Photos!!

Me working hard on the rebar cages to make the foundation for the library project! Look at that awesomeness!

Mango Harvest! These are just a few of the mangos we harvested from some of the trees around the property. Sole was very excited about all of them!

The Cork. This is where I am living. It is a timber frame, waddle and daub structure and it is beautiful! For those of you who don't know timber framing is a natural style of building that is built to take advantage of the strength of the wood it's self. There are no nails in this whole structure and technically it could be disassembled, although I think it might be kind of difficult! Waddle and daub is an earthen building technique using a mixture of clay, sand, straw and manure. It is then applied to a bamboo frame that is woven like a basket to makeup the back bone of the walls. Last year I helped to daub all these walls so it's really nice to see it up and running.

This is just one view of the house, its actually the room that I'm living in too. You'll notice a pirate flag...the explanation for that is that the house has a nautical theme and is based off of an interpretation of a song called The Starboard Cork.
This is Ion plucking feathers off of our first chicken dinner at the Ranch! I helped him when I was involved in my first ever chicken slaughter. I saw it all the way from the chicken coop to the dinner table! It was pretty awesome. It really makes you appreciate the animal and the food you eat when you see the whole process.
A view of one of the beautiful gardens at the Ranch, with a ray of sun peeking through!

Alex and I in our friday night best!

Elote

Yesterday I accompanied Chepo (Alex’s Dad and a main player in the community) to pick corn. Here they use elote to say corn on the cob and after that it is maiz again. The farm is located in the town next to Mastatal, called San Miguel. I asked Chepo why his farm is all the way over there and not in Mastatal and he said because there is a fundation called ADALAI or something like that that promotes agriculture and they bought sections of land for people years ago, and now that is where his farm is. He also said it’s cause it has a beautiful view, and oh man…..he was right. The farm is on an incredibly steep hill and you can see the whole national park, La Congreja. It is a beautiful beautiful mountain range and there is nothing like that view! It was a really fun experience, tiring but fun. As I have been getting more into the gardening here it’s really an incredible experience to harvest food. The fact that I can plant something and then see it through to the kitchen is pretty amazing. Now I know why all of you gardeners love gardening so much!! I’ve always appreciated it but have never had my own experience with it.

Any way we harvested sweet potatoes (camotes), corn (elote) and plantains (platanos). And we also learned how to walk on this super steep hill. Chepo was just bopping around up and down the slope and Mary and I (another volunteer) were scrambling around and trying our best not to fall and knock down all the corn stalks! Chepo told us a story about how he moved from this area east towards the carribean coast where the terrain in really flat. He lived there for several years and soon became accustomed to the flat land. BUT then…. He moved back here to the mountains and had to recondition his legs again to the steep terrain. I don’t think I’m quite accustomed to the mountains yet!!

Terciopelo

The Tercio is the most dangerous and venomous snake in the region. If you get bit by one and can’t get to the hospital in an efficient amount of time there is a high possibility that you will not make it. In all the time I’ve spent here I’ve never had a close encounter with one. Sure, pretty regularly you hear about people killing a tercio (fer de lance in English) but I’ve never encountered one myself…until this past weekend.

Alex, Ion (Alex’s sister Kattia’s son) and I went down to the waterfall this past Sunday and we were walking along when we noticed there was a weird patch of wind above us. Very strange because there wasn’t much wind and it was only in this one patch that we noticed it. So we all stopped to look up to see what it might be. It was then that Alex heard what he describes as the sound of a fish moving in water and looked down to see a huge tercio pelo moving off the side of the path about 2 feet from where we were standing. It was probably about 4-5 feet long and a little thinner than the width of my wrist. I thankfully only saw the tail of it when it was scurrying away but Ion and Alex both saw the whole thing and were completely scared. The weird thing is that venomous snakes normally attack and don’t normally run off like this one did. We attribute it to the fact that we stopped and maybe didn’t scare it. And we stopped because of the strange patch of wind. Who knows why that wind was there and what would have happened if we had scared it enough to strike at one of us…..

Oh life in the Jungle!!

La Biblioteca

We’ve broken ground finally on the Library project. There are 24 bases to be created and another 24 holes to be dug. I helped make the rebar cages, with much direction from Alex, called armadura in Spanish. By the end of the 24 cages I was a pro and was tying knots realll quickly. It was nice to actually be a part of the construction process. It’s a little hard to be involved since the skills are very specific and Tyler (the head carpenter) is on a really tight time schedule so he doesn’t have time to sit down and explain things to me. But I’m making myself get in there! Alex and Junior (his brother) joke that I should just bring them coffee and cookies every afternoon. So yes…this is a little offensive….but it’s actually something I totally would do and like to do! The other day I made fresh squeezed lemonade for Ty and Alex and they were very excited about it!

I’ve also completely taken over the accounts. I am keeping one in dollars and one in colones. The one in colones is a bit confusing because I’m working with such huge numbers like 1,234,550.00. That’s a lot of numbers!! We got a big shipment of gravel and cement and sand in the other day and I went and paid the guy. It was kind of exciting! He then asked if I was Robin’s sister (Robin and Timo own the ranch). But no, I told him, only a friend. Silly man! We look nothing alike!

Update

So....I had a bunch of lovely blogs prepared to upload for you all....but unfortunately my computer crashed. What a nice surprise! So now I have a new hard drive and am back up and running. I never thought this would be the case but this is probably the best place to have a computer crash! There are so many people with so many programs and different tastes in music that I already have a bunch of new music and the Microsoft Office Suite AND Photoshop! Que bueno! Me alegre. It was kinda exciting having to set up a new computer!

Anyway, things are going well here. We're about to break ground on the library project, we've gotten the full shipment of wood in and everything is set up and waiting for us to build! I will be taking over the accounting on Monday. It should be fun! The new group of interns just arrived yesterday and are starting orientation now. I will be helping train them as much as I can. I was named "head baker"--- thats a big role to fill!

Yesterday I planted a couple coconut trees, it felt fun and tropical! I've been helping out a lot in the gardens and reading and doing and reading and doing. I'm really enjoying getting a good feel for working in gardens.

The world cup started yesterday. I'm really glad I'm in a place where people are super into soccer its great! There is a guy at the ranch right now who is from Argentina so he's really into the cup now. We're actually really international at the ranch right now. We've got people from England, Scotland, Australia, Argentina, Canada and USA. And of course we're surrounded by Ticos (the Costa Rican people). It should be a fun 30 days of watching soccer! I'm pulling for Italy and either Spain or Chile in the finals!

My next post will include some photos I promise!! Hasta luego amigos!

Keith

My friend Nicole is in charge of most of the gardening here and after I had a pretty rough day (on the anniversary of his death), she offered to let me plant a tree and dedicate it to him. We chose the Jack Fruit Tree, a crazy big tree that produces a very controversial fruit, some people absolutely love it and others can’t stand it. It’s hearty and beautiful. I thought it seemed pretty fitting for Mr. Keith. Anyway we planted that on the Ranch and said a few words, it was really nice and made me feel good. This is me planting the tree. It’s just a baby right now

Aquaduct Repair

Often times in the rainy season we are left without water, which may seem odd because we get at least a couple inches of rain almost every day here. (The other day we had a total of 3.4 inches!!) In total we have had about 8 inches of rain thus far in May. So it’s pretty normal when Rafael shows up at the gate before breakfast requesting one or two able bodies to dig out the pipe, repair it and recover it. One morning I volunteered to help….it was ….an interesting experience. Rafael is really nice and like every good Tico starts out the conversation “Are you going to the dance in a week?” “Do you have a boyfriend in Costa Rica?” But he’s harmless and a good talker. This day we realized the leak in the pipe was on the deepest buried pipe in this area (not the easily accessible top pipe, of course.) We ended up digging and throwing dirt for about two hours before we finally had cleared out enough for him to cut the PVC pipe and cover the hole with a new piece of pipe. Then….we had to recover the pipes, more hauling of dirt. In the end San Miguel had water again and everything thing was good. But I don’t think I’ll be helping out on that front for awhile. It killed by back for about a week or so, I’m just now getting back into digging and hauling various items.

The storms are pretty incredible here. I’ve never actually been scared in a lighting storm before. But it’s not uncommon here for buildings, lamp posts, or even people to be struck by lighting here. One of the structures on the ranch got struck the other day and almost all the light sockets were blown out and the switches all need to be replaced. Thank you to the lighting storm for creating more work for us!! Yay! (Not that I know anything about fixing electricity…) We’ve moved into the Cork now which is about an 1/8 of a mile away from la casa principal (the main house) which results in me having some interesting walks back to the house for dinner. Yesterday I was alternating between sprinting and walking because everytime I saw a bolt of lighting it lite some fire under my ass, if you will! I got scared! But I was wearing my rain coat and using an umbrella so I didn’t get too wet in the torrential downpour!