Have some guys in today picking coffee for the local market. As you can see these are not the juicy all red perfect cherries we will be picking later on. It is now raining outside and there is a smell of coffee wafting on the breeze over the farm from Cafe Ruiz who must be having a roasting day today.
0 Comments
Well, arrived ready to ride the three machos, wearing our English gear and carrying our helmets. They were waiting for us. Two Peruvians and one Columbian - the traditional coffee farmers horse.
Fortunately the nephew of the owner was there who is a professor at the University of Toronto. A delightful man who was on holiday this week. He was to be found with an avocado and some guava sitting under a tree outside the stables and volunteered to translate between us and the handler. Yesterday all three horses and all the saddles, bridles and anything else had to go. Today, apparently, only one of the three horses was for sale. This discrepancy, to my displeasure, was put down to my poor Spanish and mis-understanding. Not so I thought out loud to myself and gritted my teeth with obvious distain. My instincts told me otherwise and so did my due diligence with another horse neighbor afterwards, who confirmed he had also been told everything must go - all three were for sale. Apparently, this is normal here. If you do not want something its yours; If you want it - no longer for sale. More disturbing to me, it is OK to say one thing one day and another thing the next, blame your customer and neighbor for mis-understanding and expect to be treated as a gentleman tomorrow? Wishful thinking in this case. Maybe this is a waiting game. If so, I am quite sure I have more patience than they do - I have an empty stable and no work or expense. There are plenty of horses out there. They have quite a handful of hormones on their hands and not too many folks who can ride well enough to handle them. Time will tell. Also, the other part of horse trading in Panama. The price had changed. Gone up of course by about $300 and that was for the bad one of the bunch that is not worth even the original price (in my humble opinion). Well, we asked to see them all anyway. The one they wanted to sell was the one I would never buy. Apparently, it was purchased for the wife. I doubt it as it was much taller than the one the husband apparently rides - if there is one thing I have picked up from riding in Panama it is that the husband does not like to be seen on a smaller horse than his wife. I did tell the handler this in my bad Spanish and even got a smile. No, my guess, he wanted it for himself but was a little over-horsed. Typical modus-operandi, tell a story (any story) to provide a convenient explanation. She is probably blonde enough and stupid enough and Gringa enough not to figure it out. Arghhh. Or, should I be grateful - Sun Tzu 'The Art of War' - never under-estimate your enemy. This is a strategic advantage of being female here in general. The last laugh is ours boys. It was a six yr old stallion/stud that even the handler was so scared of that it was hardly handled, hardly ridden or otherwise hardly used. As a result it was very under developed and rather grumpy. Skinny hind quarters and narrow chested and tense back. Tried to bite us all. Did not go close enough to be kicked. The other two very nice, the Columbian in particular was a gorgeous little horse. We registered our interest and left our phone number. Not sure I want to do deals this way. Or, do I just get on with it, play the same games myself and have some fun with it. Girls know best how to play hard to get I think. Machos as in stallions......
I was coming down the driveway with Beatrice after school and a gentleman in a hat was chatting away to my caretaker. Word has got out that I have some rather nice empty stables. Here was an offer to purchase 3 Machos one Columbian and two Peruvians for a song. The owner is in the City and never rides, they are a lot of work - no kidding. He wants to get rid of them all, the saddles and everything. We went up the road to see the boys. They are living just 100s of yds from the farm, but I had never seen them before. Only sometimes out exercising. They are good looking and seem almost tranquil munching on their hay. In all my life on horses - maybe 34 years, I have never ridden stallions. Neither have I ever ridden a gated horse. Well there is a first for everything. Sunday........here we come. Wonder how it will be perceived if I wear my helmet? I'll post part II riding the Machos this afternoon. Today, we went up the hill to Finca Lerida for breakfast and coffee. I always enjoy grabbing my fleece and heading a couple of thousand feet up the Volcano.
We went to the restaurant for breakfast, enjoying the humming birds and flowers sitting outside watching the clouds circle the mountains. It is absolutely beautiful up there, they do a great job with all the bedding plants and I always enjoy their local produce. They make their own liquados/chichas with local fruits, they serve their own jams and they use their own herbs in the dishes. They also make great lemon grass tea from rows of lemon grass clumps lining the driveway. Today we enjoyed rhubarb jam and it was excellent, my rhubarb is OK but theirs is much better, same with the strawberries and sad to say the roses (which decorated the tables), but I am working on that. The food is always good, today it was excellent - I think there are a couple of chefs there. Who-ever you are in the kitchen today, you are the best of them all. Then, we walked down from the main restaurant to the new coffee shop. The new coffee shop has an upstairs sitting room over looking an antique roasting machine. You can sit on a comfy sofa and enjoy your Finca Lerida coffee in cosy surroundings. Life is good! This morning, I intercepted this wheel barrow on the way to the compost heap. We have guava falling off the trees. Apparently, we need a little piglet or two to eat these up as well as the spare plantains and bananas. If I understood right, a piglet costs about $40 and in 8 months could be worth $300. If true and if you can feed them from your farm scraps then this is a better business than coffee?
The new British Ambassador met with members of the Chirqui British community in the Panamonte tonight.
He is a mover and a shaker, comes to us via a number of posts in Latin America and most recently Madrid. If I remember correctly, we now have Embassies in Guatemala and Costa Rica reporting into the British Embassy in Panama. We are going up in the world, we have a top shot representing us. Top priorities to grow business and trade links. The UK is already a massive investor with HSBC, Cable and Wireless and Shipping. Trading links have however been rather ignored since the days of the pirates. Actually, as a Scot, I think we got our fingers badly burned back in the C17th in the Darien - probably, the reason we are today part of Britain. Not a good historical experience. Anyway, today Britain's top priority is apparently trade, and our new Ambassador, Michael John Holloway, OBE is going to work on that. Britain needs to re-engage with Latin America. Panama is one of Britain's 7 top strategic priorities in Latin America. Mainly from a perspective of logistical importance. Costa Rica currently imports fruits to the UK and coffee; Panama not much. That may change pretty soon. Apparently, there is a department in the British Embassy just waiting for me to call to ask them how to export my coffee. And.......Tesco might well be interested. Wonder if they would like my bananas as well and maybe some orange marmalade. I think very soon we will have a dry canal over the mountains from West Coast to East and trade routes that ship out of Atlantic and Pacific ports just in Chiriqui. All these wonderful things we are making in the mountains can now be enjoyed by the rest of the world. The signs are there for us all to guess at, including me, with the 4 lane highway from David to Boquete. For those that do not know that is like the M6 artery (in the UK) or think I95 (E. Corridor USA) connecting a cow town and a mountain resort. Basically, it makes no sense at all unless it is part of a bigger plan. Perhaps one to connect the Pacific with the Atlantic, just like the first settlers here did during the Gold Rush. They did it on donkeys; this looks like blacktop all the way. It makes some sense given the much hailed canal expansion, will actually not be able to accommodate the newest generation of super container ships. I just hope I do not hear the big trucks, most probably carrying copper in acid, from my terrace. Bar the volcano exploding, this place looks set for some major expansion. Environmentally, not so good. Or, as I see it, the volcano will explode sooner or later, probably sooner, and a four lane highway will be blown away with it. In the environmental scheme of life, much longer than mine, it will all work out in the end in favor of the planet. In the meantime, lets sell some coffee or something else. Today, I learned to prune a coffee bush. We had a couple of downed trees that had fallen on our coffee and by default had taken the coffee mature trees back to almost ground level.
With the rains the bushes started sprouting every which way. Today, I learned, we need to remove all this growth and leave just four main shoots. Otherwise, we are wasting resources on this plant. Every coffee plant should cost about $25 cents a month to keep here......so that works out at about three dollars a year. When you multiply by ten thousand bushes or so.........then you get the logic. You need every bush to be cared for on a regular basis. This is not so different from gardening British style, sort of tending the garden. So, now I am doing it on coffee bushes, pink long gardening gloves, felco pruning shears and wellington boots still relevant. So, I rolled up my sleeves and started stripping off shoots. Enjoying very much this hands on thing. Day old lambs down at the Equestrian Center this afternoon. We rode out to see the babies born last night. What a treat. These are warm weather tropical sheep crossed with something looking like the ones we know and love. The traditional sheep graze on the upper slopes of the volcano; The warm weather ones on the lower slopes. Such variety here.
Coming down the driveway this afternoon, I just missed the murder but arrived in time to see the body being dragged off. A scary black bug with blue wings and orange antennae carrying a dead baby terantula spider into the coffee bushes.
Do love walking the farm on a Sunday afternoon. Enjoyed the last few warm sunny hours of the day outside. This is what I found: Quite a few early cherries. They are low quality beans and we need to get them picked and sold probably for local consumption. Have fungal problems too, fairly normal but never good. Baby tipica plants doing well and in general yields look much better than last year. It has been a drier rainy season. Now it is raining hard. About to light a fire out on the terrace and enjoying a steaming cup of .....................not coffee............Yorkshire Gold tea. It is tea time. |