Around the Land

This has been the picture for the past many days. Waking up finding someone to help us push the truck to start, a lesson in humility it has been. In these parts people are not too forth coming when it comes to helping, unless there is money involved, this at least is my experience thus far. Today we were finally able to bring it to the mechanic and hopefully it will be ready to go by the end of the day.

Around the Land the paths are starting to take shape. The main path between the kitchen and the chicken coop is almost ready.

The bridge project has been abandoned, there will not be a bridge after all, I personally like that.

Instead the attention has shifted onto the path that meanders through the Cenote, we will raise and widen it to make it a more stable walkway, this will then serve as the main way across the water.

For lack of material, and most manpower being used to form the paths, not much progress has been made with the chicken coop. There are some very sweet little nesting boxes ready though.

I love how it is coming!

Towards the back of the Land there is currently a wet land or natural laguna happening.

With the heavy rains of the season it has become a sanctuary for thousands of tadpoles, it is quite a sight, they swim around in flocks, and are so plentiful that they can easily be scooped up with our bare hands.

The children enjoys it tremendously.

Once rainy season ends this area will return to being dry land, and we are putting a lot of thought into how best to utilize this natural occurring wetland, allowing it to remain laguna during the summer months, and perhaps being productive during the winter.

It is so beautiful, and even Linus happily got his feet wet and almost went for a swim, 

not his favorite usually.

Below are one of many wild orchids found around the land, and at the bottom the grass land is actually part of the Cenote. Years and years of sediments have settled on the bottom, so that the cenote appears quite small right now, once we dig out the sediments and clean it, it will be extremely big.

~Blessings~

Inspirational visit to a neighbor

Today we went to visit Jullian's mini farm half an hour from us.

We went to get inspired, to see how organic food growing was progressing on his land and how he deals with some of the challenges presented in this somewhat extreme climate. He and his family have been working their garden for the past three years, and they are doing a lot of the things that we are looking forward to get started with.

Their house is off the grid, using only solar power and gas. Their toilets are composting (liquids and solid separated and composted for six months to use in garden on NONE edibles), and all of their grey water (all waste water from within the house) is used in the garden, including on a patch of grass for their son to play football. 

Besides the mosquitos, which simply cannot be avoided these days, it was an inspiring visit,

we left with many good ideas. 

There was an abundance of goodness in the garden, pumpkin, sweet potato, okra, eggplant, peppers, kale, lemon grass, basil, mint to name but a few...

below is a wild spinach climbing

raised beds

baby arugula sheltered from the strong midday sun

A first year papaya thriving after a good dose of homemade compost and worm castings

pumpkins..

5 passion fruit vines were planted, and now create a living roof over two structures that are used as dark and shade rooms to grow mushrooms in. The vines not only offer shades but also lovely fruit and beautiful flowers, permaculture at its best, at least three uses for each plant planted. 

Jullian gifted us with a passionfruit vine when we left, looking forward to get it in the ground..

For a roof in the house they had the traditional Palapa roof, which we will also have on our house.

It has amazing insulating properties, withstands storms well, and is so pretty. The leaves that were used to shade the baby arugula are the leaves also used to create these roofs

The children really enjoyed exploring his beautiful surroundings...

and Linus too...

We left with many good ideas, having made a new friend and even a few baby plants.

~green blessings~

A long day

Yesterday was a long day, I felt very overwhelmed by the magnitude of the work in front of us.

When we arrived at the land I looked around and for a moment it seemed almost impossible to do what we have set out to do, so unfriendly and harsh is the terrain.

Rocks are everywhere, and the first step is to be able to get around the land with a wheel barrow without braking it on all the rocks in the path, so in reality before anything else the paths must be formed. That job alone is huge as many of the rocks will not be moved easily, and we must instead fill in with gravel and such, and how to get any gravel to the back of land...well it is an organic process, and by simply moving forward one step at the time, we will work out how to best proceed. Patience and more patience!

But I am getting way ahead of myself, the day actually started by scavenging for food scraps at the local market, we were able to get plenty of fruit and veggie scraps for the chickens and the compost piles.

Then we went scavenging for other material to use, and found a big pile filled with discarded wood from a recently finished construction. Keenan was a great help, and worked proudly until we had finished.

 Ready to go..

Once on the land I did a simple soil test and found that the PH in our soil is just slightly acid, just below 7 and perfect, yet every other nutrient is depleted, so far as I could make out from the tests. To remedy this we need to create lots of good compost, as well as mulch everything heavily. I was able to get two good piles started, attempting a good balance between carbon and nitrogen material. That being one part nitrogen (chicken manure, fruit scraps and such) to every ten parts of carbon material (generally brown dry material, such as leaf litter, saw dust news paper , cardboard and such) We have so much woody debris on the land, but for the best result we would need to mulch it all, for now, we do the best we can with what we have. It is no problem keeping it moist as we are in the middle of rainy season and getting lots and lots of rain. We will 

be poking sticks deep into the piles everyday to aerate them and turn them once a week, hoping to have dark rich compost in a few months.

Keenan was again a great help getting sawdust to the piles..

 I am pretty sure it is not a good idea to put many whole citrus fruits in a pile, yet for now we will use what we have an observe the different results, also the big sticks will take longer to decompose, again using what we have..

Then, time for a swim and a snack in the shade by the cenote

Some planting of plants and little trees that we found discarded and broken. We created a whole garden at our house in Miami by using mostly abandoned plants and cuttings from all around us.

Then a last swim before piling in the truck tired, sore and plenty bitten by mosquitos 

The children and adults alike adore the freshness of the cenote, it really makes it all worth while..

My favorite part of the day was to see how inspired Keenan was from watching us work the land.

When we arrived home he brought out his wheel barrow and proceed gathering soil from around the garden, then with his boots and gloves he walked around asking all the neighbors if they needed any soil, when they did not, he asked Miguel if he would please walk around town offering soil to people. 

The two of them headed out, wheel barrow and all for a ten block walk to Frida's Garden, a little garden cafe, where I am right now using the internet, asking Rafael if he might need some soil. He happened to have a banana palm in need of soil, and in return for the soil Keenan was promised some bananas from the tree once it fruits.

It was the most precious thing.

Ahh and the other favorite part was a hot shower, yeah, it turned out we just needed a bit of patience to get the water heater working.

Now we just need internet at the house:)

 On the way Keenan found a bat that had been run over, he found a nice spot on the side to put the body to rest.

~in honor of the organic process~