Each weekday morning, the students do manual labor on the grounds. Today was the second day of tilling the soil for planting. The sisters grow corn, bananas, celantro, peppers, carrots, potatoes, and other vegetables.
It's difficult work, but done in the Vietnamese way of mindfulness, thinking about what we are doing, not rushing, but doing well whatever we do.
The conincal hats are especially well-designed for farming. They are light, let air circulate, and barely touch the head.
Gloves are a necessary part of farming. The gloves you see Carlo wearing are handmade and can be fitted to the person..
For ease of tilling, the soil is wetted slightly. This helps the shovel to go into the ground and for the dirt to make clods.
The handles on the shovel are long, as you can see from the one that Eddie is using. The farmer is able to push the blade of the shovel deep into the ground and, if the soil is especially hard, reach way up and use his entire body weight.
The clods will be broken up even smaller before planting, but this is the heavy work and the students are understanding a little bit of what it means to do backbreaking work under very difficult conditions...the life of the poor farmer.
Here is Nam Vu working his keyboard. Now entering 8th grade, he is quite the conversationalist. It's hard to believe that I have kn...