Planting Corn

                                              Keli standing under a 2 year old breadfruit tree.

Today Oldemar started working with Freddy, and between my non-existent Spanish, and the egos involved, there has been a chaos (as Freddy put it) of communication and who is supposed to do what where, and who is supposed to listen to who.  Jim is very comfortable in uncomfortable situations and so with his ease i am eased.  But my Spanish has to improve or I'm a dead duck.

The corn patch that Oldemar made is almost finished, for the record of future inquiry, i am going to use this blog to record different things like planting times, the time it takes to do certain things and so on, so that we can refer back and have a log of information if we need it.

It took Oldemar about two days to cut and clear the brush and clean to the dirt level.   Today the third day he started adding the cal and gallinaza (organic fertalizer) to the soil.  He would have finished if he didn't start helping with the construction of Freddy's work site. That would mean that preparation and planting of say 25X25 foot area takes about two and a half days for someone who is experienced with the ways of life here.  It looks great.

Food is really much better if we can get it from the farm and it seems ridiculous to buy bananas when we must have hundreds of banana trees on the property.  It is just a matter of going and finding the bananas ready to cut down and carrying them here.  Not a simple task with out a horse and saddle.  And our saddle isn't ready yet.  And also it seems that much of the time there is not a bunch ready.  Then when they are ready fifty come ripe all at once.  Anyway we try to adhere to eating truly local food as much as possible.  Eggs are another thing.  We don't have a  chicken coop yet and the egged from the store of course are pumped with antibiotics and/or go rotten very quickly so i am asking  Oldemar and Raul to bring eggs when they have extra.  Raul's sister had eggs and today we got 18 eggs individually wrapped in torn newspaper.  It was very sweet.  We pay 100 colonies at the store for eggs.  We have been giving Raul and Oldemar a little more than that when they bring eggs from home. 

It's the afternoon.  We just had lunch and Jim is fast asleep.  I'm glad. Today he was nonstop and i just thought I'd note his day.  He got out of bed at 6:00, I'm not even sure he had a cup of tea.  It seems like such a long time ago but yes i guess he did.  I got Oldemar started on clearing the patch for the work site he was going to work with Freddy on, but soon after that Freddy and Oldemar were at the door together with conflict.  It was the beginning of a full day of going between Oldemar and Freddy until Jim just took over the job to work with Oldemar on the  new temporary wood workshop, and that way they don't have to work together. By lunch time Oldemar had stooped work for the day and was sitting with us explaining how crazy Freddy is.   Oldemar wants to work full time here.  And i am wondering if he will be able to shift his perspective to embrace all the different people he would encounter here. Both Jim and I like a wide variety of people and hold a special place in our hearts for all the eccentrics. That includes us.

By 8am, Jim met Raul and Andrea up the road to pick up the bamboo.  (The first year we were here we were offered the opportunity to buy a huge field of full grown local bamboo for forty dollars, and we have been using it for all our shade structures) They tie it piece by piece to the truck and drag it all the way here.  

Then, at the same time, the truck with the 'road rock' showed up and Jim was shoveling rock and getting the road work organized while going back and forth to check on the Freddy, Oldemar situation which needed maintenance. 

I was a  able to squeeze in a fruit smoothie for Jim at around 9:00am.  That is too much work out in the Sun with no food.  I know he loves this work and loves working hard but it's nice to see him rest. And just as i am finishing up this little story, a huge thunder bold surprises us, Jim wakes up, I'm running for the clothes line and he is going for the drying rack where our first batch of especially fermented cacao beans is drying. Then back for the rest of our much needed nap.

Awakened from a soft slumber. It's only twenty minutes since i wrote the last sentence and we are hearing in our sleep the second big truck coming for the delivery.  We forgot that there was a second delivery coming.  They have to come in small trucks so they can get down this country and often muddy road.  There is half a ton of sand that has to get shoveled off the truck, one hundred cement blocks, and many cases of tiles.   Usually the truck is arriving when we have several helpers around but now there is no one.  Jim is down there and i guess i will go help shovel just because i can't just sit here while he is doing all that work when he is stone tired.  Ahh, Freddy helped too.

Some more time has passed.  The unloading went smoothly.  The whole bathroom will be made out of cement mixed by hand since we have no grid power out here.  Both of us were amazed at the amount of cement and sand that were ordered by Carlos.

Now it is 4:30 after a little more rest, some tea.  A small diversion of capturing the beauty of this amazing moth/butterfly that was on our window.  Jim shined a flash light  on it and it has glowing blue spheres in it's wings when the light is on it, and a striking design, that looks like two open round eyes on it's wings...

And finally, music practice.  It is incredible that we will get in our music before dark today.  I actually took the second half of my practice up to the Studio and practiced there for the first time.  It was very peaceful and the view is romantic. Afterward, a nice walk down the driveway, i could hear Freddy blasting the music on the radio in the farm house with Spanish romance music, and as i went from the studio, past the farm house to the church house,while hearing the children playing up above, it actually felt like a little bubbling community out here in the middle of nowhere.

The topper for the day was the phone call we got from Jim's dad.  His sister Mary is in the hospital and was in a coma earlier.  This is big news and we are definitely waiting to hear more about what is going on with that.

We end the day with Jim doing some work on the computer and i am organizing my music lessons to go onto the computer.  It's 7:30 and ideally we should be in bed in an hour.

All this and i didn't even mention the three fantastic meals we had.  That is a whole other subject and is definitely an artistic outlet.

Yesterday a friend asked me how is it going and what i am doing and sometimes i have a difficult time answering that question. So i got inspired to try for blogging  in a day, and so... this is how the day goes by.  Every day is different.

Getting Acquainted

Freddy and his amazing traveling tool box

Yesterday was Monday and the day before was the first Sunday that we slept in and so we are getting into the schedule here on the farm little by little.  Freddy, the carpenter that will finish our house, also arrived with all of his tools. Very cute travel system, I’ll try to take a picture of his especially redesigned shopping cart with a metal locking lid. Very organized and full of things to the brim.

Last night, Willie, the only other gringo from the area, came over for dinner and Freddy joined us.  I guess it was our first party. The main topic was about the environment and the locals.   Willie speaks very good Spanish and knows a lot more about what is going on around here between the people.  The more time we spend here getting to know the politics the more we sense, and feel the different sensitive undercurrents, social behaviors, and politics that are important to understand.

Oldemar is a young man who is working for us helping to build a little greenhouse.  He is the only person we have hired from around here to do farm work who can build standard things like bamboo rain shelters (which everyone has and is part of life here) that lasts for more than three days.  He has an artist’s flare and likes to do work that interests him or else he will sneak off and go take a nap in the grass and then lie about it.  We wanted him to assist Freddy last time we were here but he wasn't around so when he showed up looking for work we were pleased. 

Well, it's late - about 6am.  I woke up and actually got out of bed at 5am just to have a few moments of quiet to myself before the bustle of the work here commences.  We are working to finish the farm house, the Yoga Studio and the new house all at the same time, to be ready for guests in the summer.

It's 12:30 now.  Oldemar did a fantastic job and finished the green house.
With the guest volunteers coming this summer it might be possible to implement some creative projects to help educate people regarding caring for their environment.  I know Willy and the realtor who sold us this property are interested in being a part of some movement to help the locals understand the necessity for change.  Although Rolando thinks the adults are too set in their ways and we will have to aim for inspiring the children. 


   

Hard headed

We are on the road to the Chocolate farm and passing through San Isidro.

Mom, this one is a story you will sympathize with. And it is good to note that sometimes the drama is just more fun to tell. 

The news is that I almost died twice.  While at the waterfall, (first time there by myself,) I slipped on some rocks and landed on my head.   To my amazement it wasn’t cracked.  Boy, do I have a hard head.  Lucky to be alive.  The real killer is when we were driving home.  We saw a young girl standing on the road and waiting for a ride as people here often do, since the bus only comes twice a week.  And as it happened she was someone we know.  The moment she got in the car I started getting dizzy.  She was wearing perfume and I tried to act normal but finally when I was about to pass out I reached up for the skylight window to open it.  Jim helped me and suggested I stand up and get some fresh air.  I was a little embarrassed because it would seem quite strange.  But I guess not stranger than telling her I’m allergic to perfume.  That always makes people feel weird.  But this was strong and felt life threatening.  After she got out it took me three hours  to recover. 

We visited a nice permaculture farm today - Fuente Verde (fuenteverdecommunity.org) a lovely development with lots for sale and six families living there.  The woman we met, Tiffany, has a son 11 yrs. old who walks a mile to school everyday.  When she talked about the freedom and the life she and her son have here and how she wanted her son to feel the rainbow of freedom in contrast to what kids go through in the states it was inspiring.  I left thinking about kids with ADHD.  How many kids would have ADHD if they started out with a mile walk amidst the forest and animals singing everyday?

Driving the Sierra de Muerte

Going over the Sierra de Muerte, we are listening to one of our downloaded podcasts.  This one is about the ability of the oceans to absosrb Co2.  Of course it is one more story about how the earth's ablility to withstand our overcomsumptive life style is reaching it's end.  We all feel this now and every time i turn around there is more news about how the Earth is saying enough is enough.  I pray that the young people of today will be able to enjoy the trees, the monkeys, the fresh water and so many other things which are the real joy of living in the natural world.

Living on the farm and introducing, or shall I say re-introducing, the idea of organic farming and respect for nature is an offering and a teaching.  Many people around the farm would spray chemicals on everything if they had the money to buy it. But with our research on finding a better price for the organic cacao we can see for the first time in the two years we have lived there an interest in growing something organic.  To hear the word organic coming out of Deanae's mouth was astonishing.  Like a dream come true.
Then, on top of that, they are planting a vegetable garden box in their yard which will diversify their food supply.  I see all this is very good for the planet but for the locals it is just a good idea that they can see will serve them. 


Picking up a Tico Times (the local English language newspaper) today i was pleasantly surprised to see many articles about the efforts of people taking steps to protect our nature.  I'm trying to focus more on the great efforts being made.  Lets give that more energy. One article is about the country's attempts to answer the calls of people who have been working for years to protect monkeys and other wild life from being harmed on electrical wires. Another article is about the increasing population of a non-native and devestating population of Lionfish in the Carribean  reefs, all written by people who are in touch with nature and have the inspiration and compassion to get involved.

This touches me with a kind of piercing of the heart quality which brings with it my own desire to help in some way or at least continue with even more fervor to live with less impact. Boy do I have far to go till i live without impact, and i bother everyone with my fanatical attitude about the use of plastic, perfumes, and  "to go" containers. That's just because time is slow.  Soon, and maybe even in my lifetime, everyone will be using sustainable products of every kind in every corner of life. 

Today we met Juan who is going to help us design a website for the farm.  He is a very young and very talented man.  He has his own website design company and has been successful to the point that when we met today the first thing we talked about is how he is tired of web design. It bores him and he is now planning on attending film school in Cuba.  No doubt he will be good at that, too.

Both Jim and I felt kind of old after sitting with him.  But it was sweet to see and feel the raw energy of youth. He will be among the leaders who will hopefully make the changes necessary to continue  living naturally on this planet.

Today i ponder how our life on the farm can further love and respect for nature.

Jim is learning how to make video and also edit so we can add fun stuff to this blog and he is threatening to make avante-guarde movies of the farm.

Back in Costa Rica and a Scorpion Mother

Keli and I are back in Costa Rica.

But this is a different Costa Rica from the countryside of the chocolate farm. This Costa Rica is more like a dirtier and more chaotic version of any ugly city in the United States. San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica is one of the most unlovely capital cities of any country in the world.

We will soon be traveling to the chocolate farm and we will be updating our blog with pictures of the fruit trees we planted last year, the weeds that have covered our garden and the termite holes that infest our new wood house.

Check out the new video of the scorpion mother at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv7Pskg1iyg

Adventures in the City

Where we get our drinking water

We’ve been in San Jose, the capitol of Costa Rica, for the last couple of days.

What a vacation! When we are at the farm it is almost impossible to imagine a life that doesn’t involve early rising, hard work, way too many projects and endless discussions about the best way to do things (discussions that I usually lose!)
The first day here in town we stayed in bed till 10 AM, watched a movie, read and generally lazed around. It felt a little bit like winning the lottery.

Yesterday we visited the Om Prem Pilates/Gyrotonic studio in San Jose. It is a beautiful, fun place that was very happy to see Keli who can offer them her services as a Gyrotonic master trainer. Its great for us because it gives us a kind of home away from home and a great way to connect with people here in town.

The clients of this studio are just the kind of people who would appreciate a visit to the Chocolate Farm. They can do yoga and Gyrotonic, refresh themselves with the pure country atmosphere and eat lots of chocolate.

San Jose is just like any other big city. It is modern, fast paced, and stressful. When they travel a couple of hundred miles south to our farm they are also traveling back in time, to a place where life is more simple, people still grow most of their own food and live in rhythms dictated by the sun, moon and seasons.

Today we traveled to Finmac, an inelegant name for an amazing cacao plantation, owned by Hugo Hermelink. 110 hectares of cacao trees. All of them are grafted trees, so they look a lot different than ours, which are planted from seeds. The grafted trees have slimmer trunks and don’t grow as high. They almost look like bonsai cacao compared to ours. The beans are very uniform in taste, even a little bland when compared to our spicy, fruity and all-over-the-place criollo beans but when you are running a big business, uniform is good.

We had a very interesting tour from the plantation manager, Ivan. I was especially interested in their fermentation process since this is the make or break point in the chocolate making process. They use large boxes, about 4 foot by 3 foot by 2 foot high, that concentrate the heat created by the fermentation. It seems like a lot of manpower is needed because all those beans need to get shoveled from box to box every day - this mixes up the beans and ensures that all the beans are fermented equally.

Hugo has some industrial sized machinery that heats, cracks, winnows and conches the beans. He produces his own cocoa liquor which he then ships around the world. This cocoa liquor is the raw material for making chocolate when added to sugar and cacao butter.

The final tasty portion of the tour was when we entered the small house where seven women in white lab coats and hair nets were making chocolate bars with Hugo’s cocoa liquor. Hugo was instrumental in helping to set up this small collective of women from the neighboring village. They take the liquor, melt it, add sugar and flavoring (ginger, mint, cinnamon, cappuccino, and others) temper it and pour it into molds.

We happened to come in when they were gathered around the table wrapping the bars by hand.  Of course Keli bought many bars from them and considers it a substitute to offer friends in CA because we are not planning on making chocolate this visit.  The bars were very good.

On the way back we stopped off at one of the several waterfalls coming down the pristine mountains and filled our water jug. Waterfalls are always the high point of Keli’s day and drinking the water straight from the falls is one of our favorite hobbies. 

We leave for California in the morning.  Keli will be in Miami for a few days and I go straight into a Diamond Heart retreat with lots of material for inquiry.  So this is the end of this chapter. We anticipate an uneventful restful visit, but know that it will probably be full of more crazy adventure.

1,000 New Cacao Trees

The cacao goddess is after us!


We found that we had no choice except to plant 1,000 new cacao trees. Even though we are trying to complete building a house and take care of the million other details involved in running a finca in Costa Rica, it just had to happen...

The seeds germinate easily, they have a lot of "potencia," as it is called here. All we had to do was buy the bags where the seeds will spend the first three months of their lives, build a shade structure, dig up a lot of beautiful dirt and mix it with the "gallinaza," which is chicken poop mixed in with rice husks, arrange for somebody to fill the bags and keep them watered and that's it! Simple...

I'm trying to upload a video of the shade structure being built but it seems to be a strain on the internet connection. Maybe later...