Vitamin C

Last Sunday, after going to Mass at the Cathedral, coming home and feeding the Friars' dog and chickens and collecting the eggs (The Friars and the Missioners were away putting on a retreat over the weekend), we picked up Felipe (the constrction contractor of Casa G) and his wife and three young kids and headed up to one of Felipe's worker's farm in the mountains. There he had three or four old orange tree full of beautiful oranges. The citrus smell was heavenly. Daniel climbed up one tree and Don Alfredo (the worker) climbed up another and started picking. Meanwhile on the ground the rest of us ate lots of fresh oranges. Juan Pablo loved trying to peel them and ended up a mess of citrus juice. There are a few types of oranges and of these trees, the two that we picked from contained the sweet kind good for eating and making orange juice. I think he had two other trees, one that had acidic oranges only good for making juice and another tree that grew a larger type of orange with really bumpy skin. Felipe's wife said they use it for marinading meat. We came away with about 200 pounds of oranges, bananas, and some wide-leaf cilantro that grew wild on the ground. Of course we forgot our camera. The photos are from later in the week when we had made much oranges juice and given away 4 grocery bags of oranges.

You have to hang the bananas like this to keep the ants off and so they ripen more slowly without bruises.
Emmanuel trying an orange, peel and all.
The juicer was a gift from the Friars...someone gave it to them, but since it is electric and they have a vow of poverty they decided to go with the good old manuel kind and pass this one along. Juan Pablo loves helping Momma make orange juice.

Those big bananas are a type that you have to cook to eat. If you've ever tried plantains, they are sort of like that. There is one of those bigger bumpy oranges next to them.

We've had fresh orange juice every day this week, and I told Daniel that if he were to be found with scurvy or some other vitamin C deficiency problem, it would be his own darn fault.