for this. But here, on the farm, many things from past days appear in closets, drawers, trunks. Things tend to end up here. Not only the games that I used to play as a child (in Turkish) pop up, but drawers and drawers full of Noah’s books, drawings, toys, crayons, and artwork. It’s like going back in time and remembering how I sat on the terrace with my 3-year-old on one side and my handicapped father on the other, watching the cows and horses go by and making different pieces of art.

The heat is tremendous. The soybeans our renter has planted are shrivelling away under the blasting sun. Unlike the farmers I had been interviewing with my PhD student @BishalDahal in #WATERAGRI, some of the farmers here have implemented drip irrigation systems even for their corn fields! We are grateful for the cool house that is keeping most of the heat out. Heavy winds in early January had torn down branches and blown over some majestic trees. One of the nearly 100 years old Eucalyptus tree next to our farm entrance was uprooted. One of our tasks will be to move some of the branches and trees out of the way and chop them up for the winter. Others, we will just move and leave them for nature to do its thing. But our well is providing us with sufficient water. Apparently, some of the cables of the pump were not quite up to par when we were here last August which had caused us some water outages (as the pump wasn’t working…).

Nature observations are therefore only possible early in the morning – I am getting up at 6 am with sunrise! The birds accompany me and us for some early morning yoga and meditation. I go swimming in the evening in the river – or what is left of it. An ocean of water hyacinths welcomed me. These are so dense that I can only pass in one direction but not in the other. Water hyacinths (Eichhornia spp.) are native here. Winters here get cold enough to keep them in check – normally. But since the dam has not been dismantled and no large floods have occurred in the past 3+ years, nutrient concentrations are high and water levels are low, perfect conditions for water hyacinths. Every time I step out of the river I take a bunch of them with me – nutrient removal, I guess 😉And, we are still much better off, the entire coastline up to Canelones is infested with cyanobacteria. As researchers of the UdelR found out (Aubriot et al, 2020), this is caused by the eutrophication of the Rio Negro and affect the Rio de la Plata for hundreds of kilometres. One more reason against the Neptuno project which intends to take fresh water from the Rio de la Plata (near Arazatí) as drinking water source.

Some water activities are occurring even though it is summer, and most people are on vacation at the beautiful beaches this country has to offer. The protest against the new water abstraction site Arazatí is ongoing, as the Tucu Tucu Group had a meeting with the Minister of Environment last week to demand that the government undertakes an Environmental Impact Assessment. You can listen to an interview with one of the group members here (in Spanish). Next week there seems to be a meeting of a commission of the nature reserve of the Santa Lucia wetlands, the area that my forest also falls under (Comision Asesora Específica del Área Protegida Humedales del Santa Lucia). Let’s see what they have to offer. From what I can tell the dam is still in place and I am yet to receive news about its dismantling.

Next week, I/we will mostly still get settled here, clean the house and sort through stuff. We will set up the wildlife cameras – let’s see what we will find on those pics. The heat is to continue and reach 40°C, which means early morning rising to take advantage of the cool hours. The good part about the heat and the dry weather is the fact that there are very few mosquitos about, which makes swimming and sleeping so much more agreeable. Will keep you posted on the next steps of our adventure.