Adios Finca Quijote!

So somehow blogging has managed to evade my attention for quite some time and now we find ourselves saying 'adios' to the farm that has been our home for the last 5 months.

We're saying goodbye to some fantastic people who have endured our awful pigeon spanish and worked hard to improve it. Through various embarrassing incidents we now know the difference between 'We'll be waiting in our house (casa)' and 'We'll be waiting in our bed (cama)', along with the difference between drunk (emborracho) and pregnant (emborazada). Along with everyone else, we'll miss the awesome kids in Esperanza, who have played goodness knows how many games of checkers, snakes and ladders and cards with us and now insist on wearing plastic bags hats for the journey across the street when it's raining (all from my one time suggestion!). We're extremely grateful to people for adopting us and including us in their families, despite our communication difficulties.




Ready for the walk across the street after playing checkers.

 

I'm sure that I'll be remembered as the apologetic English girl who still can't work out how full a wheelbarrow can get before she's completely unable to control it and bizarrely wishes for a weed free garden. While Ethan will be remembered for being able to knock together stunning pieces of wooden furniture, even if he does insist on wearing impressive '70s safety glasses whilst doing it.

Cool? Me? No.... this is natural!

 

We're also saying goodbye to some of the most character-filled dogs I've ever encountered... the hobbling guard that is Chica (all 4 feet and legs work but she prefers 3!), the diplomatic temptress that is Barbie and the cutest, most playful puppy ever to have been rescued from fleas and abandonment.

 

Barbie

Puppy


 I personally, have had a fantastically varied experience here... from creating a green house garden from scratch, to making humanure, to trying my hand at carpentary for the new improved chicken coop, butchering a cow and making whatever we can from garden produce (juice, marmalade, chutney, salsa, thai curry paste, cake...). It's been a pleasant mix of daily routines and new challenges and at every turn we've learned something- whether it's a new fact or technique or just patience.

The nearly weed free greenhouse. Just look at how much it's grown!
We've enjoyed all of the leaves, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs it's produced.

 

Chickens happily feasting on their daily rations of leaves and windfall guavas.

Ethan putting in poles for the improved chicken runs,
which now features 6 runs each planted with a chicken feast.

Philip and I working on the first leg of the cow.
Who knew that scissors are the best tool for butchering?!

Making curd, marmalade and juice from the
mountain of oranges the guys harvested.

So we're heading out again to go romping around other people's farms in the hope that one of them will fulfill our ever-growing list of criteria. Both of us are excited and feel better equipped... we know more Spanish, we have more practical knowledge of agriculture in the tropics, we know more about people here and the way things work. I also think we know now, more than ever before, that we're both committed to being here for the long haul and creating a farm that we can be proud of. That's a good feeling to go farm hunting with......

This is my first actual blog post on this blog.  I am doing so after numerous requests.  I am not the writer Claire is so I have been hesitant to write anything.  But understandably I look at our stay here in Costa Rica through different eyes.  As a start I am seen here more as farm repair man than a gardener, it’s not a title that I dislike but not what I expected when I first arrived.  I expected to do a lot of digging and planting of trees and taking walks in the forest clearing trails.  In actuality I have made multiple sets of shelves for workers quarters, framed in new windows, made bunk-beds, replaced termite infested walls, built a greenhouse, new chicken runs, etc.  The nice part is I get to play in a fully stocked shop with some of the most beautiful wood on the planet which was cut on the farm and transported to almost our doorstep by the power of nature. 

The other day I went on an all day excursion to the edges of the farm to clear the boundary but to also look for illegal squatters. (Costa Rica and most of central America have a legal tradition of allowing squatters to claim land for ownership if it is “not in use” under the current owner.  This leaves the necessity to carve out the boundary every 6 months and check for squatter or pecaristas.)  During the walk, up muddy near vertical slopes next to 30 foot drops on to jagged stone riverbeds, we found multiple landslides due to the heavy rains in this part of the world on top of slick clay soil and shallow rooted trees.  The grade of the slops and soil limits the size the trees can get but also allows for some primeval wood to be scavenged for.  We found downed logs of trees easily over 100yrs old and to my eye very rare woods such as mahogany.  The farm manager here has developed a clever method of sending these trees downhill a number of kilometres by bucking them into manageable sizes and winching them into the nearest stream.  Though the stream on a normal day will only flow a few hundred gallons a minute, during a storm event these streams become rivers and carry 400 lb logs over the cataracts and waterfalls down to the farm houses.  This can sometimes take a year to achieve but the end result if patient is the ability to make a mahogany bed for the cost of old pallets at the docks.

Though the rains are consistent and we get rain every afternoon the trees that are adapted are amazingly resistant.  Though covered in lichens, epiphytes and parasites we recently had a orange harvest from the 3-4 trees growing by the house.  This harvest gave 6, 50 lb sacks of fruit to be distributed, after they had been harvested multiple times previously.  The result has been a glut of fresh orange juice every meal.  It is a real struggle to live in poverty! 

The downside to all this is we still have yet to find a farm for our own.  Though we have learned from our experiences that you can't rush these things it is frustrating working for someone else when you would rather be doing it for yourself.   Besides the frustration it is good however to learn the inner workings of a farm before we are thrown in the deep end.  In any  new country there are obviously new cultural dimensions, and though the difference between Latin America and the US/England is very minor compared to much of Africa it is good to take it all in while the failures won’t come back to haunt you.  It is nice to have the growing pains of learning a new language on this farm rather than on our own and it is nice to allow someone else to be pegged as the rich foolish gringo and learn from it before we are in the same boat. 

Until we get a farm and are allowed to apply for residency we have to make a quarterly border crossing to restart our visas.  A few weeks back we crossed into Nicaragua to do this but we also had the chance to visit former co-workers of mine in Nicaragua.  We had a nice time staying at the lodge which I lived at for 2 months last year.  This time there were a few new residents to the area that I had never noticed though. 

First there is big talk of the new canal going through Nicaragua and I assume it will completely change southern Nicaragua and destroy much of the wildlife, forests and sport fishing of the Rio San Juan unless a big part of the money goes to policing the area against illegal loggers.  One thing that will hopefully change though is the growing prevalence of drug runner in the area.  The local lodge owner pointed out a number of new houses in the middle of no where with owners that had no jobs.  It brings to reality the problems of the American drug policy and how our war on drugs is doing nothing but wasting tax payers money and making the minority of drug runners rich while preying on the poor rural farmers with more land than education.  (make it all legal and put the profits to educate people and we would be much better off)

The most interested new inhabitant of the lodge however is there new adult Cayman that has taken up residency next to the dock.  Only being about 3.5 feet long I figured I could get pretty close to get a real action shot.  I wasn’t disappointed (except for the fact that I didn’t have the camera ready)  I had a Cayman leap out of the water when my head was down checking my footing.  I looked up to see the jaws of a the reptile snap but a foot from my face and fall back into the water, thankfully without my nose.   Trying to get the shot again I repeated the process the next morning with Claire as the photographer and witness only to be disappointed in the rapid fire option on the camera and the rotted riverbank that separated me from a teenage Cayman full of piss and vinegar.   Not quite as powerful as former encounters with Great Whites or 800lb gorillas but I will admit having the snapping jaws of a reptile almost my size close enough to my face to see his cavities did give me the incentive to not be as adventurous the second time around. 

Having left Nicaragua it was official that Claire has now visited more countries than me. (F****** B****.  I need to leave her behind more often, can you believe it she is at 32 countries!, its because Europe is full of pseudo countries like Wales, who counts Wales!)

After we left Nicaragua we stayed at a farm/lodge on our way  back home.  We were lucky enough to have it paid for by the farm owners we work for so that we can gather info and techniques to bring back to the farm.  It was a very nice place and I would recommend it to any one in Visiting Costa Rica that is interested in sustainable agriculture, its called Luna Nueva.  On our way back I also decided to break our rule and purchase a motorcycle, this hog gets over a hundred miles to the gallon!  I dare anyone to find another motorcycle that came with a speedy Gonzalas decal on it!

The final things of interest that I have to write about, (this will hopefully fulfil my quota for this year) are the earthquakes and my murderous ways.  We have had a few earthquakes the last few months that have been noticeable.  The first almost dropped a pile of lumber on my head but they are nothing like the news makes them out to be.  And finally I shot a cow in the head and cut it up for dinner.  (Claire said its interesting and I should write about it)

I apologize for my ramble but to those like my mother I am sure you like knowing something about what my life is like these days.  I assure everyone that I am fine and healthy and that there is nothing as dangerous here as the smog and poison food in the US and England. 

 

Ethan

 

A garden update

Since we’ve been at Phil and Ginnee’s farm for over 2 months now, I thought you might like to see how the garden under the green house is going. It’s certainly come a long way from its brown beginnings in July.....

 

 

In the foreground of the picture, our herb spiral is becoming more fragrant with an abundance of lemon basil accompanied by purple basil, chives, mint and parsley. I’m also delighted that some lavender germinated after the seeds spent a month in our refrigerator and the culantro (similar to coriander) that was growing wild in our garden seems to like its new situation. This week’s landmark event was that we ate our first root vegetable from the garden... a rather powerful, white radish proudly stretching an entire 20cm! You can just about see the radish tops (which are tasty salad greens too) behind the seed tray table. Now we are avidly waiting on the tomatoes and the tomatillos, which are now displaying tantalizing green lanterns. Other plants that are doing well are okra, sweet peppers (which are wearing tetra pack collars to protect them from nibbling mice), eggplants, carrots and an array of different leafy greens. The kale did survive aphid attacks with the assistance of garlic, chilli and onion spray and the broccoli is recuperating after being accosted by the leaf cutter ants.

 

Dowsing the ant nest with blended citrus peel for about a week, seems to have held the ants at bay for the time being. It certainly didn’t kill them off, but they at least got frustrated at having to excavate their thoroughfare each day and have opted for a different nest opening, the other side of the garden.

We are also praising the virtues of compost tea, which I’m sure has given the plants a significant nutritional boost and helped to deter pests as well as bacterial and fungal infections. For anyone who hasn’t made compost tea (and I hadn’t before I came here!), you submerge a net sack of fresh compost in a weak solution of molasses and water. You then aerate it all in a large bin, using a fish tank pump, for 24-48 hours. This creates an exponential growth of friendly bacteria as well as releasing soluble nutrients, which you apply to the leaves and roots of the plants using the good old fashion watering can method. For anyone interesting in making compost tea, check out an interesting article by a Faye Ingram or this YouTube video by the ‘Dirt Doctor’. I'd love to hear if anyone else tries it out... it could be a great way of keeping UK lawns nice and green as well as boosting greenhouse crops.

Battling on a small scale

In one of my previous posts, I talked about the terrifying power of nature and how any trees we plant might be ripped up by the river at any minute. Turns out, I need to think on a slightly smaller scale on a day to day basis.

Meet my adversaries.....

Cut worms burrowing into the maize stalks

Aphids attacking the kale



Leaf cutter ants returning to their nest with a successful harvest

The cutworms have been plaguing the maize; burrowing down into the ear, leaving their trail of destruction (rather holey leaves and yellow gunk) as a handy detection aid. It comes as no surprise that the first line of organic defence is rather time consuming.... pluck them out with tweezers one by one! And don’t even consider embarking on this task without full length trousers, a long sleeve shirt and a hat, or everything else out there will attempt to eat you alive! The second line of defence is slightly less pleasant. You put the ‘plucked’ cutworms in the blender, dilute the product with water and spray it onto the crop. Apparently this spray then contains a chemical called Bacillus thuringiensis (or Bt). When this is eaten by fellow cutworms it produces a protein that paralyzes their digestive system, causing them to die from starvation. Sounds nasty, but kind of necessary if we want any maize to harvest!

Aphids are a problem I’m a little more familiar with, but I have to confess that some of the organic suggestions for getting rid of them such as frying the aphids by placing tin foil under the affected plants and deterring them with shredded banana leaves buried underneath, were new to me. I settled for a more personally tried and tested method- onion, garlic and chilli spray. I’ll let you know how it works or if I need to up the concentration.

In the way of leaf cutter ants, I spotted them over a week ago now. I naively hoped that they would continue to prefer their weed diet and only use my garden as an access route, leaving my plants alone. No such luck. The broccoli was the fall guy and the ants made easy work of nearly all the broccoli leaves over the space of two evenings. They’re pretty amazing creatures- able to carry twenty times their own body weight, building nests that cover up to 600 square metres and house up to 8 million individual ants, and being able to decimate foliage on an entire tree in a single night. And they don’t even actually eat the leaves! Instead they take them into their nest where the leaves act as a compost for their fungus food. Knowing the likely size of their nest, we decided that boiling water wasn’t a particularly viable option. So we’re trying out two methods of killing their fungus- blended citrus peels and boric acid (the second method being a little more aggressive!!), both placed around their nest holes so that they’ll traipse it into the nest on their feet.

So my fingers are crossed that our anti-pest measures take effect. Otherwise the beds that we've worked on for 2 months now may start to look very bare! And if anyone reading this knows of any other better, non toxic methods of pest control then please let me know. I’m clearly still wet behind the ears about tropical horticulture!

A trip to the beach

A few weekends ago we decided that we needed some perspective and down time so we took a long weekend and headed off to the beach. Three different bus rides later, we reached Cahuita- a sleepy little Caribbean town complete with its own wildlife reserve and reggae bars. It was gorgeous.

Our hotel room looked out directly onto the ocean and to the right of our view stretched the pristine tree line of the reserve.

 

 

The reserve, which operates on a donation basis, was no disappointment. Delicious stretches of white sand and an extremely well maintained forest trail that clung to the coast, crossing the occasional creek and bustling with monkeys, birds, lizards and butterflies (the last of which proved too challenging for my patience to capture photographically!). And although we didn’t go ourselves, the Cahuita peninsula also boasts snorkelling along its coral coast.

 

To add to our excitement, Ethan also spotted a sloth one evening plodding its way along the telephone wire in search of supper. Apparently these guys are smart... when they get close to the electricity cables, they nimbly (but still slowly!) limbo their way around them to avoid being shocked. 

 

If this blog post reads more like a travel advert than a description of life on a farm, then I make no apologies. I’m trying to convince you all that you need to come visit us as soon as we eventually have our farm!! Plus for us, the weekend was the perfect reminder that we’re not here just to live on a rural farm... we could do that in either the UK or the US. We’re here for the whole package and that includes being able to access white sandy beaches, have the choice of swimming in the Pacific or the Caribbean, witnessing the beauty of tropical forests and the species that inhabit them and mixing with an amazing diversity of people. And on this trip there was also the added bonus of Caribbean style fish and rum cocktails! 

Our view of the volcano

Yesterday, as we walked from the farm to the bus stop, we had this rather spectacular view of the smoking Turrialba volcano. It was nice to have clear enough skies to see the view!

Fer de Lance....find of the week

It appears Marcos, the farm manager, and his men are pretty good at finding snakes. This week's Fer de Lance was rather oddly shaped so he sliced it open to find live babies inside! Very cool.... and very dangerous! Thank you to Ginnee for taking the photos.... oh and Marcos and the men for risking their lives!

Making chocolate and a few other things...

For me, one of the most exciting things about being away is seeing different plants.... especially ones that end up on our dinner tables in the UK and half the time I have no idea what the original plant looks like or the process it’s gone through before reaching me! In the garden behind our volunteer house in Esperanza there are a plethora of exciting plants... halaconias, birds of paradise, shampoo fruit, bananas, sugar cane, oranges, lemons, guavas, annonas, manzana de agua (both of these last two were new to me), papaya and cacao trees.

We thought it would be exciting to try to use the cacao to make our own chocolate. Here’s how the process went....

The cacao pods grow off the branches of the cacao tree and are ready for harvesting when they turn a browny-orange colour. When you crack the pod open, the fleshy (rather slimy), sweet, white coating around the seeds is the edible part. We fermented both the flesh and the seeds for a few days and then dried them in the sun.

We then took the thin shell off of each seed. I’m not sure the seeds were quite the right dryness however, as shelling took ages and was no easy feat for my finger nails!



Once this was done, we whizzed the dried, shell-less cacao seeds in the Vitamix and ended up with this amazingly fragrant, gorgeously purple tinged cacao powder. Now we just need to add milk and sugar and we have chocolate as we know it! Next time I purchase a luxurious bar of Dairy Milk, I’ll definitely appreciate it all the more now that I know how much work went into just getting the cacao alone!

Apart from trying our hands at making chocolate, we’ve been busy on the farm preparing beds in the greenhouse, planting seeds, transplanting saplings and Ethan has been occupied fixing anything and everything wooden from the chicken house to the farm house window frames.

Fixing the chicken house proved interesting when Ethan found a rather large boa snuggled up next to the chickens. Luckily Marcos was on hand to help catch it. I certainly wasn’t going any nearer than necessary to take the photo!

And cleaning the nursery had a little added excitement when Ethan decided we needed to get rid of the hornet nest!

We’ve also been reminded of how powerful nature is this weekend. Yesterday it must have rained for at least 36 hours straight, which meant the streams that ordinarily bubble across the road with glistening clarity turned into fast flowing, brown torrents that flooded our boots as we endeavoured to walk home. The river at the bottom of our garden raged with all of the extra water it was being subjected to and we could hear river boulders crashing against one another 100m away from our house. Definitely a force to be respected!

So yet again, life here excites me and at the same time petrifies me. There are so many things that we can grow, make and at least start to understand. I’m not sure that I’ll ever grow tired of the excitement of seeds germinating or eating freshly baked bread. All of these things are fragile though in a powerful world that we seek to work with, rather than tame. We could plant thousands of trees and the river could rip them all out in seconds in a flash flood. And it’s not just nature that terrifies me here, it’s the responsibility.... to our potential employees, our local community and people who are supporting us along the way. I guess my conclusion is that not to take the risk, not to try and make a go of things here would be to stick my head in the sand. As long as we do the best we can, endeavouring to be well informed, listening to people, respecting the powerful forces around us and being willing to learn from our experience (and in the best case scenario that of other people too!), then we should be able to be proud of how we live. And along the way it’s important to cherish every moment of beauty, excitement, accomplishment and love, ensuring that we’re journeying towards a life that we want to live rather than leaving somewhere we don’t want to be.