Some of my beautiful roses. I am slowly cracking the code for growing excellent roses here. More rigorous pruning than in temperate zones - at least two nodes back each time. Also, raised beds, irrigation and lots and lots of fertilizer. Next week they will get a dose of my organic fungicide and hopefully soon some home made mulch.
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The rains are starting, it is planting time. Usually the rainy season is thought to begin on 5th May. This year we are a month early. Climate change is everywhere.
I have good coffee babies and bad coffee babies that we won't even bother to plant. Let me explain. Raising coffee is a tricky business. Short cuts show and plants that are not done right don't grow. Baby coffee must be started from seed about 6 months before planting. The last few months we have all been caring for little coffees in black bolsa bags. In my case, thousands of them. This is what I have learnt. Basically, another lesson about living in the jungle. 1. The best coffee babies are planted by the owner and cared for by same - lots of attention lots of resources. Vested interest. Seeds planted the right way up, large bags, fully packed with soil, then watered, fertilized, fumigated and given the right light and ventilation. 2. The next best thing is to buy your young plants carefully then care for them well. You check the seeds were planted right and bags filled right by pulling a sample out and taking a look at the roots to make sure the tap root is strong and true. 3. The worst possible thing you can do delegate and let someone else working for you buy plants for you. They are generally making a buck on buying rubbish and selling it at higher prices. No matter how you care for these they will not thrive. If the seed was put in the wrong way up or there is air in the bottom of the bag or things done sloppily in the early months then the tap root will be twisted. I have learnt, if you want good coffee, you plant it yourself. The business culture here is all about short term wins and short cuts (there is even pride in winning this way); Not about building trust, adding value and sharing larger profits. Doing business here requires a greater investment of self in everything to check, oversee and make sure you are not being cheated. Delegation is just not possible in the same way as I am used to. It is a little exhausting. Straining the coffee honey. I cut the honey comb off the frames last week. That was a messy business. Today more sticky mess.
Need to extract the honey from the comb. The comb is not all clean and it was hard getting it off the frames in tact. Normally, honey is extracted using a centrifuge either electric or hand worked. No centrifuge working down here. I don't have one and my bee buddy says his machine is bust. It really won't do to find a bees leg on the honey spoon. So.........out with the nylon stockings and a straining we go. Who needs nylon stockings in the tropics anyway. Perfect use for them. I crush the comb with my fingers into the stocking, stuff it full and hang over a bowl for a few hours. After some time of having my hands covered in honey my skin feels great. It is a very powerful honey. This honey is very rich in pollen and no sugar solution whatsoever. We do not need to feed the bees down here. Lots of people suffer from allergies in this town and I think this honey could really help them. I am very excited indeed about my first honey harvest. The penny has dropped. It can not be a coincidence. All these goings on the night after pay-day have a common thread. Alcohol, probably Seco. Little sympathy this morning. Advice instead. 'I advise you not to drink so much'. I was thanked for my concern. Thing is, I am concerned, a little for them and quite a lot for me. Drunks are not good to have around the place. Two weeks ago it was an ambulance and a worker that could not move and had to be taken to the regional hospital on a stretcher believing he had broken his back. I think he had been doing something under the influence. This morning, I was greeted by a bloodied worker with a head in a bandage and a very swollen eye and bruises all over his body. Bad people at the Feria last night was his explanation. Lots of blood apparently. Well, next pay day is Saturday 14th of April (Sunday is a 15th). Saturday night.....yikesters. Pay day on party night. The stars are aligned for something else bad to happen. Just put a note in the calendar. Not sure what to do but I don't need any more of this nonsense. Our gardener started this morning with a long apology for any possible offense. It was quite difficult for me to understand what he was saying apart from 'disculpe'.
There was no need to apologize, I love my stone heart shaped rose garden on the coffee farm. Let me say, I am not offended in the least. I, particularly like the plans to fill it with the dark red rose Black Prince and also the large red rose Madame and throw in some pink ones as well. I was only teasing yesterday when I said it looked a bit like the sign for a Push or Brothel, of which there are many in these parts. Gardens should have humor and stories to tell. Our farm has many rocks. Some were hurtled over here by the volcano and some came with the river. As the saying goes - When you have lemons; make lemonade. We have rocks and we are making them into raised beds and making a large rose garden. The stone heart is the brainchild of our gardener. He has used one of the very big boulders that was hurtled over here by the volcano and found its resting place in my garden as the top of the heart. The rest of the raised bed is river rock cleared before we plant new coffee. It will hold about 40 roses and I think will end up being the centerpiece of the rose garden. Can't wait to show my friends. Another distracted day from coffee farming. A real cowboy showed us his horses. This used to be cowboy country. Maybe it still is. We descended into a neighboring valley to visit the cowboy and his horses on his ranch between two rivers. It was hot, very hot. We saw lots of horses and rode a couple. Nice horses. All stallions all quarter horses, the cowboy horse. Then we talked about them and drank maranon juice - the juice of the cashew nut fruit - very refreshing.
I think our host is the real deal. There are lots of people, mostly men, around here who wear the clothes. He wore the hat and checked shirt, blue jeans and a giant buckle Some cowboys here have cows - he has cows (lots of them). This gentleman cowboy seemed authentic. He had his fancy horses and his regular working horses that he is more willing to ride out into deadly snake territory. Mostly though, he has the face and legs that indicate he has spent many thousands of hours in the saddle. He knows horses. He had some lovely horses. A nice Palomino took my fancy. Unfortunately probably too old to geld. The search continues. As we drank mar anon juice, I made a note to self about potential cocktail combinations with this delicious extraction from the cashew fruit and pondered the bigger problem of macho culture and impact on horses. Here there is a culture of studs. Not so much focus on the mares. I think this is a problem. Today, all about honey. The coffee has flowered and the bees made the honey and need more space in the hives.
The morning started early fumbling to get all the zippers done up on a bee suit in a hurry. Mind and fingers have to be perfectly working together and if panic sets in the game is lost. Anyone who is old enough to have done a speed typing test in the days before computers, bomb disposal experts and maybe surgeons would understand this. The rest of you will just have to guess how it feels. The bees were calmer than I had expected. We were not chased like the last time I harvested from Africanized bees. It was pretty easy. Maybe the clouds and light rain helped a bit. We took the comb from the hives and took it to the terrace a little away from where people might go. Some bees stick to it and others smell the honey and come to investigate. It has to stay outside until dark. Then all the investigating bees go home to the hive and I can take the honey without problems. Well not entirely without problems, as it is now dark and I am trying to lift very heavy comb in the pitch black. Now the house is full of honey. I am drowning in honey. Very good for preventing allergies which are rife here. I must have over 100lbs of honey. Will know later. It felt like 300lbs carrying up the bank from the hives. Delicious, strong lively honey. Now, I simply have to stop eating honey sandwiches and get on with the packing. Tomorrow very early before it gets too warm and light I need to put the extra boxes and empty frames back on the hives all by myself. It is not wise to work the smoker, carry the boxes and frames and install solo. But tomorrow, I will try. Next task, to find local bee suits without zippers so that our farm workers can help out. Garage and depositos are jam packed with calcium carbonate for a major soil correction sweep over the next few days. I am also sorting containers for a honey extraction day tomorrow. I have help coming from David with big smokers and expertise in harvesting from these feisty Africanized bees.
There are some thorny problems to solve with both these tasks quite apart from the practicalities of not having any garage space or getting stung by bees. They involve maths and physics and I am sitting down and trying to think it through. Re. the calcium carbonate, I am not sure how the hell you ensure the right spread and that the whole lot gets equal application. I do not want to leave it to chance as my workers are used to the standard 25 bags a hectare but my current application is more than that as the farm was not properly corrected for a few years. Before retreating to 'mi casa' and letting them get on with filling the air with chalk, I think I will help out with a little calculation about how much should be put on each square meter then do a demo and show them how much it is. Re. the honey extraction with no centrifuge machine. We could just use comb but then we take it away from the bees who actually need it to fill with the next lot of honey. Or we could try to drip the honey out with out a centrifuge. Not sure that will work. Probably have to take some comb and be done with it. Very tricky. Although we are in the tropics, we are Northern Hemisphere and there are subtle signs of Spring.
The coffee farm is alive with the sound of bird song. The birds have all upped their volume in the last few weeks. It is that time of year. In particular, the clay colored thrush is filling the air with music. It is a largish bird from the same family as the American Robin and it has a large repertoire and singing its heart out all day long. There are some trees that from a good distance look like cherry blossom. They are a mass of pink blossom, the locals call them many different things. The rains are starting. For now, just soft rain in the afternoon. Feeling a little mis-understood. I do not expect it to be otherwise, I choose to be here and here I am. Far too bashful to say these things face to face but on my blog....here goes for the world to read and laugh at:
First this is what I would like to say to the Panamanian ladies: - Don't expect me to understand the social structure. It is a stretch for me to understand how so many subtle differences could emerge in the space of 100 short years or less since this land mass was seething malaria swamp and you were all immigrants. You are all survivors and that is the most remarkable thing to me and something to be very proud of. - It is not that I entirely don't care about my appearance. I actually like how I look in loose clothes that cover my whitish purple legs, lowish or no heels, my own nails and not so much make up. Even if I don't like it, I have to hide my surface area from the sun or I would end up looking like a prune. - Relax, I like men quite a bit and your men are very charming. I am used to working with men and having men as friends.....I am not interested in your husbands. Could not compete with you anyway, not nearly as accommodating. Which brings me to what I would like to say to Panamanian gentlemen. - Sex is OK. Almost certainly, I am not as interested in it as you are. I much prefer gardening, horses, coffee, good food as topics of conversation. - I am not sitting in 'mi casa' eating bon bons all day waiting for you to come and visit , do some work, inform me of your plans, or drop something off! |