Amador ServínApril 15

Our “countrymen” (“los paisanos”) know how to make limestone. They break rocks and carry them in sacks to the furnace, which they have made in a steeply sided swale. It is a hole dug with all its sides straight. It has an opening at the back where all the wood is put in. It doesn’t need a cover. The limestone is burned 2 to 3 days. The size of the oven depends on the quantity of rock that is going to be burned. To make the limestone one must sprinkle water on the burned rocks.

An oven for brown sugar is built in the same kind of place as an oven for limestone. The sides open up as they go down, i.e. the floor is wider than the opening. On one side there is an opening for the wood, and on the opposite side there’s a chimney; there is a channel—horizontal, then vertical-- that comes to the level of the earth, but at a distance from the oven. A spade is put on top of the principal opening, and this acts as a stopper.

Plácido CecilioApril 17

Zapote seeds are removed from the fruit and dried in the sun for five days. The skin is removed with a spade. (The seeds) are toasted on the griddle and crushed on the grinding stone. One needs fifty seeds to fill a bottle (the size of men’s hair oil). Seeds go for 30 to 50 for a peso if a woman does not have a mamey tree.

Amador Servín

Folks frequently cut down a mamey tree just to get the seeds. Then they throw away the fruit. People from Huautla and Tenango come to buy the oil. It used to be that that they came a lot, but no longer.

RMLApril 26

I saw three boys in a large mamey tree. They had climbed to the top and, with long poles, knocked down a great deal of fruit, which they used only for the seeds.

~April 29

I saw an oven for limestone–the pit is squared, with the depth of a meter and a half. The bottom has a circular hole in the center with the depth of a half a meter. The back of this has an open side where one puts the firewood.

A planter