Goats

We are happy to announce that our search for goats has ended. For months we have been trying to plan a trip to several goat dairies in either Salta or Mar del Plata to purchase goats, but have put it off due to the expense and inconvenience of such a trip. Dane looked locally, but did not find any desirable goats until this past week. The men at INSA, the ag extension office, in Obera told Dane about a man who sold meat goats in a nearby town. After some goose (or goat) chasing Dane found another gentleman on Tuesday and spent a nice day on his farm. The man, Mr. Coon, and his family have over 100 head of cattle, 70 some goats, sheep, bees, chickens, etc. Mr. Coon told Dane that he shouldn't pursue buying goats in other areas of Argentina because they are not sufficiently resistant to parasites, a big problem in this area. His goats were all very healthy looking and have good milking characteristics, so Dane bought three nannies from him: one with a young kid and two that are pregnant.

Sadly, we lost one of the pregnant nannies about ten minutes after Dane arrived home with her. These goats are a little wild and the two pregnant ones bolted right through the electric fence and into the jungle. The children and Dane found one of them quickly in the tea, but the other disappeared without a trace. Dane spent every day this past week searching for her, but to no avail. The way the terrain and vegetation is out there, the goat could be within a few feet and us not know it. We have learned a valuable lesson and will have to be very diligent when it comes to our animals and the forest in the future. Dane is now putting some chain link fencing around the goats' electric fence training corral to make it harder for them to escape while they are learning the fence.

Wednesday morning, we woke and milked the nanny with the kid. To our delight, we got a full quart of milk. Although each milking since hasn't proved as bountiful a catch, we are already dreaming of making cheese and eating fresh yogurt again. For now, we are enjoying every drop of milk she gives us and we anxiously await the birth of the other goat's kids so we can begin milking her as well.

Here are pictures of our three new goats who have yet to be named.....

Dane did a little research on manderins and it turns out that there are over 200 varieties of madarins, and only one of those is a tangerine (and only named this because they were first imported to Florida from Tangeir). So the manderins that we have here on our property that they call "mandarinas" are mandarins. It is unlikely that they are tangerines, but who knows? We certainly don't! We do know that they are all ripe now and very delicious. We each have consumed about a dozen a day and praise the Lord for this provision. We hope to begin preserving them once we find some canning supplies.

This is a picture of one of the mandarins.

We had a really warm and dry week and the children got to do some of their schoolwork outdoors. Here is a picture of Elisabeth doing her schoolwork this past week on the table the children made of scrap wood. She just turned five and is reading well now.

Dane bought a couple more bee boxes so that he could start some more colonies. We would eventually like to have up to fifteen boxes, but will start with five. He bought three used boxes with bees a few months ago that he needs to move to our property. He tried to move them last night, but found that the boxes have more holes than he had intended (they are homemade) and he ran out of grass to put in his smoker in the hole search, so he decided to wait to talk to the previous owner who knows the boxes better, in order to be better prepared next time.

Here is a picture of him in his beekeeper gear.

Lastly, Dane got his plow all fixed up and tested it last week. He welded a bunch of steel onto it to make it heavier and modified it some. It now plows great and moves rocks and roots too and doesn't bend in the process. He is anxious to start doing some real cleaning up around here.

Taking Pleasure in Our Work

We had a really good week. We are back to working as a family (one of the reasons why we came here to begin with) as we tackle the many projects that need tending to around here and it has been a great pleasure for us all.

We started the week with the idea of getting all 2000 of the yerba seedlings that Dane had moved here from the neighbor's nursery planted. In order to do this, starting last Monday, the children and I took off from schoolwork to help Dane; however, it is so cold here in the morning now and there is a heavy dew on everything, so Wednesday we decided to go ahead and have the childrens' classes and save the planting for the afternoons. By Wednesday evening, we had planted a little over 200 trees. Thursday and Friday we busied ourselves with other projects. The remaining seedlings we have decided will be planted only as time allows. Dane got the plow fixed up so that he can plow the rows which will make the planting go a little faster for us.

Dane has never been real enthusiastic about being a yerba farmer. Cash cropping just isn't very appealing to us. However, if we need a little extra income, harvesting the yerba will be an option, Lord willing. In the big scheme, we would like more to sell our honey and animal products if the Lord sees fit to allow us.

Other projects of the week included:

1) We worked on the house. Dane taught me how to sand the wood with his electric sander and the children and I have been painting while he has worked on putting the first wall up.




This is a picture of our little painting crew. The children love their job and we can't provide the wood fast enough for them to get tired of it.


This is the first exterior wall that Dane worked on this week. As the wood gets sanded, the children paint it, and when it drys, Dane puts it up. Plank by plank the wall is growing!


This is an inside view of the wall.



2) On Tuesday we harvested all the dry corn from our corn field so that Dane could clear rows for the yerba. Tomorrow the children and I plan to take it all off the cobs and bag it for later use.

3) Dane planted twenty-three citrus trees (nine tangerines, nine navel oranges, three blood oranges, one kumquat, and one lemon) and three banana plants.

These are some pictures of the citrus trees and Dane planting them.



This is one of the banana plants.

Dane planted the banana plants up on a hill at the tree line to protect them from frost. I took this picture from there overlooking the homesite and surrounding area. It is fall now, so things are starting to look a little browner.

This was the week for eye injuries here - at least for the boys. On Monday morning, Joseph fell while he was walking and hit his left eye on a wooden crate. He scraped his lower and upper eye lids pretty good, but thank the Lord, they were just surface wounds. Monday afternoon, David had a much scarier eye injury. Sarah accidently hit him in the left eye with a tree branch. The branch scratched his cornea to the point that I thought he would be blinded. I quickly ran to read up on such an injury on the internet and apparently corneal scratches are pretty common and the treatment is just the removel of any foreign objects and antibiotic oinment. The next morning he couldn't open his eye because mucus had dried around it and sealed it shut. His eye has looked better each day and his vision does not seem to be affected either. Tuesday morning, Elijah got stung by a wasp in his left eye and his face and eye swelled a lot. It is now Saturday and all three boys look like themselves again. Praise the Lord!

We lost four of our chicks this week. The first one we think died from health related causes, and we believe the other three got too cold in the night. The remaining eight chicks are doing really well and are starting to get their wing feathers.

Here is a picture of a snake that one of the chickens found the other day. We tried to identify it on the internet and we think it is a calico snake which is not venomous. It is hard to tell from the picture, but it is red, black, and white.

Working Solo

This past week our hired helpers, the Sosa's, have gone on to other things. We are very thankful to have had their help as we adjusted to our new environment and we pray they seek the Lord as they go on their way. Though things will be different without them here, we are very excited about our family's newfound freedom. We will now have to pull together more as we work on the homestead projects and the extra cash that is available will allow us to purchase some things that we could not before.


Our first week solo went great. We found that we can get just as much, or nearly as much, done without our helpers as we can with them, which is very encouraging.


Here are some pictures of the house. Dane worked on it all week and got the beams up for the second story ceiling/attic floor up.

Dane still hasn't been able to find a ladder he is willing to pay money for. Every time he goes to the store to buy a good one, they tell him they will have some next week. So he has spent some time balancing precariously on a chair and even told me, "If I die, just tell them I fell off a chair." In this picture, you can see him standing on a board, which thankfully, is a little safer.

In this picture, Dane is sanding some of the wood that will make up the outside walls of the house.

Here is a picture of Elijah painting wood with varnish and having a very good time doing so.

We finished making beds and planting the garden this week. When we planted last Spring, we didn't get the entire garden planted because we had so many sun loving plants planted outside of it; however, the winter crops all like the partial shade and we easily used up all the space available. We already have some lettuce, cabbage, spinach, peas, and broccoli growing. Our tomatoes are still doing well too, despite the colder weather.

We finished all the tangerines we brought home from the Sosa's(we thought they were mandarin oranges because they call them "mandarinas," but we have since decided that they are more like tangarines); however, some of our tangerines are getting ripe too. This is a picture of the fruit in one our trees.

We got a dozen new chicks this past week. They call them "ponedoras," or "putters," but we think they are Rhode Island Reds based on their color. They were only a day or two old when we bought them, so we are keeping them in a plastic tote with a kerosene lantern. We read that when you use a lantern to warm your chicks that you should use one with a guard around it so that the chicks don't burn themselves. But as you can see from the picture, our chicks sit up on the tank and wrap their bodies around the glass to keep warm.

Here is a picture of Joseph peeking into the tote to see them.

We always encourage the children to use their heads. Here is a picture of Sarah doing just that, literally, with some of the day's laundry on her head.

Today the children made their own table out of some old scrap wood and some bent nails. They ate their lunch outside on it when they were done.

Time To Plant

The past week was rainy. We had some rain every day, and the temperatures were in the upper 50's most of the time. It was nice, but it is pretty muddy here around camp. Most of the week's laundry is stilling hanging on the line, and any other available spot. Little Joseph has had to spend most of his time playing on the table or on the wood pile because there really is no place for a baby to go when its pouring rain and you live in a tent with a dirt (or mud) floor. These things aside, we are very thankful for the rain, specifically since it is time to plant.

Mud, mud, and more mud.

We woke up to some frost the other morning as you can see on the truck bed.

Elisabeth was very excited to find this frog one night before we went to bed. It quickly escaped, but we did manage to get some pictures of it first, so that she could show her brothers and sisters, who were already sleeping, the next morning.

A couple of months ago Dane bought the yerba mate nursery of one our neighbors because the neighbor had moved to town and was not able to care for the seedlings anymore. There are about 10,000 little trees in the nursery that have to be transplanted to another location, so this past week, Dane, Javier, Andres, and Pascual started the process of moving the trees from there to here so that they can be planted on our farm, the Sosa's, and on Jim's farm. They managed to get 2,000 trees out of the ground and over here. After each load, we moved the trees out of the crates and into our garden to be planted later. Yerba mate is an evergreen holly and is the largest cash crop of this area. The leaves of the tree are harvested and dried for an herbal tea that is very popular in South America. It is slowly becoming popular in the U.S. as well. I haven't seen a farm in our area, that did not have yerba trees. Black tea is also an important crop here, but many farmers have abandoned their tea trees because of the low tea prices. We have several acres of old black tea trees on our farm, but they are overgrown to the point that eventually Dane will probably cut them down to the ground. We have been told by several people that once cut, they will regrow.

Here is a picture of Elisabeth and David helping to take the seedlings out of the crates.

This is a black tea flower off of one of our trees. The children brought me this one as a gift. The flowers smell very nice.

We worked in the garden some this week when the weather allowed. After the needed moisture and an addition of fertilizer, we are replanting some of the things that we planted a few weeks ago that never sprouted (lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage). We pray the Lord's blessings on our garden, so that we can become more dependent on the produce of our own land instead of that of others.

Here is a picture of Susana and Abby working in the garden one afternoon.

Dane replaced the upper A-arm bushing in the Toyota this week. The rough roads are hard on the vehicles, so it certainly is a blessing that Dane is a good mechanic.

The children and I went to the Sosa's yesterday to pick mandarin oranges. They have a ton of orange trees and most of the fruit goes to waste, so we brought home three large bags. We are enjoying the fresh fruit. Isabel Sosa told me that most of their trees were started from seeds that they collected from oranges they bought to eat. I didn't know that you could start orange trees from seed, but it sure is worth a try. So I intend, Lord willing, to plant some of the seeds from the fruit this week as well.

Well, lunch is calling now.

Until the next post,

Jessica

Into the Rainy Season

After a dry summer, autumn is here and so is the wet, cool weather. We are thankful to the Lord for the rain. Our springs are replenished. Our garden is receiving some extra water, and the moisture in the air creates some spectacular views.

The picture below is one that I took in the early morning around 5:30AM last week. Typically the valley has heavy fog in the morning.

Dane took the pictures below in the morning at about 7:15AM on the 24th. You can see the clouds forming and rising into the air over the river in the distance.

We took the below pictures last evening around 5:50PM on the road down to our farm. In the bottom picture, you can see the roof of our house in the distance, and again, beyond it, the clouds forming over the river.

When researching this area prior to our move here, Dane and I read that Misiones has no rainy season, but that the rain (about 70 inches per year) is distributed relatively evenly throughout the year. This is basically true, from what we have experienced here, with the exception of summer. We arrived here in the summer of 2007 (winter 2007 in the US) and the weather was wet here and there, but there was no significant rainfall. The rainfall increased slowly through last autumn and winter, and then it was really wet in the spring, and then came a dry summer. Over the summer, all of the uphill springs dryed up and some of the higher downhill ones, too, but after three days of heavy rain, all the springs are flowing again and we have had some rain just about everyday for the last two weeks.

With the increase in rain, we had to retire our tent that we used for storage. The tent was pretty much done a few months ago and had become like tissue paper, but we covered it with plastic and it did fine for a while. However, the elements finally deteriorated the plastic too, and we decided to move the contents of the tent into one of the other smaller tents. The other tent sits under the awning of the kitchen tent, so it is more protected from the sun and rain.

*By the way, US military tents are awesome. They are built to last, and are worth every penny spent on them. I imagine ours will be around for years. Our kitchen tent has been dry when everything else was wet. We keep Dane's office with our computers in this tent and have never had a problem with them getting wet, even in severe weather. We use our woodburning stove in it too! If we had known better, we would have brought some GP smalls; but, we really didn't expect to live in tents either.

Dane got the rest of the big exterior walls framed on the house this past week. I think he is going to start working on the wood for the exterior walls next. He has to sand and finish all the wood first and then he can start putting it up, but it is also time to plant and we have about 10,000 yerba mate trees to put in the ground! What to do, what to do? At times like this I think of Proverbs 24:27 that says, "Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house." I pray that whatever Dane puts his hand to that the Lord God guide him and that we as a family put our complete trust in Him.

Two men came to our farm on separate days this past week with farms to sell. One is thirty one acres right on the opposite side of the river from Jim's property. Below is a picture of it and the river in which it meets. The property isn't the greatest and it is fiscal, but it is riverfront property. When Dane has time and Lord willing, he is going to go to the Office of Lands to check the status of this property's papers (who is the owner on record, who has the permission of occupation etc.,). Many properties are too complicated to buy because the people who bought them prior haven't gone through the proper government procedures in getting the property in their names, getting the permission to occupy etc.

Well its snack time and Elisabeth, who is four, has made the tortilla dough all by herself and is now, rolling the tortillas out. I'm off to fry them for her, so she doesn't have any accidents.

Just a Note

I finally got the last of our old email updates from 2007 on the blog today, so now our whole history in Argentina is in one place. Look for them in the archive folders if you want a recap.

The Rain Has Cleared

It has been a couple of weeks since I posted. Last weekend we had three days of intensive rain and after that had no internet for nearly a week. But we are online now.

With the sun, rain, wind, etc., our sleeping tent, a ten person tent that Pop bought at Walmart, has about had it. The tent has been great, but it certainly was not intended to be used daily for seven months. We have sewn it, patched it, and put plastic over it time and again. With the big rain this last week, we added two more pieces of plastic and again, thankfully, I think we are in the dry. We are grateful to God for the lessons we have learned during this time of tent dwelling. We have a greater appreciation for the weather than we ever had before. I think we also appreciate more the experiences of the tent dwelling sojourners of which the Bible speaks.

Not much work happened on the house since my last post except the framing of some more walls, but Dane hopes to get back to that sometime next week.

Dane did work on the big Ford truck. He put rails on the flat bed, got it fixed up so that it would pass inspection, and got it insured so that the Sosa's could use it to haul yerba mate for other farmers. We hope that this will generate a little income for us and for our neighbors.

The things they say........

One day as Dane was working, he kept dropping his tools and said, "Boy, I am dropping tools left and right."

His helper, Elijah, our six year old, responded, "Yeah, and straight down!"

Furthermore, Dane passed a kidney stone a week ago Friday. I think that his bouncing around in the truck as he drove it to town dislodged it. Needless to say, he is happy to report that it is over for the time being. He did say that of all the accidents, broken bones, surgeries, etc, that he has had, passing a kidney stone was by far the most painful. Ouch! We are thankful to have him up and going again.

Also, we did get back to Posadas to apply for Joseph's Argentine passport the Tuesday before last. They told us that we should have it within forty days if there are no problems this time.

Joseph got his first pair of shoes Friday. He is walking really well now and at fourteen months old, he had never had anything except socks on his feet. You would have thought he was being tortured when we stood him up with the shoes. He walked and screamed like a cat with something on its feet, but within a half hour he was used to them. If it weren't socially unacceptable because of modesty issues, I imagine someday, if left to his own devices, he might resemble the vine swinging Tarzan.

Well, we are in the midst of celebrating the Passover this weekend. Passover, the time set aside to remember the sacrificial death of Jesus, was last night and today is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which symbolizes our casting out of wicked worldly things for things of truth (1 Corinthians 5). Tomorrow will be the Feast of First Fruits, when we celebrate Jesus's resurrection and His gift of eternal life to us (1 Corinthians 15). In fifty days, will come the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was given unto men. This is a special time of remembrance and Bible study for us and we have enjoyed having the opportunity to study the Bible with our neighbors Susana and Andrea.

This is a picture of the beautiful sunset and a full moon that Dane took last night before we had our Passover meal.

Here is a picture of the children sitting around the table just before we began our Passover meal.

Wow....

One big worm!

Anyone want to go fishing?