Something quintessentially Spring like in April here. The rains, the greenery, the birdsong and the wonderful blossom of the Mountain Oak. Different pinks and rarer and more lovely still the white ones.
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Dig, dig deeper boys: 500 baby coffees in the ground 5000 to go + citrus.
Started planting today, the rains are now coming hard. 500 babies in the ground. Inspected planting technique late pm, it is very important to get this crucial step exactly right. Not thrilled. We found lazy digging and slopping finishing. Some of those plants need to be re-visited tomorrow. Not interested in excuses about rocks, just dig harder or in a different place. Also, the newbie on the job needs to learn about compacting soil. So, now I'm the chief of hole digging. Such is life in the tropics. Today, we applied our biological fungicide. This is our third application of non-chemical fungicide this year. It is a brew of trichoderma in a feeding medium of molasses and compost. It has the most lovely smell of treacle, and when sprayed, sticks to its target like shiny glue before starting work on eating leaf fungus.
So thrilled was I with the first application, that I asked for the garden to be sprayed as well as the coffee. Instructions were left for my roses to get a double dose. By around 9.00am this morning my windows, doors, screens and car as well as washing on the line and a duvet drying on the deck were all covered in a light coating of molasses as my worker proudly wielded our powerful sprayer in all directions close to the house oblivious to the consequences. He even sprayed the window box. About the same time, the bee lads arrived to help me with the hives. We fed the bees the dirty old honey comb we removed a couple of weeks ago. This is a fast way of re-cycling some dirty honey into clean comb. Hoping for another bumper harvest end of May. Honey is always a sticky business. Never fails to be. Now I am covered in honey and the dog as well. So, off to the Beauty Salon with my sticky self in my sticky car. A little time, pause, to think and strategize: How to put things right in a town without window cleaners, washing machines large enough for duvets and not always even good quality Windex type solution to buy. I love the beauty salons in Boquete, they are like the small town parlors I remember as a child in the '70s in the UK with their own Latina twist. A place where real women go for help. Planting has been suspended due to a spell of summer weather that has returned to the Valley. Beautiful warm sunny days and clear evenings. We will likely have this weather until the New Moon. Weather is with us until the moon changes, Full Moon or New Moon. At first I thought this was a little strange and pagan. It may be both these things but over the last year I have to agree it is also quite accurate. So, we are biding our time before planting. Today, I made rodgrod from juice of sub-tropical blackberries. Wonderful intense sour berries that make the most devine juice. Then I practiced some latte art. Tomorrow, a nice contrast to supervising digging holes for baby coffee plants in wellington boots on my farm. I plan to join in the most glamorous coffee event in town - The Best of Panama competition. It is the Specialty Coffee Association of Panama's (SCAP) Oscars.
My coffee is not in the competition, it does not make sense for my very small farm to donate 500lbs or so of coffee to enter. That said, as a member I am thrilled to be able to participate and join the more well known names of coffee in this small town for their big event. Apparently, there is a spare cupping table and I am going to go along and see if I can taste some winners and learn something. I will be joining some Japanese, Greeks, a panel of international judges and many of the big growers who will also be slurping coffee. The nice lady who administers the organization briefed me this afternoon on the 'rules'. She really is a sweetheart, very kind and helpful even on this rather tense day with all hell breaking loose in the office in preparation for tomorrow and the second round of cupping. So, this is the situation: I am not allowed to smell of anything. No perfume or body lotion, no fruity lip gloss, no scented deodorant, fruity shampoo or hair spray that the highly sensitive noses present might scribble down and attribute to a coffee. No open toed shoes and no high heels. Not sure why no sandals - could it be the distraction of brightly colored toe nails or smelly feet, not sure. No high heels, because they make a distracting noise on the floor. Not sure quite where that leaves me, ballet flats are apparently the coffee cuppers uniform. I do not own any. Agreed to check in with my nice administrator friend first thing in the morning for a reminder on the cupping rules. The basic gist is: You can make as much noise as you like slurping the coffee but must not make any other sounds or talk. Nothing very exciting to report today. On the farm the men have started digging holes in straight lines. It will be around 4 straight days of digging for each of the three lots, maybe more - thats about two weeks of digging holes. Rather them than me! At least, that is what I thought until I started my chores for the day.
My little job today was to mail out 30 or so pounds of coffee. They were headed for USA, Canada, France, the Netherlands, UK and one for Panama City. That took me serious post office time, followed by homework with reams of brown paper and silicon glue. I was informed by the nice ladies behind the counter that my parcels were just not good enough. So now, here I am learning the old fashioned art of making parcels out of brown paper and glue. No tape is allowed by the Panama postal service. This feels like it completes my back to the future transition into the retro world that is small town Boquete, Panama. A world where: Where men dig holes with spades and ladies wrap packages in brown paper stuck together with glue. Holiday is over here. Everyone back to work today. We are starting to prepare our ground for planting. Actually, we have already tested the soil and added a lot of calcium carbonate. Our soil is rich and there is no need to add any more minerals or nutrients right now, just correct the pH and then they become available. It takes a couple of months for the cheap version of calcium carbonate to soak into the soil so it is now a game of just waiting to watch and hopefully see the plants perking up in the next few weeks.
The next job is to decide how we are going to organize the rows and design paths and small roads between the coffee for horses, people and trucks. This is not quite as simple as it sounds. We are changing the direction of the rows of coffee to protect from the prevailing wind, el Norte, and fungal spores that come on the wind. I am also going to use some Caturra as an ornamental hedge around my new rose garden. It is such a pretty bushy plant, perfect low hedging material. In addition to deciding where we will have rows, we are working out how to get about. We are constructing paths and roads in the coffee so that we can more easily move fertilizer and other things around the farm. Some of this is easy work, just marking out routes and not planting there. Some of it is a little more tricky and may involve moving rocks. I am looking forward to walking around the farm more easily to do some birding in the coffee and also, some fun riding. That was what little paso fino horses were designed to do, to trot between the rows of coffee. Here are some pictures from the Orchid Festival that is running in town this week at the fair grounds. Many coffee farmers grow orchids as a hobby. The exhibits were lovely. There are lots of people in town, the fair is full of vendors selling flowers and Central American crafts and tonight is the big party night.
The alcohol ban has been lifted, thank goodness tomorrow is Sunday - most working men will have headaches and be pretty useless for anything. One of my workers has already disappeared a couple of hours early, another I sent home as he got stung a few times by bees. For me, another one and half days of peace before real work begins again on Monday with the planting of the baby coffees. I don't think there is a more lovely scent than the smell of orange blossom after the rain. It is very peaceful here on the farm this morning.
In this Roman Catholic country Good Friday is a holiday, there is a ban on selling alcohol and tonight there will be a procession of the cross in town. It is a day of reflection. My little contemplation, to smell this scent with my eyes closed and imagine that this is something Jesus, living in another land of oranges, would have surely done |