13/03/2026
Meet Maria, another member of the “Asociación Ixkoq’a” collective. She has worked in fields all of her life and has had her organic garden since 2019. She grows various crops such as turnips, chard, beetroot, onions and black nightshade. She sells some of the vegetables at a market in Sololá, which requires waking up at 3:30 AM. She also lives with her mother-in-law, Candelaria, who is another member of the collective.
One of the challenges she faces in her garden is the manual labor of tilling the soil, which is very exhausting for her. Thankfully, her son helps her with this, making it easier for her to do other gardening work such as sowing her seeds, which she saves from her own plants. Another challenge she faces is the very arid soil during the dry season, as very few of the plants can grow well.
Maria has a lot of chores to do around the house, such as preparing food for her family and cleaning, and she mentioned that having her own garden gives her freedom to do something on her own! 🌱
