Lancaster Winter Crop

An Amish team punches Fall soy seeds into the land.

Not a typical Fall scene lit by the neon colors of the season, huh?

Soy's harvested in late September then the crop seed's replanted in October for winter germination. At least that's how I understand it... and I don't understand enough about agriculture...Well not a lot more than it's greatest byproduct... beauty. Here - nearby to my home, a 6 mule team pulls a fall planting head across the soil just before the first snarls of winter paint the Pennsylvania leaves.

Geek Stuff: Captured by my Canon 20D through its faithful EF-S17-85mm glass, handheld of course, then processed in PSCC 2019 with help from some Topaz filters carefully brushed onto the appropriate spots to capture the sharp stubble and hairy tails. Oh... BTW - it is wrong to ever take a picture of an Amisher's face. We respect our neighbors around here - so I will never purposely do it, and if it happens accidentally, I trash those images.

But yet, do I need a face to convey a stoic muscularity of this man and team? While faces do reveal intricate personal stories... can they be any more expressive than this gentleman's shoulders and his freedom to go a distinctly individual direction in the face of a world-storm of technology?

My Amish neighbors simultaneously live among us, show a determined pride in their country, and live a successful and proudly religious life. Oh, and they also continue, for example, to invent and manufacture farm devices, employ cutting edge agronomics, all along with computer repair and maintenance projects which attract worldwide customers. Their detailed craftsmanship and quilting arts command international attention.

Yeah, they're a surprising culture, eh?

Patagonia 5: Puerto Chacabuco - Soft Scrapple

For details, click on any image...

It's 291 nautical miles from Montt to our second
stop at  Chacabuco south through the Golf of Corcovado.

It's about a day and a half by ship between the red pins.

Puerto Chacabuco is a relatively new port city. In 1991 a savage wilderness fire and the eruption of nearby Mount Hudson volcano silted the Aisén river and blocked access to Puerto Aisén which caused the construction of a new port in the sleepy village of Chacabuco some 10 miles south of Aisén. Transition's fattening up Chacabuco and its population of 1,243. 

However, the town's location along the far side of the Aisén river is magnificent. 

At sunrise on Tuesday 1/22/19 we awoke to this view from our balcony on the
ship's port side with Chacabuco visible (below) from the starboard.

Daytime temperatures dropped about fifteen degrees, on average from Santiago mid-day 90 degrees to Puerto Montt and another ten degrees in Puerto Chacabuco. The town's weather is wet much of the year, but in mid-summer-January that still left us wearing heavy jackets over long sleeves in the port's morning which we ditched by late afternoon.

Joe & Mary Mayberry, Gib & Marti Armstrong and
 my wife Rita model Chacabuco January mid-summer fashions.
BTW, that's our Norwegian  Sun anchored to the right.

On the other side of the river from the image above, Chacabuco sits
 in a river valley and is beginning to sprawl as a result of
its replacement of Aisén in 1991 as the region's major port. 

And what's to do in Chacabuco? Well, just about nothing. So we engaged an old VW bus-like ride to visit the new National Simpson River Park.

As you can see, the topography is rugged and mountainous.
Our bus had an ancient low gear which left us expecting to push.

The trip did reveal the life style of people living along rural Route 240 as well as structures in both Chacabuco and Aisén.

Generally the people are NOT poor. Rather they live in tidy, secure, and comfortable structures in a rocky countryside dotted by small livestock farms. NOTE the canted metal roofs in all of the structures above. Why? Tons of snow of course. Note also the lack of foundation shrubbery which is always destroyed by the collapse of snow upon them from those roofs. This is a challenging place in winter.

 The last President of Chilé kicked off an expensive (and not overwhelmingly popular) series of national parks. One of the newest is the Parque National Rio Simpson. Which features, well, some wild flowers and the Simpson River. 

The Simpson's a nice mountain river, and well, ho-hum. Perhaps if you are a Saudi
this is inspiring. And certainly to fly fishers it's inspirational. I'm neither. Seen one river,
seen 'em all? Well no, but this one is pretty average even within its mountainous setting.

The trip up to the park though wound cooly through valleys alongside a rushing stream fed by waterfalls dropping from the peaked walls of the old Pioneer Trail.

Note, just to the right of the base of the lower waterfall. See the guy? I left him there 

to put the height of these glacial fed falls in perspective. Rain  returned as  I teetered
atop the two-lane highway bridge's  railing to grab this shot above the stream. 

In the very center of the port sits Radio Chacabuco there on the right. It was hidden behind a few downtrodden  

shops but worth the effort. See the dirt road? What you can't see well in this painting without blowing it up is the line of new  construction there between the mountain base and the field at the road's end. 

A Levittown development's happening there with perhaps a hundred homes going up. Chacapuco's about to change as its expanding port juices economic activity. This image captures the transition right before it happens. And, of course it's just the painting to bring country life to a chi-chi Santiago, New York, Lancaster, Atlanta, or Viennese up-market condo, right?

Chacabuco caused one of us to wonder if this is where you flee to escape the rest of the world. Near-antarctic winters are intense and even the summer's are challenging. But the farms and port apparently create jobs and incomes sufficient to live snugly with the weather, volcanos, and earthquakes. It's not hard scrapple, no... but definitely soft scrapple.