Finca La Ceja

After passing through La Ceja, we turned off of the main road and headed through a tunnel of trees.  I felt like I was in a storybook as we drove up the dirt path.  When we got to the finca, it was quiet.  Only the family that maintains the property was there.  Some people rent the house, but the finca is for sale.  How do you divide a house among eight siblings?  A house and property that will soon be taken over by the growing town around it?  You don't.  Instead, all you can do is try to sell it and divide the profits.  The problem that the family is having right now is that who wants to buy such a big house?  Families are shrinking, no one needs four bedrooms.  The land is good and will go quick.  Surrounding industrial flower farms will eat it up.  But the house?

I felt very grateful to be shown La Finca.  I now know that it was hard to go there.  To see how the place where you grew up- where you played soccer in the yard, where your grandmother's roses grew, where you built a fort, where the tangerine trees and the orange trees and the lemon trees still stand- has changed.  

We picked the swollen fruits from the trees, we took them home, and we made juice.  It was fresh and sweet.