Argentina: Workaway at Villa de Las Rosas
Click for the DRONE FOOTAGE of the farm!
To get here, you can take a bus from Cordoba for 4 hours of a beautiful drive.
Villa De Las Rosas lives up to its literal name: the village of roses. Most of the streets of this town are lined with roses all year around, and the center of the city is a small park adorned with roses throughout. Here every weekend, they have an art fair. Cordoba region is home to many artesans and free spirited people, but farther out here in the valley is where you can see the densest gathering of such interesting people.
From here, you can attempt to hike Cerro Champaqui by quite literally starting to just walk that way from the city center. On the way, you will see pretty little walks and streams and picnic areas to hang out. But the best way is to get a taxi or drive to the mountain trail start point, because the walk there itself from the city is going to be more like a two hour adventure.
In this area past the town center, you see a lot of restaurants on the road, and I always wonder who come here because it seems to in the middle of nowhere. But another thing you see is a lot of signs for pan de casa — homemade bread. Bread is often served as a part of any meal (half of Argentina is from Italy), and any stale bread is used to make tostada for an afternoon tea snack or for breakfast. For 20ish pesos, you can get a huge loaf of bread made with home love!
The farm I worked at is a 20 min drive from the town of Rosas. Named La Matilde, this business has three parts. One is a land-share-sale sort of a thing where people can buy plots of land and build whatever they want, second is the farm part, and the third is the hotel where people can come and tour the farm and learn about the biodynamic farming practices. There was also a small shop where they sold the wine (organic and all) that they had produced, jams, goat milk dulce de leche, and other herbs. Here they had wifi!
The farm has horses used for tourism and goats, who used to produce a lot of milk, but no longer since it doesn’t make enough money to make the labor worth it. There are large corn fields, vines of grapes, olive trees, and a garden that has all sorts of herbs and fruits and vegetables. The biodynamic part is that they strictly follow the lunar calendar, use no pesticides or unnatural substances, and use all things that come from the farm for close to zero waste. The lunar calendar part was very interesting — depending on the phase of the moon, there are things you want to plant on a certain day, and things you want to pick on another. For example, during my days there, the moon was just right for picking flowers. So we picked herbs whose medicinal potency lied in the flower, then a few days later we picked herbs whose potency lied in the leaves. After that would be roots, and over and over!
Having seen my grandparents’ farm in Korea where the moon had absolutely nothing to do with it, especially since they didn’t work with sensitive things like herbs, and Mendoza where they thought quantity over quality, the seriousness toward following the lunar calendar was bizarre. Yet very fitting for the people I met there.
Mostly I helped Ceci — who was in charge of the garden and herbs — harvest herbs. Other times I helped organize farm tools or set up irrigation pipes. I found spiders the size of my palm and a nest of garden mice amongst a whole lot of other things.
Other days, I used my drone to film promotional video shots for the farm. And normally I had so much free time that I would walk between the tomato vines to pick and eat them, or pick up random things from the ground to make dream catchers (inspired by Ceci as well).
My other farm work experiences have been relaxed, but here I almost felt like I was treated as the granddaughter who was visiting the farm for fun! Not a bad thing. I would pack and eat lunch with the men workers, who would ask me stories of the states and play pranks in all good fun. Hector the tractor driver gave me a tractor ride while he was taking some things back up to the hotel, because the farm was way too large to walk it for funsies. And everyone was just so sweet!
The farm was a cool experience, but the best memories that I got was from the house I lived in. The house was located in a part of Las Rosas called Las Tapias. There are two rooms, and in one, a family was living there already. Ceci and her son Mauri were living there.
The house is a part of a farm that used to be there, made of concrete, and very small. But Ceci, being interested in arts and crafts, had decorated the house in a homely style and even had given me a dreamcatcher in my room. The bathroom was the only location where we had any signal, and it was also where we used to hang the herbs that we harvested in the farm to dry. The house came with a large family of cats — 11 or so! We had some aloe, pomegranate trees, grapevines, and some lime trees in the backyard that Mauri and I used one day to make a variety of juices — or potions, we called it. The cats, the herbs, the dream catchers, and now the juice made our house seem very magicky, and we’d often call it La Casa de Brujas — the house of the witches.
There are not much else in the area in terms of development, but across the street is a winery, and next door is Olium, an olive oil business. Here you can go in at any time for a free tour that ends in an amazing olive oil tasting at the end!
On a normal day, Mauri would go to school in the evening (they have to stagger classes because the school doesn’t have enough space) so he sleeps in, while Ceci and I go to work at 8 AM. Then we both get back in the afternoon after lunch. Dinner in Argentina is very late — like around 9pm or later. So around US dinner time, we bring out the mate and some snacks like tostada and dulce de leche to last us until then. Then, we work with the herbs, chat about life, or do some arts! I got really into making my dreamcatchers, and ceci would do some painting. Then at night, while watching the milkyway easily with our naked eyes, we would go out in the back and play guitar and sing songs! I learned a few of Ceci’s own creations, translated some lines, sang with her and added in some harmony, and just had an amazing time! Then I picked up the guitar and learned how to sing besame mucho like the American that I am.
On a more exciting day, Ceci and her friends wanted to check out this new dance class that was happening. The first class was being offered for free, so she invited me along. It is called biodanza, and it is technically a dance class but very free spirited so no one really needed to know how to dance. It took place in someone’s house near the base of Mount Champaqui, and the location was perfect. There was a little stream nearby, the yard was open to the sky, and the living room was mostly glass, so though we were indoors it seemed like we were outdoors and connecting with nature. I showed up in my bangkok pants, and everyone else one up-ed me easily. They had bangles, bangkok pants, colorful wear, long hair, etc. Everyone was extremely friendly, and though it is common for people to kiss on the cheek when they meet, everyone kissed everyone else here to say hello! Not missing a single person.
Then the session started with the teacher explaining that biodanza is a way of life and that it unites all things in nature and in our lives. Then we went on to do a series of exercises/dances. Some were unsurprising like holding hands and running around in a large circle, and dancing and just letting your whole body go and let the music take your relaxed limbs in all directions. And some others were more interesting: one exercise, in small groups, we closed our eyes, put our hands in the middle, and spent a few minutes listening to calm music and just touching each others hands and arms. In another, we would touch palms with someone and make strong eye contact and walk around the room, and change partners as we walked around. In another, we made two concentric circles, where the outer circle people would very lightly touch the hair of the person inside, and rotate every half minute or so.
During some parts, I was attempting to hold down my laugh because it seemed so ridiculous. But during some other parts, I really did feel extremely and quickly connected to everyone in the class — mentally and physically — and there were no weirdness to it. No sensuality, no friction — just human to human connection, and that is something that I do believe is difficult to come by these days. At some point in the class, a few people were outright sobbing because of how touched they felt. The class left me with a lot of questions and either way an unforgettable experience, but for sure, I did have fun. No drugs involved, I promise.
Ceci does weekly meditation on Sunday mornings with a similar group of people, followed by a snack — just like church services. They were having a potluck, so I headed over and it was interesting to hear some of them were smart and successful and decided to leave the city and the busy life, and came to the valleys of cordoba looking for a more wholesome and meaningful life. As someone who just entered the working scene I couldn’t quite relate, but somehow, I could tell that stress was definitely not one of their problems, and that I respected!
