We are getting a little husky from all this elote...

After a mini vacation in Mexico City, visiting museums, pounding the pavement of old cobblestone neighborhoods, and eating lots of street food and chocolate, we made our way back to the corn fields in Atlacomulco. We spent our time there with an amazing family, headed by Melecio and Alicia. Melecio is an expert storyteller and Alicia is stonefaced until you gain her confidence and then she becomes super warm and smiley and winky.



Alicia feeding the crazy turkeys.




We met these awesome women weeding the corn and tomatoe fields, barefoot in the mud. BADASS!




Much of the corn that is produced on Melecios 5 hectares is fed to their crop of cows, which they milk daily and turn into cheese. We got to eat a lot of it, and surprisingly, we had never had this kind of cheese before. SO GOOD in a quesadilla! And they gave us a giant block to take home, which we made into pan de elote last night!



Simon milking the herd. Simon became a part of their family when he became an orphan at the age of 2. They say he is the hardest worker and we witnessed him being the heftiest eater, as well.



Alicia making cheese. mmmmmmm



While we were there, we became intimately aquainted with the riveting corn publication, Nuestro Maiz. Kate was very into it at midnight.



We spent a dusty morning mixing fertilizer.



Then we trekked out to the field for a few hours to spread it by hand. Sadly, we were not of much use, as they would not allow us to help, thinking we were weaklings.

We finally got a ride in the tractor!

That night we drove to the top of the highest mountain in Mexico. Allegedly an hour each way, but really more like 3.5 hours in total, and we got back about two hours late for our bus.

Right now it is elote season around here, which pretty much means one type of fresh corn. Each elote costs 1 peso. That means 13 ears of corn for $1. So cheap and so tasty! It is the tradtion here to eat the corn boiled, then rubbed with lime and covered in mayo, cheese, and chile. Below are pictures of us indulging in two elotes each. Such a delicious lunch.

We also got to pull our elotes right off the stalk. The field next to this was completely destroyed by hail and the next day when we drove by they had cut all of the corn stalks down.