Interesting week in the rainy season.  As the coffee season picks up, so come the rains and the morning exercise routine has to become a mainly an indoor activity.   It is not that it is always raining in the mornings, usually it is clear, but the air is very humid, the ground slippery and wet and the bugs come out of the coffee in swarms and bite any exposed flesh.  So I head indoors.

This time, there is a new gym in town and it is proving very popular with the local ladies.  I've signed up, together with other moms from the school, ladies who work in the local salons, a few of the local lovelies and a cohort of very energetic 50 something Boquetenas who put the rest of us to shame.  The exercise is good enough, the boredom busting factor exceptional.  Laughing my head off through the early mornings in back row with my new chums.   It is mostly about trying to follow a the male Panamanian latin dancers who come up the mountain from the big town to play drill sergeant for the morning. 

Only in Panama would you have an entire hours worth of class devoted to the butt, bum or I think they say something like pompies? here but the word is nowhere in the dictionary that I can find.  What ever they call it, the ladies of Boquete are working very hard in preparation for the holidays.  The next day we got 30 minutes straight of hula with our arms tied up on poles behind our backs, no cheating.   Essential for all the dancing that will take place over the coming months. No argument joints are important to keep moving ....but 30 minutes straight, well that is extreme.

Mañana we start all over again.   Wondering what is in store for us this week?



  

 

Today, we celebrate Dia de Campesino, the farmers day.  A bit like Harvest Festival or Thanksgiving - Chiriqui style.

Dia de Campesino is the beginning of the endless parties, holidays, drum beating and marching through the streets that starts now and goes on and on and on and on..... until after Easter or the Orchid Fair in April, whichever is later.      

All these parties require clothes.  We started meeting with the seamstress for the new costume about 2 months ago.    It was a pilgrimage walking up an unpaved road to her beautiful wooden house by the river to get measured and have the costume made.  It is a work of art.

The costume actually consists of one skirt and no less than three tops, each one used on different occasions.   Today, we use the same floral color as the skirt which is the most rustic; There is also a frilly white blouse with ribbon for fancier occasions; And the off the shoulder number with pompoms that is not strictly part of the uniform of this province, but all the girls want one anyway.  

Huge thanks to a  lovely Panamanian lady who took us under her wing and guided us through the process.   It is great fun dressing up as Panamanian peasants.  Actually, it is pretty fancy for a peasant; But I guess that is Latin America for you in a nutshell.  Charming.

 

Dry stone walling is one of the most elegant and beautiful things in this land of volcano spewed and river rocks.   Half of our volcano is now lying fragmented around the province and a great deal of it on my farm with a little help from the Caldera river that has brought all sorts of rock treasures here over the millennia.

There is nothing more satisfying than seeing this abundance of rock and rubble sculpted into beautiful dry stone walls.    Little fragments of order in the jungle.  Small testaments to human labor and productivity etched in the landscape. 

We have recently disturbed hundreds and thousands of years of rock when we cleared for a new road into the farm over the last few weeks.   We are now making something beautiful with the help of a neighbor and a lot of hard work.   Nothing good is easy.

New worker arrived today.   The call was made on Monday and he arrived from the Comarca at first light.   In fact, we were woken up before 7.00am by a knock on the door.  Reporting for work.

Ready and willing but missing a few vital things for working in Boquete during the rainy season.  No wellington boots, no bed for the night and not much of anything including no cell phone and no minutes.    Doubt if he has any food either but fortunately has two brothers in the area. 

He does have a nice sharp machete.    Such is life in the jungle.  

Pink banana jam with walnuts. I am rich in bananas and it feels good to make them into something wonderful.   The ladies in the house have some treasured family recipes for banana jam.  We added a little twist of walnut and voila......the most amazingly delicious paste of banana for toast, muffins, ice cream, cheese, you name it....a sort of ambrosia of the marmalade world.  

Meanwhile,  I am conquering demons.  It is the rainy season and that means lots of water and opportunities for testing drains.  Feeling brave, some would say fool hardy.  I have asked and bored my friends to death for advice about drains and it is time to put the drain discussions to bed and start some experimenting.  Time for a heap of blue gravel, some cement and a spade.    To simplify, my driveway has a hole in it, the risk is that in filling the hole I flood the adjacent area, which happens to be my house.  

My fabulous neighbor who makes roads has come to the rescue.   He seemed to agree the plan  might work and astonishingly, he is delivering some more blue gravel this afternoon.  By tomorrow, we should be able to have banana jam on toast for breakfast and then watch the school bus go all the way around my new driveway rather than have to do a 3 point turn to get out.    How civilized is that.  

We started Monday morning meetings a couple of months ago.  This is quite a new thing here.  It is an experiment born from the exhaustion of pushing rocks up hill solo.     

In Panama, there is a big divide between workers and owners, resulting in one of the biggest obstacles to a stress free life.  It is counter intuitive.  You would think  more workers, less work for you, lower stress.  Not so, more workers, more stress......It is a bit like having a big family.  The children take a lot of attention and need babysitting.   

So, the experiment begins.  How to get things done by providing some basic incentives and making sure everyone understands the goal.  Some little motivators that get us all pulling in roughly the same direction.

1.   Lets have a vegetable garden?  I provide materials and seeds, the farm workers provide the labor = we share the vegetables. Some vegetables better than no vegetables.  So far we have rows of beans growing, maize in the ground and the shell of a greenhouse. Plastic goes on at the weekend then we can plant leafy greens and other things.  Looking forward to more home grown vegetables.  

2.  Lets clean up of piles of wood?  We have piles of bits and pieces of wood from fence making, chopping coffee and oranges.  I have taken all I can possibly  use for firewood.  Gifting the rest for outdoor camp fires.    The Indigenous family, expanding for coffee picking,  like to cook their food on an open fire.   Almost every bit of stuff we don't need is useful to someone, lets get it outa here.

3.   How about picking oranges?  Last year picking oranges was a loss making activity.  By the time I hired pickers and people to take the oranges to the Coop, I made a loss.  This year the workers get a chance to pick in their leisure time for $1.50 a bag, I take the sacks to the cooperative and should make another $3.50 for the farm per sack.  Not exactly a kings ransom but covers a months electricity or something like it.

4.  Know anyone who might be able to do xxxx and would like a bit of extra $?   The maid's son is an artist who is going to start working on painting bees on the honey house; The gardener's daughter is a good cook and we have had some magazines with new recipes; The main coffee man has a brother who can take care of horses at least we hope so; The main maid and her sister have some pretty awesome recipes for banana jam and she lives in front of a wood with lots of decaying trees - perfect stumps to start our mushroom spores on.......all we have to do is get them here, in return she would like some rose cuttings.

5.  You need xxxx, how about some help with language por favor?.  OK, you have no minutes left on your phone, use mine.   All kinds of phone calls get made.  Like calling the guy to fix the irrigation pump,  figuring out how to pay for horse feed, call your brother and see if he can come and work on the horse paddock, and so it goes on.......

Early days, but so far probably the most productive hour of the week.

Coffee picking on Saturday morning.     

The family party has begun up by the stable block.  Our extended indigenous family is gathering on the farm.  We have converted one of the stables into a temporary dorm so everyone can stay here overnight.  The children are having fun pretending to process coffee, peeling red beans with various home made tools.  Mum is making great smelling things for dinner and granny actually picked 3.5 latas of coffee and son in law is pulping it.

Six months ago the coffee bushes had their main flush of flowers, it was St Patricks day.   This was early for flowering here and accordingly we are getting our first coffee early too.   We are honey processing our coffee this year. Today, we inspected progress in the drying room.   One tray had turned the magic color of green that indicates just 11.5% moisture.  This first batch has been drying for around two weeks and tomorrow morning early, before the temperatures rise we will be bagging it for storage.