Today was a bit like a dream come true - here goes:

This is a photo of the morning light falling on the twin volcanoes Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl. Popocatepetl, on the left, is both active and 'male', while Ixtaccihuatl, his wife according to legend, is neither - if you look at the silhouette you can just about see the outline of a woman, laid down, hands folded across her chest.

Together they depict a sort of Mexican Romeo and Juliet, or many a modern marriage, perhaps. She lies sleeping (/dead), while he fumes.

Anyway! Back to today, which began both with the view shown above, and this too, below:

Fields in the early morning mist - it could be England, or anywhere - until you notice the spiky maguey cactuses, which mark the boundary lines, and it's definitely Mexico.

Today, we were visiting an NGO, Proyecto de Desarrollo Rural Integral, that works with farmers in a small municipality in the north of Tlaxcala state, to see if we might be able to work together to understand the social, economic and environmental implications of rejecting chemical pesticides and harvesting chapulines (grasshoppers) - just like everyone used to do before monoculture took over.

This is Panfilo Hernandez Ortiz, of Projecto de Desarrollo Rural Integral (the integrated rural development project), showing us a 'net'-ful of tiny chapulines that he has just swept through the edge of a polycultural maize-bean field in Vincente Guerrero. 

Vincent Guerrero is a village of 573 inhabitants, named after a revolutionary general, where the morning serenity is broken by fireworks summoning people to church/work. A bit of a contrast from the jingles transmitted by loudspeaker in the Japanese countryside, but I was sold.  

Speaking of Japan, check this out:

Sure, it may look like a badly-shot photo of a couple of Mexican farmers (and yes, it is) - but look closely! Anyone keen on cultigens (I'm sure I have a wide audience here. Well, I would if only the other 60% of the world had internet access) will see that maize is being intercropped with squash. This is a system that increases soil nitrogen and agricultural productivity, which first I learnt about here in Zimbabwe and South Africa. It's something that I tried to implement in Japan, with some (pretty minor) success.. But, of course, both crops originated here in Mexico.

Anyway, back to the grasshoppers. Here they are up close:

Still almost invisible, right?

The harvesting season in this region is Sept-Oct, depending on the weather, so they're not ready just yet.

For the time being, they'll be left to explore any food source they can find among the fields and their borders. Meanwhile, we'll try to figure out a way of addressing the research questions mentioned at the beginning of this post... and perhaps by the time autumn arrives, we'll have both a plentiful grasshopper harvest AND a strong protocol to celebrate!

(Actually, it was such a successful day that we began our celebrations early. Grasshoppers cannot be harvested in Vicente Guerrero yet, but Pulque - a milky, mucilaginous cactus beer that tastes about a hundred times better than this description - certainly can...)

 Thanks to the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the Oxford Martin School, we have funding and a venue for an interdisciplinary workshop to be held this December at Oxford!

More information, and the call for abstracts, can be found here, where I'll also be uploading the programme and abstracts once these are confirmed at the end of September. 

We also have a bit of funding to assist graduate students with travel expenses - details on how to apply for this can also be found on the same page.

Good bye, England!

But before I say good bye, I'd like to share some happy surprises I've come across in the past few months..

Here is the first: People in England enjoy Japanese insects!

This is a photo of a participant at a workshop held near Oxford, looking very happy with her insect creation! It's a tortilla topped with roasted veg and Japanese grasshoppers...and she left the festival clutching a bottle of 35% hornet liquor, to be saved for her 18th birthday party, which is still at least a decade away...

So how did this happen?

When Becca and I visited Japan in May to give presentations on insects, nutrition and sustainability, were given a very generous 3kg of edible insects by Mr Tsukuhara. Becca had the great idea of using these to share information about insects as food at a local festival - Tandem festival. Becca is a political economist, and she also recruited Annie, a psychologist, so we were a three-person team. Here are their accounts of the event: Grub's Up (Annie) and Look Down (Becca)

The workshop sparked a lot of discussion...

...Not to mention a great deal of culinary creativity! (Yes, that's a wasp larvae and salsa 'pizza')

Next, we’ll be collaborating with other Oxford-based science communicators and chefs to take a similar workshop to Green Man Festival, at the end of August.

This time, though, we’re hoping to reach thousands of people! We have some core funding and we’ll be holding an insect picnic in Einstein’s Garden, under the grandiose banner of ‘Bug Banquet’ (I love this name, because it’s so true. In many places in the world, insects are festival foods, seasonal delicacies for special occasions.)

We have initial funding, but in order to really make an impact, we need a little more… so please do visit our kickstarter page if you’re feeling generous, and if this is something you’d like to support. We’re running this on a not-for-profit basis, and our aim is to get people discussing, thinking about and enjoying edible insects.

Anyway. On to my second topic for this post... Honeybees!

This photo was taken in a back garden in Oxford, at 7.30pm one evening, and as you can see, they’re pretty active. This is partly because it’s very warm in the UK at the moment, but also because this house, despite being very close to the city centre, is surrounded by a lot of ’wild’ land where these bees can forage for all sorts of nectar.

My biggest surprise, though, came from the style of hive:

It’s a Kenyan top bar, just like hives I’ve seen in Uganda and Zimbabwe! Apparently you can buy them here in the UK, made to order - and why not? These are great hives, and the bees here seem to like them too.

Which brings me to my third ‘meeting of worlds’.. Foraging.

This is meadowsweet, which at this time of year is scattered throughout the field I happily call my ‘back garden’ when at home in Oxford. I’ve known it as a flower for years - but I had no idea that it can also be used to make a sweet infusion, similar to elderflower, which would probably go very well in a summery gin-based cocktail..

And this is a crayfish trap! 

A simple union of plastic wire and a bicycle basket. Crayfish are also caught in Japan, where they are known as 'zari-gani', although I've never fished for them there - apparently there used to be lots in the irrigation channels bordering the rice paddies, but now there are very few due to runoff from agricultural chemicals.

Anyway, using this ingenious invention (it’s Shoji’s and I think he should patent it, it worked so well) and some fishguts, free of charge from Hayman’s fisheries in the Oxford covered market, Shoji and I caught 8 little crayfish in a single evening - all in a part of the river Isis that I've swum in and rowed on, countless times, without ever thinking about the animals beneath me! 

I’ve enjoyed finding out that familiar worlds can meet in unexpected ways on home turf, but I’m leaving now for a little while, and looking forward to learning new things in unknown places.

When I come back, though, I do hope that in my ‘back garden’, these very well-known berries will be ripe for the picking..