8.oo am: Edoina arrives with a beautiful bunch of roses and cuttings from her garden. Nothing like my little house smelling of roses and freshly ground coffee to get the day off to a good start. Add to that the sound of evangelical hymns and you have a heady cocktail. Edoina likes to sing as she cleans the house and she sings quite well.
8.30am: Mariano brings a sack of oranges to the house. I have decided with tens of thousands of them out there I better start squeezing my own. Then he starts potting out the new cuttings Edoina brought me in the greenhouse. How exciting. Some very nice new double pentas, a double variegated pink begonia, lots of different coleus, a cactus like thing and something exotic, she says for the porch.
9.30am: Edoina's husband also came this morning to re-cork the glass roof. As usual in this country, he had under-estimated how much silicone he would need. So, off I go down town to the construction store to buy more. There, I am reminded by the owner (whose family arrived here from Coventry in 1880) that I come from Gran Bretana, not Inglaterra. Queen of the seas! Quite right Sr Rodriguez, I do.
10.30am: Back on the farm, I go on a walk about to see the new team of coffee workers. Our new coffee manager has brought with him four young indigenous men and their wives to do some of our extra work. They are using machetes to whack down the long grass and the ladies are picking early coffee cherries. They are amazing workers, so tough, strong and hard working. I could stand and stare at them macheting all day............
11.00 am: Off to inspect the bees, from a distance. I am not doing a proper hive inspection until I have back up with a bigger smoker. It is too hard trying to smoke African bees at the same time as working them all by yourself. I want to check that they are coming and going in a normal pattern. My mentor emailed last night to say his bees have some honey in August. This is unusual - it is winter here, usually we feed now. Anyway, all seems well with my hives.
11.30am: Off back to the house to complete my forms for getting a credit account with the Agricultural Cooperative in town. It is a fierce looking form that needs to be filled out in Spanish. In the end though, after consulting google translate, apart from my passport number and my name there is not much more I need to put on there. I remember to put pasaporte de Gran Bretana and smile to myself.
12.15pm: Off to town to meet with the accountant. I sign up for doing the 10 year cash-flow, profit and loss and balance sheet required for an unlikely government grant. In the end, it is easier for me to do it than the accountant and easier for him to figure out how to position the application than for me. Backwards but this is Boquete Panama and that is just fine.
1.15pm: Pick up lunch on the way back at Nelvis a down town tipico restaurant. Lovely chicken with salsa, rice, beans and a chiote and carrot mixture. All for around $3. Then, driving home, the cookie lady is out and about. A lovely Colombian lady who wears big bellowing skirts and hats and sells cookies out of a basket. She has oatmeal and brownies left and I buy one of each. Beatrice will enjoy that as a treat.
2.30 pm Decide to pick some lemons. The Persian lemons are turning quite yellow. Need to use them and maybe will make lemonade this weekend. Noticing there are thousands of guava on the ground and wishing I had some expertise in guava jam or someone who would do it for me.
Now I am off to get Beatrice then need to rush back here to count the coffee cans leaving the farm. We are getting $9.30 for the early cherries at Cafe Duran......Life is good.
8.30am: Mariano brings a sack of oranges to the house. I have decided with tens of thousands of them out there I better start squeezing my own. Then he starts potting out the new cuttings Edoina brought me in the greenhouse. How exciting. Some very nice new double pentas, a double variegated pink begonia, lots of different coleus, a cactus like thing and something exotic, she says for the porch.
9.30am: Edoina's husband also came this morning to re-cork the glass roof. As usual in this country, he had under-estimated how much silicone he would need. So, off I go down town to the construction store to buy more. There, I am reminded by the owner (whose family arrived here from Coventry in 1880) that I come from Gran Bretana, not Inglaterra. Queen of the seas! Quite right Sr Rodriguez, I do.
10.30am: Back on the farm, I go on a walk about to see the new team of coffee workers. Our new coffee manager has brought with him four young indigenous men and their wives to do some of our extra work. They are using machetes to whack down the long grass and the ladies are picking early coffee cherries. They are amazing workers, so tough, strong and hard working. I could stand and stare at them macheting all day............
11.00 am: Off to inspect the bees, from a distance. I am not doing a proper hive inspection until I have back up with a bigger smoker. It is too hard trying to smoke African bees at the same time as working them all by yourself. I want to check that they are coming and going in a normal pattern. My mentor emailed last night to say his bees have some honey in August. This is unusual - it is winter here, usually we feed now. Anyway, all seems well with my hives.
11.30am: Off back to the house to complete my forms for getting a credit account with the Agricultural Cooperative in town. It is a fierce looking form that needs to be filled out in Spanish. In the end though, after consulting google translate, apart from my passport number and my name there is not much more I need to put on there. I remember to put pasaporte de Gran Bretana and smile to myself.
12.15pm: Off to town to meet with the accountant. I sign up for doing the 10 year cash-flow, profit and loss and balance sheet required for an unlikely government grant. In the end, it is easier for me to do it than the accountant and easier for him to figure out how to position the application than for me. Backwards but this is Boquete Panama and that is just fine.
1.15pm: Pick up lunch on the way back at Nelvis a down town tipico restaurant. Lovely chicken with salsa, rice, beans and a chiote and carrot mixture. All for around $3. Then, driving home, the cookie lady is out and about. A lovely Colombian lady who wears big bellowing skirts and hats and sells cookies out of a basket. She has oatmeal and brownies left and I buy one of each. Beatrice will enjoy that as a treat.
2.30 pm Decide to pick some lemons. The Persian lemons are turning quite yellow. Need to use them and maybe will make lemonade this weekend. Noticing there are thousands of guava on the ground and wishing I had some expertise in guava jam or someone who would do it for me.
Now I am off to get Beatrice then need to rush back here to count the coffee cans leaving the farm. We are getting $9.30 for the early cherries at Cafe Duran......Life is good.
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