Argentina Update - December 2007 - Part III: Of People, Animals, and Miscellaneous Stuff

Argentina Update – December 2007 – Part III: Of People, Animals, and Miscellaneous Stuff

Hello. This is the third and final part of our photo tour. We have several pictures of the family, the animals, and some miscellaneous things that we wanted to share with you. We hope you enjoy them.

Here we are. Here Joseph is playing with one of the puppies. He is such a sweet baby and it sure is hard to keep him clean now that he is crawling. In this picture, Andrea is cleaning the new concrete so that Joseph can play on it.
Here is a picture of David. He is such an adventurous little boy. I think that he has had more accidents since we have been here than all of our other children combined in their life times. As soon as he turned two, it all began. He is not scared of much (except dump trucks) which is scary for us. Meme, Dane’s mother, says that he reminds her of Dane when he was little. Here is a run down of the injuries that he has had since earlier this year: 1) David cuts his hand with a knife that was left on the table while trying to cut a lime – for this injury he had to have his thumb taped to his palm for two weeks. 2) David severs two toes in Elijah’s bicycle – for this his toes had to be sewed back on. 3) David falls in a hole filled with water from a recent rain only to be rescued by his brother Elijah who was with him. Later, David came down with what we think was an e coli infection. He was sick for two weeks. 4) David breaks his collar bone by falling out of the bottom of the bunk bed only to be accidentally knelled on by his father who was arising to help him – for this David had to have his shoulders in a figure eight sling and his arm immobilized for three weeks. 5) David gets hit in the head with a machete that Elisabeth picked up and is cut just above his eye – for this he had to have his head bandaged for a few days. 6) As soon as the cut healed, David tripped and fell twice in one day and gave himself two nice sized goose egg bumps – because of this he looked like a Klingon from Star Trek for a week. 7) David touches the generator motor when it is hot and burns his entire right palm – for this he had to hold his hand on ice for two hours and wear a sock on his hand for a week. I think that that is all of the most significant injuries up to this point. We stay busy keeping an eye on him. When he is out of sight briefly, everyone goes into panic mode until he is found. He hears all the time, “No David, that is dangerous! Don’t do that!” All in all he is a joy to have around. He talks up a storm and can switch between English and Castellano with ease. Furthermore, we are constantly trying to teach the children modesty and since David stopped wearing diapers, he has had a problem keeping his pants from sliding down a little. David doesn’t quite understand all this as was demonstrated the other day when he asked me, “Can you see my bottom?” I answered, “No.” He then asked me, “Why, is it dangerous?” We have laughed and laughed about that. This is a picture of Elisabeth. She loves to help whenever she can and will clean, clean, clean when given an opportunity. She loves to carry around bags and will collect things to put in them. It really doesn’t matter what kind of bag it is either. She has a deep little voice and a funny laugh that makes everyone else laugh when she gets started. At four, she is still trying to figure out how things work. She still hasn’t figured out the difference between breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Other things are difficult too. The other day she said to me, “Look Mommy, I’m fat, but I have to have a place for my gizzards.” I think she meant organs.
This is Elijah, our six year old. He is such a big help to his Daddy. He is always by Dane’s side and is a hard worker. He is very careful about most things and is always concerned about the welfare of his brothers and sisters. Here is Sarah. At seven, she is also a very hard worker. I depend on her a lot to get things done because she is very conscientious about her work and usually doesn’t stop until she sees the job through. She is also lighthearted and laughs easily.
Here is Abby who is nine. As the oldest child, she bares a lot of responsibility. She is great with the younger children and the baby is usually content with her carrying him around. She has already become quite fluent in Castellano and we often have her translate for us when we have a hard time understanding. She loves animals and bugs and is constantly finding new ones to show us.
Here is a picture of the puppies. All the puppies that we still have, three of them, are growing and doing well, even the one that had to have his tail amputated.
We are all enjoying the chickens. This is a picture of one of our roosters. This is our smallest hen. She has been sitting on a nest for about twenty days now. We expect her chick to hatch at any time if the Lord wills. She originally had eight eggs, but only one has survived being cracked and eaten by the other chickens. We have so much to learn about chicken raising. Here are a few of our other hens. A few of our chickens fly the coop everyday and one hen likes to lay her eggs in an empty box on top of the trailer.

We find giant snail shells without snails all the time, but Abby finally found one with a live snail in our garden. These things are huge! There are giant firefly type things here, called taca tacas, except their light doesn’t go on and off like a firefly. They stay lit up all the time and while they are flying they look like a green glowing ball zipping through the air. When they land, their wings cover most of their glowing abdomens and you can only see two dots on their backs that look like glowing green eyes. One night, a couple of months ago, we were in the forest, walking by lamplight and we saw two glowing green eyes in the weeds by a tree. It was very bizarre and we were afraid to inspect it further. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was coming from the outhouse and I saw this glowing green ball flying around the house area. I had no idea what it was. It looked like something you would see in a science fiction movie. I called to Dane, “It’s coming around again Dane!” He still thinks this is funny and repeats what I said often. He had already seen one of these bugs earlier in the week. Here is a picture of one that had landed on the ground. You can see the spots that glow on its back. In the picture below, we used the flash on the camera so that you can see what the bug looks like. These bugs are about an inch and a half long and their lower bodies are totally fluorescent green when their wings are open.
This is a picture of our neighbor’s property up on top of the hills. We live down in the valley on the other side of the road. The valley is the area with all the fog that you see in the picture.

Here is a picture taken from our adjoining neighbor’s property of the valley that we live in. You can see the roof of our future house in the middle left of the picture.

Here is a closer up view of the valley. Again, you can see the roof of our future house. This is the trail that leads down to the large creek. The Sosa’s cleaned it up all the way to their house for easier passage. Following this trail is like visiting a national park in the states.
This is a picture of our corn field.
Here is one of our cucumbers growing. They grow so big and green here.

Well that is the end of my photo tour. I hope you all have enjoyed seeing what we are doing here. We miss you all and think of you often. As I said before, if you have any questions or have any photo requests, let us know. I have more to write soon.

Take care,

Jessica

Argentina Update - December 2007 - Part II: Things We Are Working On

Argentina Update – December 2007 – Part II: Things We Are Working On

Hello again. This is the second part of our photo tour. In this update, I hope to show you some of the things that we are working on around here. Dane is working on so many different projects. A homestead is difficult to start, particularly in the absence of many of the building conveniences that we are used to, but in the end I think we will appreciate it more because of all the hard work that went into it.

This is a picture of Dane and Javier burning the cut brush and dead trees in preparation of the garden.

The burning continued into the night. After the garden fence was built and the shade cloth put on, Dane plowed the earth with the track vehicle. Here is a picture of some of the wood that Dane will use to build the house. All of this is inside wood (floors, walls, etc.). The wood for the outside will be delivered later because we really don’t have much more room to store it until Dane is ready for it. Dane covered all the wood with plastic to protect it from the rain.
The next two pictures show Dane and Javier making the metal brackets for screwing the wood together. Dane bought the iron and they are using a device that Dane made on the back of the track vehicle to bend the iron into the shapes that Dane needs.

Dane, Javier, and Andres poured concrete for half of the bottom floor of our house. It was two days of hard work and they did a great job!Dane bought a chainsaw to cut posts from some fallen trees on our property. Here is Elijah posing with it after Dane finished testing it out. Dane and Javier found a huge fallen Angico tree in the forest and have begun cutting posts for our fence. The wood is beautiful and extremely heavy. When all the cutting is done, they are going to have to find a way to haul it up here to camp.


Well we have had relatively dry weather here for about a month and our little uphill springs finally dried up, so Dane bought a pump and we are now pumping water from the big downhill spring until more rain comes and fills the uphill springs again. This picture is of the pump house.
This picture is of the spring where Dane is pumping the water from. He built a little dam to make the water a little deeper where the spring starts.
I also do my laundry here sometimes (in the pools below where we take the water for the house) while the children play in the other pools.

Most of the time though, I do my laundry here.

Well that is all the pictures that we have for now of what we are working on, but there will be more to come, Lord willing. And another note, the inverter that Dane bought here in Argentina went out and is being repaired. For now we run a generator to check email and use the phones several times a day, but our phone is not on all the time. If you need to get a hold of us, please send us an email or call our phone and leave a message. All our phone messages go straight to email. We would love to hear from you. Again, let us know if you have any questions and if you want any particular pictures.

Jessica

Argentina Update - December 2007 - Part I: Our Camp

Argentina Update –December 2007 – Part I: Our Camp

Hello to everyone. With this update, I want to give you all a photo tour. I am trying to assemble some pictures so this will be a several part update for easier downloading. To start, I know that you all are interested in how we are living here so the first part of the tour will be pictures of our camp.

This is the entrance to our camp. Abby saw that one of our neighbors had a sign that said, “No Pasar” (no passing) so she made one for our property too, writing the words with a leaf on some scrap wood.

We are all sleeping in the same tent now. Pop bought us a ten person tent to camp in a while back and Dane was able to fit our double bed, a bunk bed, and a baby bed into it so that we don’t have to sleep on the ground. It is really nice being all together in the same sleeping area. The small children often wake in the night and need help going to the bathroom, so it is a lot easier this way. In front of the tent you can see the concrete that Dane, Javier, and Andres just poured last week.

This is an inside view of the tent. Dane, the baby, and I sleep in the double bed. Elijah and David sleep on the bottom of the bunk bed and Abby and Sarah sleep on the top bunk. Elisabeth sleeps in the baby bed because she is still small enough to do so. The baby bed is on the other side of the bunk bed.

This picture is of our showering area underneath the water tower. Dane surrounded the bottom of the water tower with plastic so that we would have an area to clean up.

This is a picture of our outhouse. It is just an outhouse, although, a special one, because it accommodates very tall people and has a toilet that we can flush with hauled water.

This is the inside of the outhouse.

This is a picture of our garden. It is nice and large and is shaded so that we can grow vegetables year round.

This picture is inside our kitchen tent. Looks just like a regular kitchen – almost – huh? In this tent we have three tables: one for Dane’s office and the other two for preparing food and for gathering to eat.

This is a picture of our hen house and chicken yard.

This is the inside of the chicken house. It has fourteen nest boxes and can accommodate many more chickens than we have.

Well that is the end to the tour of our campsite. Write us if you have any questions or if you would like any other pictures. I will be sending out a couple more updates with more pictures soon. Take care and hope to talk to you soon.

Jessica

Argentina Update

November 4, 2007

Hello,

We have not sent out an update in quite a while, so I hope to catch you all up on what has been going on with us down in Argentina.

The children finished their school year a little over a month ago, and we moved out to the farm shortly thereafter. Let me tell you that this is an exciting place! What an adventure it has been. We are living in tents – a big US Military kitchen tent serves as our kitchen, Dane’s office, and our living area. We have several smaller tents to sleep in – a boy’s tent, a girl’s tent, a parent’s tent, and a storage tent. We are storing our clothing, some furniture, firewood, trailer, etc. under the roof of the future house. Dane’s system that he built for electricity is working great! We have electricity for the computers, lights, refrigerator, and the washing machine. Javier, Dane’s helper and our neighbor, found a spring on our property uphill from our camp, so we have running water that we store in an elevated tank. Water used for cooking and drinking, we filter and heat in Grandmommy and Debra’s pressure cooker until it reaches about 15 pounds of pressure. The propane refrigerator and toilet that Van Duhon donated to Dane are both working great. The refrigerator keeps our meat nice and cold and Dane installed the toilet in our outhouse (we have the most modern outhouse around with a flushing toilet and all).

(internet tower up the hill from camp)

Our farm is so much fun and so beautiful. We are constantly finding new sources of water and Dane discovered some beautiful water falls in the creek on our property. The children have enjoyed wading downstream on hot days and running down to the creek to clean their feet. I have never seen so many different flowering trees and plants in my life. With the start of spring here, everything seemed to be in bloom. It was an amazing sight to see flowers everywhere. All the flowers attract thousands of butterflies. The butterflies are everywhere and when they settle on the ground, the children like to run into the middle of them and stir them up. It is like a snow globe only with butterflies. Furthermore, it is so peaceful and quiet here. The stars are numerous and the sound of the rushing water from the river close by is such a joy. Elijah and Dane saw a toucan yesterday on our property and wild parrots are around daily. There are tons of insects here that we have never seen before - very beautiful and brightly colored – an entomologist’s dream.
Living in a semi tropical area, has presented many challenges. It has rained more in the last month than it has been dry, so we have had to deal with mud, mud, mud. I don’t have to tell you what happens when you mix mud and small children. Thank the Lord, we are surrounded by water and can clean up regularly. And I must tell you, the water comes out of the ground every where here. One day after several days of rain, Dane was digging trenches around our camp to try and keep us from getting flooded out and as fast as he could dig, the trenches would fill up with water from under the ground, not above it. Also, we survived a torrential rain storm that we did not know was coming. It hit in the middle of the night and by the grace of God none our tents blew away. All our clothing and most of our things got wet and we lost a few trees, but the Lord definitely showed mercy on us. Many of our neighbors lost their roofs, some their homes and this whole area has been without electricity for several days. David has recovered from an e-coli infection that we think he got by swallowing some dirty water when he fell into a hole Dane was digging for our septic system, the hole was full of water and David didn’t know it was there and walked right into it. Furthermore, we have had to deal with new things like bot fly larvae spread by mosquitos (in us), flesh eating maggots (not in us, but in one of our puppies that had a puncture wound) and many other things we have never experienced before. The bot fly larvea come from mosquitoes that carry the eggs of the bot fly. When a person gets bit by a mosquito that has bot fly eggs attached to it, a bot fly larvae can grow just under your skin. Two of the children have had one of these things. They are not dangerous, just irritating, and can be removed easily, but reason enough to more protective against mosquito bites. I know some of this sounds scary, but it really sounds worse than it is. Now that we know about these things, how to deal with them, how to prevent them, and so forth, we are more prepared for them in the future.
Dane and Javier have done a lot of work on the farm. They planted many vegetables on our property – corn, lettuce, tomatoes, squash, mandioca, watermelon, carrots, onions, garlic, cantaloupe, and cucumber. We look forward to our own vegetables soon. Javier built a big hen house for the chickens that we bought from our neighbor in Obera. Dane also bought a track vehicle – a tractor with tracks instead of wheels (picture above) that he and Javier have been working on. Dane hopes they can use this to work the land and plant in more areas. Little improvements are made everyday to make our camp more comfortable as well – more clothes line, a larger showering area, the hanging of plastic sheeting to protect our things from the rain, a door on the outhouse, etc. The rain has prevented the delivery of the wood for the house, so the construction has not begun aside from preparing for the concrete, but the wood is ready and should be here soon. Below is a picture of Dane and Javier harvesting yerba mate (the herbal tea that everyone drinks down here). We have several hectares of this stuff, but this was on Jim’s property. We have added some animals to our farm. We have thirteen hens and three roosters. It is nice having fresh eggs everyday. Our neighbor in town gave us a dog that had puppies a week after we got her here. She had five puppies – one of which Abigail has had to nurse because I had to cut it’s tail off after maggots got to a puncture wound that it’s mother accidentally made in it when she was trying to move it during a storm. The puppy is doing well and is stronger everyday. We also brought the cat from town that originally belonged to one of our other neighbors, but came to live with us soon after we moved in. Like us, all the animals like their new home and seem to appreciate the peacefulness of this place. We hope to soon buy some goats and cows too.

We got word yesterday from our friend in town that our residency paperwork has been completed and we just have to go to town tomorrow to sign one last document. That means that we can now live, work, and do business in Argentina legally. We are excited about this and hope that we can soon get permission to keep our vehicle here too. We still have not been able to get a passport for Joseph, so I will not be able to travel with him yet, but we think that a trip to Buenos Aires is all it would take to get his documents. Apparently, there have been some cases of people selling there babies in this province and those babies had counterfeit documents, so they are a little leery about giving us a passport for Joseph since he was born two weeks after we arrived in Argentina. They want to make sure that he is really our child – like I said – something that we could clear up if we made a trip to Buenos Aires.Our neighbors the Sosas have been very helpful. They have given us much advice about living out here and how things are done. Javier works with Dane and his sister Andrea works with me. They are both here Monday through Friday. Javier helps Dane with whatever he is working on and Andrea helps me with the laundry, cooking, cleaning, and the children. The Sosas have been very good neighbors and we enjoy getting together and signing hymns with them on Saturday evenings.

We hope all of you are doing well. We love to hear from you, so please feel free to call us anytime. Our phone number is the same because we have VOIP internet phone service. That means that you can call us at the same old 806 area code phone number that we have always had. Take care each and everyone.

Jessica