On Saturday, April 24, 2009, I went to an indigo farm and made a T-shirt with blue dye. The first thing I did was take a long, tiresome drive. Once we entered the dirt road leading to the farm, my mom said "Five more minutes guys". It turned out to be another forty-five minutes on a skinny road that had dust all over the place. The road was like El Salvador for twenty minutes, Arizona for five, and China for the rest of the ride. Our micro bus has great gas mileage, great turns, but it doesn't have the strongest motor. So when we were looking down the two hundred foot cliffs, we didn't feel so good. Once we got to the farm, we got out kissing the ground. But as we got up from that, we felt like pieces of sizzling bacon on a frying pan.  As I started walking in, I felt like an alien, for my brother and I were the only boys there. There wasn't even a dad! That day was a field trip for my family, but a Girl Scout event for my sisters and all the other forty- five girls. Yikes!!! Once I got in, I felt a little better. Later we took a ten minute hike to see where they grew the indigo and tiki.  Tiki is a big tree that has leaves which release a red dye when smashed.  On the hike we saw huge selva trees and a family of horses roaming the ranch.  Once we got to the destination, we saw the indigo.  Indigo comes from a leaf on a large tree.  When processed the leaf turns into a blue mud like material and then can be made into a dye.  This is a long process.  At the end of the hike we got to pick our own indigo( the indigo was still a small plant.)and smash it on a white handkerchief so that it would make a cool design.  When we got back to the ranch house we sat down and waited for everyone.  As soon as everyone got back, we started to make the shirts. All the Daisy Scouts got to go first , and since my sisters,(who are Daisy Scouts) I got to go first. Once all the Daisy Scouts were there, the owner explained how to do it. It is really easy, you just need to know how to do pony tails. After we had finished dipping the shirts in the dye for sixty seconds and letting them dry for another sixty seconds in the shade...six times, we finished!!!  As our shirts dried in the sun, we ate lunch.  That part was fun because everyone sat together all over the place and picnicked.  After lunch we went and undid all the pony tails and marbles in the shirts.  They hadn't completely dried yet, and there was till a long cleaning process to finish them completely.  My mom took over from there.  As we drove home, I thought to myself that I was sure glad I had gone.

COOL   FACTS

• The dye we had used smelled really bad because it hadn't been dumped for more then 8 years.
• Indigo is green until mixed with oxygen.
• The size of a indigo leave is about 1 cm.
• The Selva is the national tree of Guatemala.