The Burros of SMA.

Although San Miguel de Allende is a thoroughly modern city, in most ways, there are bits and pieces of fading rustic charm, which give it, if you;ll pardon the once-imperial dominating French, that certain je ne sais quoi. Quite unlike U.S. cities, mostly unlike most Mexican cities of its size, the Municipality of SMA, with it's dozens of small villages that are under its providence, still has a touch of rurality.
This is brought home throughout the year, as campesinos (i.e., people from the countryside) travel around the city with their burros laden with product to sell. In the Spring and Summer, the burros are packed with gunnysacks of earth, usually taken from the foothills surrounding SMA. These are sold to the people in town who want to augment or rejuvenate their garden soils, with something other than store-purchased additives.
In the Fall and Winter, the burros loads are firewood. Many of the homes in Sn Miguel have fireplaces and chimeneas (the pottery, pot-bellied fireplace) in their main rooms for heat. And even though most house are equipped with gas or electric furnaces, firewood---though, of course, more immediately polluting; long-term effects of gas/electricity production have more far-reaching ecological/polluting effects---is relatively economical and there is something about a fire roaring on chilly night, that warms more than just the body.