Written by Daniel Folweiler from Westminster College, UT
From November 2nd to 8th, the students of Round River Patagonia Primavera ‘23 stayed at a very diverse group of rural homestays near Cochrane, Chile. Groups of two or three went to seven different homes with a wide variety of livelihoods, diets, needs, accommodations, and hosts. Some campos (ranches) had more rugged lifestyles with long hours of labor and some hosts pampered their students more, but we all had valuable cultural experiences and felt like a part of the family.
Over the weeklong homestay, I helped till the ground, plant peas, plant and transplant cucumber sprouts with manure fertilizer, organize logs from a downed fence, transport mulch and animal feed, collect firewood for my host’s stoves, and rake and burn leaves with Elena, the other student with me at the homestay. Our host Orfelina didn’t have us do too much work, generally doing an hour or two in the late morning and another hour or two in the afternoon which was a great break from the busy Round River schedule. Orfelina spent another couple of hours each day walking around the campo doing smaller tasks like feeding the animals, moving the sheep to and from fields, tending to flowers, and checking to make sure everything was working properly. It was a rewarding experience helping out our host who lived alone and seeing how people grow their own food, tend to their animals, maintain their property, and generally live on rural campos.
Over the course of my homestay with Orfelina, I noticed that she employed many sustainable practices on her campo, whether that was the goal or not. It seemed that a lot of her actions stemmed from the rugged self-sufficient culture of the area and a lack of access to other options, but regardless, her campo was very sustainable. The house that she lived in was built by her parents decades ago, constructed mainly from local cypress that had been cleared to create the fields for livestock to graze in. The house is heated using wood stoves; burning wood that is found on the campo, from either decomposing logs or wind-felled trees. While wood is not the most sustainable option for heating, alternatives such as natural gas or electric heaters have yet to be introduced in the region, and locally collected wood is more sustainable than having it driven in. The wood stoves also serve a dual purpose of being used for cooking, getting hot enough to cook elaborate meals, quickly boiling water, baking, and deep frying bread. Food scraps from the kitchen were used to feed the chickens, ducks, dogs, and sometimes cats, although the animals received supplemental corn and kibble when there weren’t enough scraps.
While Orfelina has a washing machine, she usually washed her clothes by hand and would let them air-dry outside, as opposed to using machines that consume electricity and sometimes natural gas. While she ran her house in a very sustainable way, it seemed to be out of necessity rather than in a conscious effort to do so.
Orfelina also operates a beautiful campground in a grassy field behind her house, complete with flowers, handmade tables, and stools, poplar trees as shelter from the wind and sun, a fully furnished cabin to rent, and two newly built bathrooms with showers. Water for the showers is heated using propane tanks that are exchanged when empty with full ones delivered on trucks, which eliminates some of the waste that propane use can produce. The water for everything was drawn directly from a clean creek cascading down the mountain above the campo using a plastic pipe, cleverly pressurized using only gravity. Another larger plastic pipe was laid even higher in the creek, collecting water that flowed downhill for about 100 meters, pressurizing it before it entered a small hydroelectric generator that powered everything in the campo. It was interesting to see how innovative and less energy-intensive the plumbing was on her homestay compared to what’s normal in the urban United States.
Orfelina has a garden and a greenhouse on the property to grow a variety of produce including green and yellow onions, collared greens, peas, potatoes, currants, cherries, cucumbers, peppers, jerusalem artichokes, an unidentified root vegetable, and many other vegetables that had not yet sprouted or been planted.
All of the work to plant, tend to and harvest the produce was done by hand besides tilling the soil, which was sometimes done with a machine. Most of the plants were fertilized using sheep manure rather than artificial options, which are much worse for the environment and the health of the consumer. She also uses decomposing leaf litter from her poplar trees as mulch in her greenhouse and garden, an important aspect of gardening in the harsh, cold conditions of Patagonia. By growing her own food she reduces the frequency she needs to travel to the town of Cochrane for groceries, where most of the produce comes from thousands of kilometers away using fossil fuels.
Orfelina was an amazing host and opened my eyes to all the things that go into living on her campo like growing her own produce, raising her own livestock, and being completely self-sufficient. It was interesting to see how she and others living in rural areas are finding alternative sources of income to adapt to a modernizing world and the rising prices of essentials. Many are starting to supplement the meat, wool, and produce they sell with other goods and services such as running campgrounds, providing meals for travelers, and selling artisanal items like jams. I found it very interesting to see how the traditional ways of rural Patagonia blended with modern appliances and ways of life, combining in a way that improves quality of life while maintaining many traditions.
It was very interesting to see all of the sustainable practices on Orfelina’s campo, and compare them to what sustainability looks like in the US. While there were a lot of similarities, it was eye-opening to see that Orfelina is living sustainably out of necessity presumably, in order to conserve resources and reduce the amount that she needs to travel to town. She is so independent that she doesn’t even need her own car, instead relying on the bus and her friends and relatives living in the area. This would be shocking in the rural United States, where owning a car is seen as a necessity by most if you’re living outside of an urban area. Similar to her other low-impact practices, I assume that this is more out of necessity than an effort to be sustainable, which is a key difference between sustainability in the U.S. and in rural Patagonia. This does not make her efforts less valid in any way, just because Orfelina isn’t aware of how her actions are a part of the environmental movement doesn’t mean her efforts are less important. I think that it is important to recognize that the way sustainability is practiced in the U.S. often involves consumerism and has a social or performative aspect, both of which undermine the effort in a way that doesn’t happen as much in rural Patagonia. While there are merits to both styles, it’s interesting to think that sustainability is much more inherent to the lifestyle in rural Patagonia and other less modernized parts of the world, whereas it’s a movement and a much more conscious effort in the United States.