A Sabbath Day Walk

Planting and Lots of Other Stuff

It seems like it has been a long time since I wrote a post, particularly after uploading all the following pictures. Among other things, we have spent the majority of the last couple of weeks planting and preparing to plant.



First off, I want to tell you about our trip to Buenos Aires. Abby, Joseph, and I had a safe trip and completed all that we set off to do. On the way there we were delayed by about six hours because heavy smoke from burning fields shut down the highway, and we missed our appointment. Thankfully, we were able to reschedule an appointment at the embassy for the following day. In the meantime, this gave us the opportunity to eat at Burger King and McDonalds (I can't tell you how good fast food tastes when you haven't had any in nearly two years) and we even visited the Buenos Aires Zoo!



Joseph now has all his U.S. documentation underway and the embassy is only waiting on Dane's signature to finalize the process. Praise God! I am so happy to have that done. Joseph will have dual citizenship in Argentina and the United States, and will have two passports with which to travel. What a special little boy he is!



This is a picture of the United States Embassy in Buenos Aires. It is a little like a fortress. I had hoped that I could take Joseph's picture by the U.S. flag, but they don't let you take any electronic devices in there. Having never visited an embassy, I was a little nieve about what it would be like. In my imagination, I thought that I would sit across the desk from a fellow United Statesican for the interview, but in reality all communication occurred through heavy glass windows via an intercom system.







Well onto some other neat stuff before I get into the planting........



The children continue to find really beautiful flowers. We have asked them to tell us when they find one so that we can get of a picture of it growing in the wild in the future. Here are a couple from last week.



This is a picture of the firewood brigade - Elijah and Sarah.


The one man show around here, Dane, is up to his usual business - trying to tackle several hundred projects at once. Anyone up to a rustic, back to nature working vacation in beautiful subtropical Argentina? We'd love to host volunteers!



Dane got the three bee colonies that we have changed into new boxes. The old boxes are pretty shabby and the hives will be a lot less vunerable to predators in new, more secure boxes. Here are some pictures of Dane making "marcas" or bee panels for the new boxes before he gave the bees their new home.


First, he takes a panel that he and/or the children made and hooks his battery charger to a wire on the panel.

Then he puts a piece of bee's wax on the wire and carefully melts it on with the charger.

A completed bee panel:

Dane also finished the bamboo chicken tractor and we couldn't be happier with the arrangement. We no longer have chickens rushing the door every time we open it and they aren't using the bathroom all over our porch.

We have even started eating some of our meals on the porch and don't have to worry about a single bird stealing food from the little ones. Sheww!

And guess what - we've even been getting some eggs. Those chickens were either laying in the forest or they like all the new feed that we have been giving them to boost there egg production. The following picture shows about a week's worth of eggs - not many but their numbers are increasing.

Furthermore, Dane bought a load of bricks. About 6000 of them, with which he hopes to finish the house, build the bathroom, a bread oven, a cistern, etc., etc. The picture below only shows about a third of them.

Well on to the planting....

The company with the acacia trees gave Dane 3000 trees to plant, so the past couple of weeks he has been preparing for that. Dane now has an agreement with this company to sell them the bark off these trees for making tannin in seven years. So not only do we get paid for the bark, but we get to keep the wood for fence posts, firewood, etc. Dane got a little over a hundred seedlings planted this past week on Jim's farm, but he hopes to hit the job harder after we get our fields planted here on our farm.

This is a picture of all the seedlings in the back of the truck.

Making "chorizo" for "mudas" and "macetas" .....

Dane and the children spent an entire day making little dirt filled bags "macetas" in which to plant our most fragile seeds (tomatoe, bell pepper, and egg plant). We plan to take special care of these plants until the seedlings "mudas" are ready to be transplanted into the garden soil.

In this first picture, you can see Dane cutting a long piece of tubular plastic in which to make the "chorizo" or dirt sausage.

In this picture Dane has placed a piece of pipe at the mouth of the plastic and he is scooping dirt into it. The bottom end is tied off.

Here is a nearly full dirt chorizo.

Then he poked holes in the chorizo with a fork to allow water to enter.

He placed the chorizo in water to allow the soil to be moistened.

Then he cut the chorizo into little three inch size "macetas."

After that, Sarah planted them with seeds. All and all that day, they planted about 250 tomatoe plants, about 80 bell pepper plants, and 60 eggplant plants. We pray the Lord's blessing upon our seeds this year, that they grow into healthy and fruitful plants.

Since we are still experiencing some cool nights, we have been covering our macetas with plastic at night in case of a frost.

The children and I planted lettuce, swiss chard and carrots into our garden last week. We also transplanted all of the onions and garlic to the other side of the garden that Dane had already plowed so that he could plow the side that they were on. We still lack planting green beans and okra and will get to that, Lord willing, this next week.

I also planted some macetas with lettuce and cabbage - about sixty plants of each.

Dane has done a lot of plowing and discing. He finished plowing the field above our garden and the field that we planted corn in down the road last spring. I spread fertilizer on the upper field yesterday and Dane hopes to disc it in this coming week and then, Lord willing, we will get these fields planted in corn, black beans, squash (summer and winter), watermelon, canteloup, and cucumber.

With all the plowing, Dane has discovered that the tractor needs some maintenance, so he has been working that into his list of tasks too.

Well, sorry about the long post, but I hope it catches you all up on what we've been doing around here. Take care and hope to talk to you soon.

Jessica