Derek Way of Chester Beer

We got a tour from Derek Way of Chester Beer brewery this week, located on a farm just outside of Puerto Varas.

This craft beer is brewed in two repurposed stainless steel refrigerated shipping containers, and efforts towards waste reduction, recycling, and upcycling are incorporated throughout their entire brewing process.  The leftover malt doesn’t even go to waste – it is fed to the cows on the farm!

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Weichafe Recycled Jewellery

Derek’s partner, Jenny Gonzalez Assis, makes a line of beautiful jewellery out of recycled aluminum cans, called Weichafe.

The interior of her pieces are filled with a variety of found treasures; seaweed, traditional woven textiles, yarn, copper wire, merken (a common spice in Chile), the list is vast and potentially limitless.

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Fundación Artesanías de Chile

The Fundación Artesanías de Chile in Puerto Varas is a great non-profit organization and store that sells items made by artisans in Chile, who are fairly paid for their work.  On each tag is information regarding who made the item, where it was made and with what materials.

Woven textiles at the Fundación Artesanías

Many of the crafts are made using traditional methods, and these methods are also outlined.  Here you will find fine woodwork, jewellery, textiles, knit and woven garments, dolls, and more.

Mapuche weaving class

The Foundation brings in skilled artisans for workshop series as well; I was lucky to be invited to sit in on a Mapuche (an indigenous group within Southern Chile) weaving session one morning.  The process requires incredible attention – strands of yarn are warped around a rectangular stand-up loom, which could easily be homemade (here in Chile, homemade looms would be the norm).

Mapuche weaving students at work

A heddle bar rests towards the top of the project, and the only other tools are a shed stick and your hands.  I had to really dig deep to where what little I know of weaving was stored inside my brain, but after two hours of concentrated attention I mostly pieced it together and now have a strong resolve to pull my second-hand frame loom out of storage when I get home and try my hand at this craft once again.

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cranberry harvest with Osorno Volcano. credit: Macarena Acuña Schmidt

One beautiful sunny day, I had the opportunity to watch a cranberry harvest with the lovely photographer Macarena Acuña Schmidt .  The 350-hectare farm was so vast – each field was about 1.6 acres, dug a few feet into the ground with a trench around so they can flood the field for harvest.  The cranberries are rustled from the low-laying plants, then the field is flooded with water (which they recycle) and the berries corralled to one end and up a conveyor belt, into a waiting truck.  Such an interesting process, and so well documented by this great photographer.

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More to come!!