Reaching for the HIGH Hopes

Four years ago, I never would have believed it.  Not a chance, not the slimest chance:

That we'd both quit our jobs, get rid of nearly everything we owned, and take off with no idea of where we'd end up. 

But essentially, that's what we did. 

That is: 

We've lived in an 80 year old homestead mountain cabin and a coffee picker shack
with no electricity for months
no indoor plumbing
bats in the house at night, every night

and two years of hand washing ALL clothes and linens.

A romantic vision of a peaceful life. 

And now, in a couple of more months (3 years after leaving the U.S.), we'll have a nice house in the moutains of Costa Rica.  Huge sigh of relief . . . although we've enjoyed the adventure.

To survive the drama, we told ourselves that we were retired, that we were living our ultimate dream - and on good days we believed it.

Honestly, we wanted a home, a real home, sooner (with hot water and everything).  

We even tried to get the building started last year- but nothing worked out right.  

On the upside, we did manage to level the ground for our homesite and to nearly finish the background rock wall.  But when the rainy season started again last April, it was too late to begin building.  So we had to wait until the following December when the rains would stop again. 

Yep, that's the leveled homesite.

And the building of the great wall.  Nearly 200 feet long.

Oddly enough, by a series of accidents we ended up constructing a workshop building with a secure tool room, a laundry room, a toilet room and a shower.  It's been dubbed "the accidental workshop."  But it's not fully finshed yet . . . something to do with problems with various groups of workers.  However it IS functional now. (No foto included)

So this brings us to the present time.

The rough construction of the carport is pretty much done:

Jeff says that it will be for parking next to the wall and for lounging, sipping coffee, and enjoying the view from the other side.  It's built to also be used for a classroom, a dance hall, and as a stage for speakers or musical groups.  Right, like we're going to have speakers . . . .

See?  The right hand side will be for hanging out.  A bamboo curtain will separate the relaxing area from the parking area.  And a cement bench is built in all along the short outside wall (not in this foto).  Sweet.

Plus, every carport needs skylights, right?  Yes, eventually the metal beams will be painted.

The house is "framed up" with the roof going on soon.
(This group of workers has been great to work with.)

We decided we needed more entertainment so brought home one pregnant sheep.  Then seeing that one sheep is a sad story we brought home two more sheepettes 5 months old.

Here are some pictures of the construction as it progresses and some of our new sheep.

Before the construction crew began their work, we had a bonfire on the homesight. 

OMG what a mess they make.  Such is construction.

Inch by inch . . . .

Bar by bar . . . .

Wall by wall . . . .

Never seen anything like it.

Ever play with tinker toys?  Or lincoln logs?

A romantic vision of things to come.

The kitchen in rough, real rough.  Stove in front of the left window; sink in front of the large window.

Front sidewalk 5 feet deep, split roof with upper windows and skylights.

Manuel covered in cement dust - but he doesn't care.

Protection from the sun is mandatory.

The young 'un of the builders.

Giovanni, the welder, pausing for the camera.

This guy always reminds me of Lawrence of Arabia.

View from above the rock wall.

Back of the kitchen.  In the next stage of building, this will go into the dining room/ living room/ hang out room and master bedroom.

Man to man support.  Julio's a good friend.

Dennis, our mentor and angel, who knows so much about construction and has adapted it to the Central American issues (of which there are many).  Thank God for Dennis.

 
And just to prevent any boredom, Viola and I took off for a buying trip to David, Panama. (Things cost a lot less in Panama AND the selection by far exceeds that available in Costa Rica.)

Viola and I in front of Pricesmart in David, Panama with our booty.  Note the 100 ft. long industrial quality hose.  When I shop, I shop BIG.

David is so friggin' hot that most "establishments" are air conditioned.  This restaurant was REFRIGERATED.  I had to use my only possible cover available to ward off a case of pneumonia - and aim for a local fashion statement.

Not only does Pricesmart in Panama offer great deals, the sunset from their parking lot can be awe inspiring.

And the coffee is blooming again.  Next year the harvest will far surpass this year's - but it's still just a little bit of coffee.  This year our finished, dried, cleaned harvest came to about 80 pounds of organic, delicious, homegrown coffee.

This is about an acre of coffee that WAS inside of totally overgrown brush.  Alvaro cleared it out then we selected the coffee plants that appear to be resistant to coffee rust and cut them down to the requisite 20" height for regrowth and renewal.  We'll see how many live and how many THRIVE.

 

Recently Jeff and I decided we need more animals around the homestead. Meet Molly. We took her to Victor's sheep farm to visit her boyfriend where we hoped that they would have a fiesta.  She's now come home with us and we're hoping that in 5 months we'll have 1-3 more sheep.

They're working it out.  We're seeing possibilities.

But Molly was lonely. So Jeff showed up with two 5 month old girls to keep Molly company.  We call them "the Kids".  Looks like we're onto something.

Really?  Company?  YeeHaw!!

Molly, meet your new roomies:  the Kids.

Victor, an organic sheep farmer, is full of information.  He's teaching Emmanuel about making fish fertilizer.

Oh, just one more thing:

We're negotiating on the second 3 acre piece of property next to us.  It's not because we're bored.  We're not bored.  But we want the protection of owning this piece on our side.  This will make it so that we will be the legal protectors of this land from the creek on one side to a little past the creek on the other.  From monkey to shining monkey.  Dang, that'll be a good feeling.

Visitors Urs and Umi from Switzerland also bought a property at the end of a road - and actually have to build a road up the mountain into their property before they can even think about building a home.  Shannon, one of their daughters is talking to Baru in the foreground.

We're not bored.  We're up to our same ol' nonsense, hanging out and waiting for visitors to show up.

Season 3: Two Little Expats

Now that the rainy season is over we are finally getting started on the BIG project: our house. This very Monday our home builders jump into action.  Yes, we thought we were going to start building a home a long time ago - but complications happened and the rainy season hit.

So the time is NOW.

In spite of the home building delay we haven't wasted any time. During the interim we've managed to build a 200 foot long rock wall behind the home site – which is turning out perfectly stunning in an oh-so-earthy sort of way.

And what art will decorate this space?

Under stairs dog hideout - one of Jeff's ideas.

We've also built a workshop that includes a bathroom, a separate shower, a laundry room, a  utility sink area, a locked tool and equipment area, and a large work room.  Seemed like a good idea, and it was a great practice project.
  
All we need to do now is to complete the finishing touches on the Workshop - like tile in the shower, toilet and sink in the bathroom, and paint all over.  Here's the workshop building:
 

Side shot of the workshop, with the bathroom and shower room on the jungle side, open utility area on the corner with the laundry nook on the right.  The work area is further to the right - out of the foto.

We affectionately refer to our septic tank as the Caca ChooChoo.

The final internment of the Caca ChooChoo.  We resisted
painting it red and mounting a steam whistle on it.

 

Workshop crew

 

Good times!!

And yes, we're still together, “living/camping” in the two old shacks on the hill with our two wonder dogs - although this remote living takes it's toll on our sanity sometimes.

A quiet evening at home - with his dish towel

Nothing like the joy of stirring your own effective micro-organism soup (an organic "fertilizer" of sorts). 

Jeff has taken the lead on construction issues, thank God, and he's discovered his playful, creative side of homesite planning.

Man with a mission

We've planted at least another thousand trees of all types bringing the total to somewhere over 2,200.  Plus we've added 5,000 vetiver plants to help with erosion control and hundreds and hundreds of citronella and lemon grass starts.

Planting vetiver grass along a water drainage.

Our 2015 coffee harvest is around 85% complete.  We've been harvesting from our remaining cultivated 300 coffee plants AND from the old abandoned coffee trees still holding on in our “jungle regrowth” zone.

Although most of the 27,000 original coffee plants on the finca have died – several varieties have proven to be resistant to the ravages of coffee rust, "la roya".

What is the total harvest?  Today's number is 360 pounds of red coffee cherries off the bush.  By the end of the harvest we're hoping for 400 pounds.  If the dried coffee beans come to around 20% of that figure, obviously there's not enough to sell; only enough to relish.  We still haven't roasted any or tasted our own coffee.

And we've been picking and processing it by hand at home, although just how that happens will be the topic of another conversation. For now I'll just say, it ain't easy.

Picking only the red berries

Removing the cherry from the grain with a 
rolling pin for drying the coffee bean.

Drying the coffee cherry whole.  Later the outer layers are removed, leaving only the bean.  

 

 

The Inca Nut vines produced a nice first harvest. Unfortunately some of the plants died from an apparent root nematode and/or fungus attack which we're attempting to neutralize with organic solutions.

Sacha Inchi: Inca Nut

Our regular export bananas are making a reasonable come back from last April's wind storm that toppled down 70 plants.  Unfortunately the regrown trunks still reach 30 feet tall.  Really, there were just too many of them for us, so we have eliminated a number of the groups of them in making way for other projects.  

Export bananas - we sell them to our neighbor who sells them at the farmer's market.

At the same time we've planted around 22 different types of bananas and platanos.  We now have a “Datil” section, a “Rajpuri” section, a “Jardinero” section, a “Manzanito” section, a “Banano Enano” section, a “Guineo Negro” section, a “Congo” section, etc.  And WHY?  Ummmm . . . because we CAN and because it's FUN.

This is a Cuadrado.

The old platano plants have continued falling down due to nematode damage, so we've done a major replanting of 150 new ones, about half of which are on the upper property, now aptly called “Plat Flat”.  Most of them are still quite young though some of the earlier plantings have begun producing.

Garlic, tumeric, peanuts, chard, yams, aracachi, and katuk all thrive in this microclime.  We'd still love to get our hands on some Nootka Rose garlic seed to try out as we understand it does really well in wet, warm climates.  

Tropical garlic.  At this "high" elevation it seems to do well, though there are some tricks to growing it here.

Growing organic papaya is problematic, but we may yet succeed.

White yams grow like weeds.

And our beloved tumeric.

The various bamboo plants love their new homes and promise to someday provide us with construction material.  One of Jeff's favorites is the magnificent black bamboo sitting outside the prospective meditation nook and facing the jungle where the white face monkeys migrate. The thick-walled Guadua and Asper are coming right along too.

Black bamboo

The borojoa orchard of 32 trees wants more shade (poor dears). What is borojoa, you ask?  If all goes well we will have annual harvest of its protein-filled fruit. Yes, another of Starr’s experiments.

The 90 gandul, or tree beans, that we planted to add nitrogen to the soil on Lower Banana Hill are just now entering full production.  I've read that ONE tree bean is sufficient to supply one family with beans.  Hmmm . . .  If we ever put Sheep or Emu on that hill I'm sure they'll love 'em.

We've planted flemingia on the uphill side of the timber trees on Gold Hill to fix some nitrogen in the soil – free tree fertilizer.  All the coffee on that hill “up’d and died”, so we replaced them with beautiful wood-producing trees like Cedro Negro, Cortesa Amarilla, Cocobolo, Rainbow Eucalyptus, Savannah Oak, and added some flowering trees like African Tulip Trees, Loritos, and Jacarandas.

Our dogs have developed a dynamic and undying interrelationship, with us and with each other.

Cora loves her Baru.

Well honey, what would you like to do today?  
The same thing we do every day:  wait for the monkeys to show up.

Baru hiding in the sugar cane residue that we use for erosion control. 
He thinks he's pretty funny.

And we've managed to stay together too, with a little help from our friends. We enjoy close and supportive relationships with many lovely folks who, like us, have chosen this area to explore their own Costa Rican journey.  Here are a few of them:

An "End of the Roaders" gathering at a friend's
home under construction.  The group consists of 5 couples that have resettled in Costa Rica and chose to locate themselves at the end of some God-Forsaken road. We enjoy swapping ideas on how to survive.

Vyola and Julio - good friends, good times.

There's only ONE Mieke.

We have opened up and grown into this new life with all its challenges, surprises, miracles, and wonders.  Hardly a day goes by that we don't marvel at our happy luck.

Yep, we're still here.  And glad about it.

 Remember: The home builders arrive on Monday
January 4th, 2016.


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