I’ve heard it said that farming is little more than moving piles. First you spend a pile on seed, compost, tools and tractors, and then you spend a pile on labor to shuffle everything around the landscape. After the crops grow you spend another pile to gather in, package, cool, palletize, and ship your harvest. With luck and good management a little pile of money should return to you to catalyze this process all over again. I can’t help you with luck but I can tell you how to communicate with any Spanish speakers you deal with about where those piles all need to go.

In the English world we have here and there. A Spanish landscape is a bit different. Here is aquí, as in “aquí estamos,” here we are. Richard Alpert, acid-head professor-turned guru Ram Das, wrote a book called Be Here Now. Had he been born Ricardo Alperto he might have written Que Sea Usted Aquí Ahora.
But here is also acá in Spanish. Go to any playground in our town of Watsonville and hear the mothers calling out to their children: “Ven te para acá.” Come here! Actually, what you will hear is “Vente pa’ca” since the Castillian para acá is clumsy and gets contracted in urgent speech. The mothers mean come right here, within their grasp, so that they may wipe a moco, clean a face, or administer justicia or amor.
Aquí is more general and non-site specific than acá. “Por acá” means “around here” as in “¿Ha le visto a Chuy por acá? Have you seen Chuy here?” Chuy may be aquí en America without being por acá , on the ranch.

There is allí in Spanish, or allá, depending on where there is. Allá is further away than allí. “Desde acá enfrente de la ventana, from here in front of the window, I can see four of my goats para allí, or p’allí, over there, reaching their heads through the fence to eat the greener grass. Allá, over there, a fifth goat is poking into the brush.” When the fifth goat is way over there, más allá, so far away as to be hidden from its companions, it will commence to bleat in goatese “Dónde están?” “Aquí estamos,” the four will respond. “Vente p’acá.”

Aquí, acá, allí, and allá are all relational terms that fix the speaker’s point of view in the world they are addressing. When you use these locational terms correctly you more completely join the world you are trying to manage. If you are a farmer, all the piles in your life may never go away but with a little help and clear communication you may get them all in the right place.

A few more locational terms:

near (to) cerca (de)
far (from) lejos (de)
up arriba
down abajo
in back (of) detrás (de)
in front (of) enfrente (de)
in, on en
inside (of) dentro (de)
outside (of) afuera (de)
between, among entre
around alrededor
next (to) allado (de)

Places:

field el fil
orchard la huerta
road el camino
tree-row, avenue la avenida
row, vine row, furrow el surco
edge la orilla
edge, levee, border el bordo