hennequin, part 3

 

 

 

 

OK, so I'm learning about this blogging system, and now realize that you will find this part before you find parts one and two. So, if you haven't already done so, go to two posts back, to get to the beginning of the story. The reason it is broken in three parts is the number of photos I can post at one time...there is probably another way to do this, but I haven't worked on it long enough to know!

Part three, hennequin

Here is the barn, which I inadvertantly deleted from the last post. It is an elegant building, and well maintained. Other buildings in the hacienda appeared to be equally well maintained, particularly the mule stable.

The next two photos are the cart and driver, going to the field with a full cart of dripping wet, green compost material, and returning with the empty cart. It was smelly, but what do you expect? The last photo is a bale of dried hennequin, ready to go to the rope-making plant, probably in Merida.

Out in the field, there were two men with feed bags, a pitchfork, and a pick-up truck. They were filling the bags with the dried compost, and loading it on the truck. For sale? I don't know. The carts went far back into an open field, on a network of tracks that looked like they were temporarily laid. As I watched, at the end of the line, the mule/cart driver would stand beside the cart, and with the man working in the field, they would push against the side of the cart. It would tip over,dumping the green, wet contents. Sort of like a mini dump truck. Then, as the cart and driver would return to the barn for another load, the man in the field would spread the green, wet stuff with a pitchfork. As jobs go, I would take the job of cart driver over any of the other tasks.

This whole process was behind the huge fields that went on for miles. The little village was probably all the workers in the fields and in the barn. Behind the stuccoed wall, in addition to the processing barn, drying fields and composting fields, there were several buldings. The largest could have been one of those fancy haciendas that are now hotel resorts. But, it housed the mules, I think. At least, from the opposite side of the building, it appeared to be the stalls. There was another low-slung house, with a deep, shady porch on three sides, which might have been housing for workers, but we didn't want to get too pushy in our poking around. I would love to see the fields where they were harvesting, but didn't want to drive a rental car on that dirt road. The truck, which looks very much like some of the equipment my brother uses on the farm today, looked like it had driven many heavy loads over bad roads.

We felt very lucky to have stumbled on this processing plant! I found a small clump of fibers on the ground, by the drying field, and brought it back as my souvenir.