Today, is a big marching day in Boquete.  There are marching bands and marching school children and lots of fun.

It starts with the Priest thanking God, then just about every faction of government gets to thank each other and God (While we wait in the pouring rain, the wind and well it was a little chilly too).

Then the music kicks off, the marching bands get into gear and we get to dance around the streets in formation.  The dancing is the Foklore dancing of Panama, lots of swooshing twirling skirts.  We march up one street and down the next before filing past the dignatories and disbanding after shouting Viva Panama!

Buses come in from Panama all day long and just seem to join the parade.   It is now late at night and the town is full of marching bands and parties.   I am guessing they sleep on their buses.  Trying not to guess where they are going to the bathroom.   There are no public toilets in Boquete.  5,000 or so marchers without a bathroom and the Mayor is worried about horse shit?   Viva Panama.

Today, was the day for the holiday Cabalgata in Boquete.  This is a horse parade around the streets with some beer involved.

This morning, we got an email that the Mayor had cancelled due to aversion to horse droppings.   

Not to be deterred, a good 30 or so of us set off anyway.   After all this is a tradition that pre-dates the Mayor.  Frankly, Beatrice's tears and tantrum on hearing the 'cancellation' was about 10x more frightening than horse poo.  Mother decided to go regardless.

Mucho fun, must do it again next year. 

Look what came up from the far end of the farm this morning.   Beautiful green orchids native to Panama.  Just lovely.

1.  For family not here; And friends who are.  Friends who care, who have passion and work hard at their hobbies.  In this Valley, with every birthday...the harder you dance and play.  Not a 'dull' gene in the Valley.

2.  For sunglasses, sunscreen and hats to enjoy the tropical warmth bright light and fresh air;   For electric blankets on wet colder nights; And always for the de-humidifying machine.

3. For earth quakes that shake more like a big smoothy drink than a cocktail with ice cubes in it;  A volcano that does not blow; And my sturdy little house that is still standing with no cracks or holes to let the rain or insects in.

4.  For the coffee harvest; The red cherries safely out of the field being pulped; Even the ugly ones, we'll get them out too and they will pay bills; The oranges that pay for their own picking and put food on workers tables; The bananas that feed all life, life with eight, six, four, and two legs; Day and night time life; Life that flies and life that doesn't.

Everything is ripening up at once.  We are madly picking coffee in the day time and at night....experimenting with the many fruits that are also ripening.    Without any experience with these ingredients it is more challenging.  There is also virtually no culinary tradition here in Panama.   There are fabulous ingredients and more recently some great cooks, but not much history of cooking.  So it is a blank slate, to be invented, and that is a lot of fun.

Last night, tree tomato or tamarillo sorbet.     It is beautiful and delicious.   I added oranges, of course also some lemon juice.

In an orange hole of my own making - time to stop digging any deeper.

The precise moment I realized how deep the hole was, was last night.   Gazing into the crystalline byproduct of my orange candying.   The fact is it looked, felt and even smelt very like the sugar I have used in the past to wax my legs with.   We have been getting some nice bare leg weather this week.  I mulled over the idea of testing my crystalline gooey sugar on my shins for about 10 seconds.  Thankfully common sense prevailed.

You see the desire not to let the oranges drop and rot on the ground is very strong.    However, this instinct to preserve can easily escalate into some out of control behaviors.   A bit like the old lady who swallowed a fly and ended up eating a horse - she is dead, of course.  

The orange version of the slippery slope goes like this.   

Step 1: Start juicing and sending Beatrice to school with bottles of juice and drinking it yourself

Step 2: Buy sugar, boil and make cordials - keeps longer, easier than squeezing every morning

Step 3: Buy even more sugar and pectin (which you bring down in your suitcase with mucho trouble from customs who want to know more about the white powder) and make marmalade. 

Step 3.5: Marmalade is a venture you can spend a LONG time on. Get side tracked with different citrus combinations and mixing with coffee and other fruits.  This is a large topic, large enough to earn a PhD at least.  It extends into cake making - marmalade cakes are delicious - coffee and orange marmalade cake scores very high.

Step 4:  Buy still more sugar and pay the maid overtime to peel and chop skins for candying.........

Step 5: Don't go there - what to do with orange flavored syrup left over.  Climbing up Volcan Baru would not burn enough calories.  Tempting to use to wax legs with............but not tempting enough.

Repeat above steps for various citrus.........navel sweet oranges, mandarin oranges, mandarin lemons, persian lemons and so on...

Yes, it is time to stand back and take a deep breath.  My maid tells me she is bringing me some tree tomatoes and other goodies from the high mountain tomorrow to play with.

Here is the Indigenous picking team.   No easy smiles for photos or even when I  gave them hot scones and took them out into the coffee;  On the other hand they were folded over double laughing when they thought they were stuck in my car with the child locks.  Can not figure them out at all, and that is OK. 

33 latas today, 120 this week.  Two more days to go and about 150% of my estimation for this sweep of the farm.  That is great.  We are keeping this sweep, processing, drying, peeling in Boquete with the help of a well respected local coffee house and roasting ourselves. 

Not so much to say really,  just love the way it looks.   This was a pot of 50% mandarin lemon and 50% mandarin orange juice with cane sugar.   

And I would have to ask:  Is there a more velvety smooth texture? A richer softer color? A more divine combination of sweetness and acidity.  This is a pairing made in heaven.

Do not recommend this process. Most of my kitchen is splattered in wax,  sticky honey got everywhere  and then there were near escapes from swarming angry bees.

That was the most surprising part.  The original bucket of comb contained a few dead bees, actually quite a few.   Not sure how that happened, I was not here at the time.  So, the waste product included some dead bees.  We put it in the trash and within 20 minutes had attracted a swarm of live bees who must have smelt their dead colleagues;  After dark, I ventured out and smoked off the swarming bees and put trash in the car to take up the drive next day.  In the morning, I put Beatrice in her car to go to school.  'Mum mum get me out of here the car is full of bees' - and so it was, a.   Drama all the way.  Too much drama for a block of wax.   Don't think I'll be doing this again in hurry.

Lovely juicy red and yellow cherries from the top lot on the farm.   Working our way around to the other lots over next few days.  These are cherries we will keep to dry and process in Boquete and hopefully to roast as well.  Mainly Red Catuai with some Caturra and one bush of yellow Catuai, that must have been an accidental planting.