We’re having a very strange winter this year. Generally, it starts getting cold in November and stays that way into mid-late February. Somewhere near the beginning of January comes several weeks of precipitation that manifests as rains in the lower reaches and sheltered valleys and snow at the higher altitudes. I’ve been told that a generation ago the snows fell more deeply, at lower altitudes and lasted much longer, but that the climate has gradually gotten just enough warmer that it has affected farming. Farmers, of course, prefer rain to snow.
This year, however, they’d happily accept any indication of precipitation in this season just as they wish the monsoons had ended a month earlier, rather than extending into October and drowning out the summer corn crop. The cold came as expected in November, giving us virtually no autumn and now Spring appears to be trying to bust in two months early. Since this is a region whose economy is based in farming and a small amount of winter recreational visitors, a warm, dry spell in late January has everybody alarmed. Even more important than summer corn is the winter wheat and it’s stunted and dry on the terraced fields of the mountains. Last week I wore five layers of warmth and woke up in the morning to the smell of wood smoke as people lit fires before dawn to keep from freezing. This week there are not only no fires, but I’m wearing a single sweater and, despite vaguely overcast skies, the ground is dry and the wind coming from the Southeast instead of the frigid North, is positively balmy. My neighbors in this mountainside village are getting worried. Many of them count on small family fields to feed themselves, their livestock and perhaps make a bit of cash to buy things they can’t grow. If the winter rains don’t come, not only won’t they be able to grow what their families need to eat, but the price of wheat, a necessary staple, will do what corn has already done and double.
I’m city born and raised (Chicago, San Francisco) and, although my father came from farm country, his family was business people - stockbrokers and lawyers - rather than folks who worked the land. Still, I spent just enough time in DeKalb and in rural Wisconsin in my childhood to have some clue about how close to the edge most farm families live and how important the seasons and the elements are to survival and sustenance. I can at least say I’ve grown vegetables, milked a cow and fished an egg out from under an annoyed hen. Heck, I’ve cleaned and plucked chickens, ducks, geese and turned four-legged critters into steaks and rump roasts. I truly appreciate how much work goes into making the food humans eat, which in turn gets transformed into energy by which we perform other essential labor. I watch the farm wives around here cutting and hauling piles of grass as big as a Volkswagen to feed the cows and water buffalo and bending over planting rice seedlings while ankle deep in squishy mud. They deserve a high return from their labours. I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to plow and plant a field of wheat (oxen as still used to pull plows around here as many fields are inaccessible to vehicles) and then have to wait for a vital season of rain that doesn’t come. I buy my wheat, my rice, my corn, from these people. I’m one of the privileged class - if the price increases, I’ll manage anyway, unlike some of them, but I want them to succeed, I want them to celebrate rather than dread the wheat harvest this spring!
Farms at the edge of town
Even before we left the States to wander around and eventually land here in Himachal, our household had begun to embrace the beginnings of what has become the “Locavore” movement - supporting one’s local agriculture and economy (as well as improving overall nutrition) by eating as much of one’s diet from local sources as possible. In the Bay Area that wasn’t as difficult as it might sound - we had access to excellent farmer’s markets and small, regional producers of everything from milk and cheese to fruits, vegetables of every description and freshly baked breads. In Mexico, we also bought from local farmers whenever possible, figuring that it was good for us and a way of being environmentally responsible. Basically, the less distance things have to be trucked, the less they are processed and package, the smaller the “carbon footprint” is left in the doing and the consuming. That can only be a good thing all around.
But here… here we can really truly practice a philosophy of supporting the local farmers in every possible way. And we do. I can actually tell you who grew the wheat that I baked into bread last night and who grew the amazing fresh greens that we’ll eat for lunch tomorrow along with paneer - cheese that we make ourselves from milk given by a very sweet cow who lives in a shed several doors down from us. We don’t eat a lot of meat, nobody here does, but what we do consume probably has passed by our front door on its way down to market - walking down the road on four feet. Everything has a direct relationship - the animals, the people, the earth, the soil and all it produces.
Greens picked fresh in the morning reach our table for lunchtime
Two types of fresh cheeses are hung to drain. The whey from a previous batch was used to make the batch of homemade bread.
So, although this mild, dry weather is really pleasant for general living, we’re all pulling for a return of the winter before it’s too late. I’m hoping to wake up in the morning and see the haze of my breath on the way to the latrine and wheeze a little at the smoky dawn air. I’m hoping I have to wait an extra day or two for laundry to dry on the roof because it was hung right before a rain storm made us scurry upstairs to collect it quickly from the lines. My friends and community are counting on that rain and the cold, sometimes uncomfortable weather that goes with it! Certainly there are times I really really miss Trader Joe’s and Monterey Market and the abundance of exotic goodies, the sheer variety that they offer. I miss those giant pound plus bars of Belgian chocolate and the cheeses (oh how we dream of Gruyere and Camembert, of Port Salud and Roquefort!) and we inevitably return from our visits West with a stash of chocolate, dried cherries and a few hunks of Gjetost. But most of the time we are dependent for our sustenance on this place where we make our home. What is good for the farmers and craftsmen and merchants of Tso Pema is going to be beneficial to our lives. So right now, we’re hoping for the cold and the rain to come and do it’s seasonal thing.
Funny. This is not the blog post I intended to write. When I sat down this evening, I planned to write about all the visitors who come to Rewalsar/Tso Pema in this winter season and to describe them, first in words and then in some pictures I’ve taken of the winter residents and pilgrims who are beginning to actually crowd the path around the lake. No joke, there are folks down from the higher mountain regions where it truly is freezing cold at midday, places like Ladakh and Kinnour and Spiti and valleys tucked away on the Tibetan border. They have their own traditions and customs and manner of dress and most of them have their own language too. Devout Buddhists and often very sensible people too, they come down here to what they think of as a warm, but accessible location and spend their days circumnambulating the sacred lake, attending pujas, chanting, praying - and staring at all the strange townie folks and the odd Western tourists - who stare right back at these odd follk in their different costumes, elaborate jewelry and incomprehensible speech. They’ll stay many to a single rented room, sleeping close together for warmth, making tea over tiny wood fires and reconnecting with friends who they haven’t seen all year. From now until Losar (Tibetan New Year) they’ll continue to flock into town, many of them older people, retired from a lifetime of hard work, seeking the relative comfort of our mild winter afternoons. It’s like a festival or fair some days as you go along the streets. Vendors follow the pilgrims, setting up stalls to sell everything from tea to noodles to prayer flags and incense. It’s a marvelous time for people watching, and I wanted to share some of that with my blog readers. That’s what I was planning to write about before I got side tracked by farming issues and carbon footprints. I’ll go ahead and end with a few pictures - a few portraits of the different characters in my environment. As much as possible, I’ll try and post at least a picture or two every day, even if I don’t have a chance to write much. It’s just too interesting not to show what can be seen here through the camera’s lens!
A musician entertains pilgrims sitting on the grass near the sacred lake
I love this picture of two elderly Tibetan nuns waiting for their afternoon tea. These two are, as they appear, a pair of very feisty old birds. Do not mess with them!
Young girls from up near Ladakh. The headscarves are very traditional, even if their jackets are second hand Adidas.
