Composting

To go along with my gardening, I decided to start composting. It is not sustainable to keep importing miracle grow, so we need a permanent solution to better the soil. Plus, I hate trips to the dump and hope that this makes it less frequent. I read a lot online in preparation for this endeavor, but many items in the states cannot be found here, so we had to make it work with what we could find. The open pile is not an option for us as we already have too many bug and mice problems, not to mention dogs that will tear up anything to eat trash. They have problems with their expensive Dog Chow, but trash is always a delicacy.

I found one of these tall drums at a hardware store for Q170 (about $22). You have to be careful because many are used for paint thinner and other toxins, and then are just rinsed out before being sold second hand as brand new. Often, the partially torn off, diamond, HazMat sticker is a dead giveaway on these types of containers. I figured mixing Hazardous Materials with my compost sort of defeated the purpose. Most of the time these are used by people here to store water in.

Lucky for me, our ground is not level, so I had a nice random hill that I could prop my bin on. I drilled five holes in the bottom just on this one side and the bin sits a slight angle so that the water runs off to that side. Then I bought a Q10 plastic bowl that fits perfectly to collect the compost tea. I have another container with a spigot on it that I pour the tea into for when I am ready to fertilize with that (about once every 10 days.) You are supposed to water it down at an 8-1 ratio so that you don't burn your plants. Being in containers, the dirt quality of my garden is really important to me.

I bought a really small pitchfork to stir the pile with. The bin sits in full sun and the inside gets REALLY hot, which is important for compost. I water the bin when I water my garden. I have had a few gnats, but that went away with more dried grass and stirring. In about a month I'll buy another bin and let this one sit. I'd like to have finished compost by the end of April when a lot of my veggies will be done producing and I'll be ready to start new plants.

Do We Look Like Poor Gringos To You?

The other day we had to go to Santa Elena to run some errands. I hate going by myself, so all four decided to go and while we were there we went around to introduce our boys to some of our friends there. We saw our vet, who's wife is very outgoing and talks so much that she knows everything about us and has been DYING to see the boys. We also went by to see our lab technician who is the guy who told us we were pregnant and also knows too much about us both. We also really wanted to show them off to Cristina. We finally tracked her down in the market.

Walking through the market with two little white babies is quite the trip. Everybody is commenting about the twins and several of the more outspoken ladies yell at you to come over so they can hold the boys, talk about twins and smother them with kisses. While standing around talking to Cristina, an indigenous lady in her typical dress (we don't see too many dressed like that here because of the heat) came up to Shelley and handed her a Q5 bill. She said, "Take this for your children." The look on Cristina's face mirrored what I was thinking and she said, "For WHAT?" The lady responded, "It means something to me" and walked off.

Usually people are asking us for money, so it was very odd to have it happen this way in reverse. I have no idea what it means to this lady, whether personal or religious, but it was definitely an experience I won't soon forget. I'm sure everybody else watching also thought it odd.

Watching My Garden Grow

While in the States we were trying to plan out everything we needed for the boys for at least the next year so that we could bring it with us. In that planning we were talking about baby food. Our plan is to make our own, but it is really hard to find good quality vegetables on a regular basis. Sometimes you have to walk away and come back the next week while you live on potatoes, canned corn and tomato sauce. Of course, avocados are readily available as well as bananas, but the inconsistency finally got me thinking about starting a garden.

Living in Petén is basically like a greenhouse, but with more bugs and harsher sunlight. Our dirt is REALLY bad where we are renting right now, but plastic pots are plentiful, so I researched container gardening. To buy good black dirt costs me around Q10 ($1.25) per 50lb. bag.

I ordered a bunch of seeds on Amazon and started them the first week we were back. Besides just for personal consumption, this is also research for our future Kekchi Bible Institute. We would like to introduce to the Kekchi pastors other crops that grow well in Petén besides corn so that they can have a better variety of food and better nutrition. I am keeping very detailed notes, and those plants and varieties that grow well and have a good yield will be potential for future projects.

I have 33 containers.

(Rabbit Trail: We had to put up a make-shift fence to keep the boxer out. She could very easily jump any size fence under 10', but she only destroys when the opportunity happens upon her. She doesn't go looking for trouble and is really good about staying out of things like this. I know that if left in the open however, she would readily eat every pot, spread my dirt all over the yard and chew up every flower. That is because plastic, dirt and flowers are the natural enemies of boxers and must be destroyed...)

In those 33 containers I currently have 2 varieties of okra, large tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, jalapeño, 3 varieties of Zucchini, Watermelon, sugar pie pumpkins, lima beans, little finger carrots, cayenne peppers, sugar snap peas, stringless green beans, and 3 types of onions. Some of these are better suited for colder climates, but the seeds were cheap and I figured it was worth a try. The colder climate things are growing in the shade of my banana trees.

We do not have potting soil, or seed starter containers and my compost isn't ready yet, so I just used some miracle grow in the black dirt I bought. We have NO danger of frost EVER, so that makes some things easier and everything has come up so far. I have had to kill a plague of grasshoppers, and of course some things are growing better than others. I am not a very patient person, so waiting on things like a garden is hard for me.

I am using some portable soccer goals we had made to trellis my tomatoes, lima beans, peas, pumpkins and watermelons. I used scrap pieces of mahogany to make my support for my green beans.

I found this great website with information on picking, canning and freezing everything you can imagine. We will attempt it all to see what works best. I'll update you soon- signed Farmer Jim.

Shopping for a Micro

After being kicked out of New Horizon, we had to decide how we would continue to work with the people there. We have some really good relationships and do not want to see the 2 years we already have invested go to waste. Our idea was to sell my wife's Blazer (it can't get fixed here anyway) and buy a micro-bus. That way we could pick up the people on the highway where the town council has no authority and bring them to our house for services.

Very quickly my home church gave us $7,500 and two days before we left KS an anonymous couple in the church dropped off the other half of the money needed. So we quickly started shopping.

One of our closest friends here is Luis. He owns a couple Micros and a couple larger 28 passenger buses that he rents to tourists in Petén and Belize. He also speaks English and has proven to be very dependable and trustworthy. We met him with our first group of teenagers that visited us in July, 2007 and use him exclusively for all of our missions teams.

He volunteered to help us shop around. We went saw several Micros to get an idea of what was available. However the nicest one was the one we were riding around in. The money converted to be around Q120,000, but he was asking Q140,000 for his, so we weren't really that interested. It was my dad who pitched to him that he take the Blazer and Q100,000. After a couple days he called and said that he liked that offer.

He knows all the problems we have had with the Blazer and are still having, but for some reason he still wanted it. At least I have a clean conscience that I didn't sell it to some unsuspecting Guatemalan just to unload my problems.

With the other Q20,000 we set to fixing the Micro. It is a "16 passenger" 2007 Toyota HiAce, manual transmission turbo-diesel with 195,000 km. Supposedly they will run 500,000 km without too much effort.

I had the stickers removed along with the very thick tinting on the front windows. The tinting was so think that you could barely see the mirrors during the day and they were invisible at night. We also had to fix the sliding door handle that wouldn't open from the inside, replace the turbo belt and replace the windshield. We had all the fluids changed and filled just to start from scratch on the service. I also bought and had installed a rear bumper guard, front grill guard, fog lights and had the luggage rack painted.

The downside is that I really miss my automatic transmission, but I won't have to ride in a tow truck to Guatemala City to get it fixed either. The best part is that we have a vehicle that the boys can ride in safely with their seat belts. On a recent trip back and forth to Guatemala City (7 hours each way) we spent Q550 ($70) in diesel. It costs us twice that in gas in my pickup. Here's some Micro pics:

Funny post by Expatmom

I don't read very many blogs, but the ones I do follow I read every single post every time it's updated. You can see to the right which ones they are but I think you will enjoy by ExpatMom. She came to Guatemala as a single traveler and ended up married with two boys living the life of a Chapina. She writes professionally and has several websites that she works with. I enjoy reading about day to day life stuff because her perspective is unique coming from our culture (well she's Canadian, but that's close, eh?) but being married to the Guatemalan one. Shelley enjoys the creative, crafty side of her blogs because everything she does is with things available in Guatemala, unlike many blogs where you need a specialty store like JoAnne's or Michael's. Here's the link again:

Guatemala:Where They Send All the Crap

Siphoned Gas and a Chew Toy

Before leaving for 5 months, the most important thing for us was to find somebody to watch our house (really just our dogs but house sounds better.) We have two big ferocious guard dogs for whom we would trade everything they are supposed to be guarding to keep them safe.

If you read this post you can get the background on how much we were paying him. While we were gone he was kicked out of his village for his association with us (we were also kicked out, but that's another post) and so lived at our house full time. Instead of buying a motorcycle, we talked about him buying a plot of land and putting up a "house" since he has no place else to go.

Living in our bodega (concrete storage room off the house) full time, we didn't really know what we would come back to. Happily, the dogs were both alive and healthy, which was the main thing. However, he had siphoned all the gas out of both vehicles (I'm not sure what he did with it though), given my nice soccer ball to the dog to chew up (probably not intentionally as much as left it outside without putting it away), and I am missing a nice flashlight and some MACE I had left for him. I also lost both cell phones ($12 ea.) that I had left for him.

Everything else seemed to be in order. Again, the most important thing was that nobody broke into our house and the dogs are ok.

Welcome Back to Petén

So after 5 months we are finally back in Guatemala. We left August 20th so that we could be in the States in case of any complications with my wife's pregnancy. You can read about those adventures on my wife's blog- www.jimandshelley.blogspot.com/

Now after being back for a month it is finally time to start blogging again. The goal is a new post every other day. I hope you all come back! Besides the "normal" Petén experiences, I might have fun cute stories of my boys, although my wife has first dibs on those for now. So to tide you over, here's a picture: