Dave has had lots of opportunities to take agricultural tours. On one trip he was able to take a tour with approximately 30 students of the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Santiago. They were just finishing their B.S. degrees and were on a sort of graduation field trip.
Dave had the chance to not only take the tour, but also to help the students learn more about the field of entomology and agricultural pest management. One of the crops that Dave found interesting was chirimoya (seen above and below). This isn't a common fruit in the U.S., but is very common here. It is eaten fresh and is also used as a flavoring for ice cream.
Dave was able to visit several avocado orchards. Due to the long coastline of Chile there are lots of places where avocados can be grown. Avocados like cool climates that don't get too hot but that don't freeze either.
Dave had the chance to chat with the growers about avocado production as well as watch an avocado harvest. The fruit below was placed in bins and within 24 hours would be on a ship making the two-week trip to either the west or east coast of the United States.
One of the growers Dave met with was trying to develop a greenhouse for hydrangea production.
Most of the hydrangea flowers he harvests were shipped with a long stem to the United States to be used for weddings.
The coastal areas of Chile are also a great place to produce strawberries. Dave visited a local strawberry farm that is only a few kilometers from our house. It is owned by a company in the United States that Dave has done research with regarding blueberries.
Dave is always interested in the post-harvest part of production. Most of his time at work is normally spent helping farmers getting crops to the point of harvest; he usually doesn't deal with the part after it is picked. Below is a packing shed for strawberries. Most of the fruit was going into packages with labels in English for export to the United States.
Durng the tour Dave was able to go east of a town called Rivadavia to table grape orchards on the route from our house towards Argentina. Up in the mountain valleys it is often very windy. This entire vineyard was covered in a mesh cloth for wind protection.
Below is a photo of the students taking the tour.
On the last day of the tour (a Saturday) Dave got permission to take the entire family. We boarded the bus and had a great time getting to know the students. Many of them liked the opportunity to practice their English while we had the chance to practice our Spanish.
Dave followed behind the bus in our car so that we could return home after the trip to Ovalle (the bus was heading back to Santiago). We had to drive back and forth on a bunch of switchbacks to cross the river. On one of the switchbacks Dave took a picture of the bus. If you look closely you can see Evan waving in the window. In the background are the orchards we went to visit. They were near the small hill seen in the background to the left.
The main place we visited was planted with avocatos. This was a treat for Jill because avocados are one of Jill's favorite foods.
The orchard was almost completely planted to the variety Haas. This is by far the best commercial variety that is produced in most of the world.
This orchard was harvested mainly in August and September when proces in the export markets in the United States were high. However, there are always a few fruit that get missed. Every five or six trees we were able to find a fruit. We asked the grower what would happen to the fruit left behind. He said that it was very few fruit and that it would just fall on the ground and rot. I told him of our love of avocados and he said we were welcome to take home any fruit that we found.
While Dave was still participating in the tour the kids went around scouting out good spots to find avocados. They got the ones they could reach, but had to get Dad's help to get the rest. Dave is a really good monkey at climbing trees and was able to get ones that were left behind in the very tops of the trees. By the time the collecting was done, the back of our car had 72 avocados in it. We guessed that this was more than 20 kilos (40 pounds) of fruit. Here in Chile this would have been worth about 45 dollars. At home in California it would have been worth at least double. We were excited. Due to the excellent shelf life of avocados we figure that we will be able to eat guacamole every day for at least two months.
At the end of the tour we got invited to a nice lunch with the grower and students. The kids were excited to have orange crush soda.
Since we would be heading back to La Serena from here we took a few last photos with the group of students that had become our friends. Above, Evan poses with all of the cute college girls that thought he was so much fun. They became his best friends when they found out his love of coin collecting. They all dug through their personal wallets and together donated 11 coins to his collection. Together they were only worth about twenty cents, but small coins here are really hard to find and Evan was really happy. After the photo Evan gave besitos (kisses) to all of the girls.
There is no better end to a great day in the field than a good empanada in one hand and some soda in the other. It was a great opportunity to get out in the field and see how food is produced, but also a great chance to make new friends and take part in the Chilean culture.
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