Well, when we looked for worms in our milo fields, we found some. It just seemed to me that there weren’t that many. But we met up with some other farmers out there, and they looked. They left a message at our house: Worms! Worms! They can destroy the whole crop! Danger!.
Again, some workers found us. (Don Andres and Peña are working somewhere else right now.) Two brothers with farming equipment offered to work for us. We went to visit their machine yard, and drank an obligatory shot of tequila. They offered to bring an enormous tank of water to the fields, and their own experienced selves, to spray a foliar fertilizer and insecticide. We bought the prescribed bottles, and took them to the fields this morning. They showed up with a heavy truck, a very large tank of water in the back, and their spray rigs. They had one with a gas motor, and two that work with hand pumps.
Wondering about their names? Mechin, Monstro, and Chino. I think Mechin (sounds a little like Machine) is the older brother, maybe in his thirties, and then there’s Monstro, who from his nickname you’d think he had some feature, difficult to overlook, that would make him look somehow monstrous. You’d be wrong, though, because he has a baby face and a quick smile. Their cousin Chino was the third team member. (Curly hair is called chino, and if you guessed that he has very curly hair, you’d be right). The three of them filled their tanks and sprayed our two fields in about three hours (not three days like the time it took for dry fertilizer and weed-killer).
The early morning was cold. The workers got very, very wet right away. Their pant-legs were wet. Their shoes were wet. They wore bandannas over their faces. They mixed the liquids quickly and moved fast down the furrows. We were home right after eleven.
There was rain in the evening. The skies are so beautiful here in Guanajuato.