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

Update 9-2-07

Well, things are starting to move forward a little here. Spring is around the corner, it is time to start planting the garden and it seems to be getting warmer by the day. Lately, the temperatures have been in the upper 60’s to lower 70’s. It is just beautiful with all the hills and vegetation although I suspect the vegetation is going to start getting ahead of us pretty quickly (as you can see in the pictures, there is a lot of growth).

We have finished the “roof” on the house and have ordered the wood for the house. We had originally thought we were going to go with wood but then began thinking about a brick structure but after looking at the options for brick, and having difficulties with help and so forth, we decided to go back with wood. It will be faster, probably a little cheaper and I think it will look better. The wood shop has selected the trees to use and is cutting them to make the floor beams and deck for the second floor as well as the wall materials. We are going to have a “red” hardwood for the floor and outside walls and the inside walls are going to be pine. When I say “red” that means the maderera will select trees based on color and class of tree but not necessarily the same species – this is more economical than specifying a specific species. A maderera is not a saw mill or a carpenteria (carpenter’s shop) – Madera is wood or lumber so a maderera is a wood worker more or less – they take rough cut lumber and make beams and tongue and groove planks called machimbre). The name of the maderera we are using is Fuks & Fuks (pronounced like Fooks), this is the last name of the owners. With drying time included, it will take about 2 months for it all to be ready.

We have most of the material on the farm to install the septic system, and water supply. Lord willing, we are going to try and use the spring about 30 meters away to supply our water by building a small covered pond at the spring and a pump to pump the water up to our storage tank. The pump we have is a ram type pump and does not need electricity but uses the flow of water to pump the water. With about 3 feet of fall between the water source and the pump, the pump can pump a small amount of water about 100 feet high. About 10% of the water is pumped for use and the rest is wasted out the back of the pump. This is something that they have been using down here for a long time. We have a 1000 liter (275 gallon) tank and it will sit on top of a 6 meter tall tower next to the house. So, although the pump is slow, it will pump all the time and once our tank is full, there should not be a problem keeping up with our demand – and no electricity required, just nice clean spring water. We will boil what we drink and the rest will be for cleaning and stuff like that. Boiling water is really a lot simpler when you use a wood burning stove because you have a heat source from cooking that usually lasts for some time afterwards.

We have the tower for the internet on the farm also. It is going to be 35 meters tall (115 feet) and about 200 meters (660 feet) up the hill from the house. We have to have such a tall tower because there is a high hill next to our farm between us and the main tower, which is in a town just to the north called Campo Vierra. They are supposed to erect it early next week. Once that is up and operational, we should be able to be out there on a more full time basis building the house and preparing the fields.

I have taken some pictures for everyone to see some of the things we have been working on. It is turning warmer so a lot of stuff is really starting to grow and get green.

This one is of the limit of my property where I am clearing out for a fence. The tree to the left is a peach tree.

This one is of our homestead area with the tent and the tinglado.

The one below is of a path I am clearing from the house to the top of the hill where the internet tower is going to be.

This one is looking towards the river from our home site. A lot of the trees you see with no leaves are called Kiri and were planted to harvest and use for furniture. When cut, they grow back with another trunk and you can harvest them again 4-5 times. It takes about 8 years for them to grow large enough to be ready to harvest. In the spring, they get leaves on them about 12-18 inches across and heart shaped.

The one below is where I think we are going to start the garden. There is a little brush that we have gathered to burn.
Here is a closeup of camp. I have dismantled the old car somebody left behind into pieces small enough for me to carry. The tent is real nice since it is totally screened in we can get away from the insects and out of the weather.

Here is a picture of the internet tower out on the land.

Here is a field I cleared about 3 months ago for the tower (it took me about 2 ½ hours to clear about 75 meters square), all the new growth is winter growth. You can get a general idea of the way things slope here, this is a relatively flat field but as you can see, it still has a bit of slope to it.

You can see the 6-7 ft tall weeds to the left and all the cut vegetation on the ground. With the first cutting I am really only able to cut about 6-10 inches off the ground so you are looking at about 12-18 inches of cut stuff laying on the ground – it takes about 2 weeks to dry out enough to burn. Burning puts a lot of potassium back into the soil as fertilizer. I have done all this clearing with the weed eater in the picture above. This particular area of my farm has very good (deep) soil. I have learned since that the taller blue green bush in the left of this picture is called Canela and develops into a tree that makes “the best” firewood for our stove.

Here is the Argentina wagon. I did make a road up to the top of our property so that I could drive up to the internet tower.

Here is Abigail with a piece of bamboo (tacuada); she made it into some sort of decoration. Here I was trying to clear a path for the electricity from our house to the tower. I came into some pretty rough stuff and decided on another route. It is a funny thing that where I came from, straight lines were pretty easy to come by. Here, faced with the prospect of many scratches and hours of hacking at brush with a machete and an axe, you think, “I could just go over there 10 meters and be good to go”.

We are really anxious to start planting things and from talking to our neighbors and others, the options for planting are almost endless. Often when you ask what grows here you hear, just put a seed in the ground and it will grow.

Let me know if the pictures don’t come through or you have any other problems with the email.

Dane

Update from Argentina July 2007

July 21, 2007

Hello,

It has been a long time since we sent out an update. We keep busy with our daily activities and the time passes so quickly. So much and so little has happened since May depending on how you look at things. The pace here is very different than in the U.S, so according to U.S. standards it would appear that we haven't accomplished much, but by Argentine standards – we've done a lot!

We did finally get to Posadas, the capital city of Misiones, and get all the papers we needed to file for our residency. It took just two more trips there since the last update to get it all completed. We filed our paperwork at the Gendermedia (military headquarters where the immigration office is located in Obera), and received temporary residency until December 23, 2007. We should get permanent residency when we obtain our FBI background checks from the U.S. and submit them to the Argentinean Government for approval.

As far as the building goes out on the farm, we are still waiting for the builder to get back out there and put the roof on the barn and then Dane will purchase the wood and start building the second storey floor and the walls. Rain, wind, and other projects have delayed the builder from getting back out there, but we expect them to be back out there next week. Dane purchased some gravel and sand to make a concrete floor in the barn/house, but the dump truck got stuck on the road trying to deliver it, so Dane had the driver dump the gravel on the neighbor's property. When Dane tried to move a trailer load of the gravel the next day, the trailer got stuck (just so you know Dane will not admit to being stuck – he says that if he were stuck, he would not have gotten out). It took Dane nearly a whole day to get the trailer out, but with a winch and a tree and his perseverance (he kneeled in the mud for hours and inched the trailer out) he finally freed the trailer. Then we had rain for a week. The sand was delivered this past week and put on one of the other neighbor's properties. Dane will have to spend some time taking small loads of both the gravel and the sand down to our property when he his able to get back out there. Because of these difficulties, we have decided to build the barn/house out of wood instead of brick.

Dane found another spring on our property one day when he was cutting down monte. It is about 30 meters from where we are building the barn, so it will be great for watering the animals when we get them. The water comes out of the rocks in two different places and flows down into two pools. The overflow flows downhill to the other stream with the waterfall that feeds into the river Bonito. We are going to incorporate the building of the animal pens around this spring, so that the animals will have access to it, but will not be able to contaminate it.

Dane got his generator system built for our electricity on the property. He bought a 13hp gas engine and a local auto parts store donated a 24V bus alternator. He bought a pulley, some belts and two huge 400amp deep cycle 12V batteries. He built a frame for all these things and a local electric motor shop wired it all together. It runs pretty quietly and he looks forward to testing its capabilities as soon as he gets the inverter that he has ordered. If the system works as planned, we will move out to the farm barn or no barn. We are so ready to get out there.

Dane did get the water pump for the 4Runner. A man from an auto parts store here sent Dane's water pump by bus to Buenos Aires and they matched it and sent it back by bus. The whole process took about a week and a half, so we weren't without a vehicle for long. The windshield was also loose on one side and the vibrations made it crack down the middle, so Dane took the windshield out the other day and then reinstalled it with new sealant. He did a great job and now he knows how to install windshields. He said it really wasn't that complicated a process.

We got a wood burning stove for cooking and heating the house and water. We are all really enjoying it. The winter here has been unusually cool, so we have a fire going in the stove most of the day. It keeps the house warm and I can keep a pot of hot water for washing or for using as drinking water going all the time. We have been able to eliminate a lot of the paper trash that we have as well, since we use it for kindling.

Dane hired Noelia (the woman from the real estate company who has given us some Castillano lessons) to go around and get prices for building materials and other things that we need on the farm. The language barrier and the Yankee factor (sad note to all you Texans: in Argentina and probably most of South America – YOU and all North Americans are Yankees, pronounced jankee) was making shopping for materials difficult. Here they think that all North Americans have lots of money, and probably rightly so. Seeing the poor people here and the way they live makes even homeless people in the U.S. appear rich, considering all the programs available to help them. Anyway, Noelia has gotten lots of information for us which has helped tremendously and will, Lord willing, get us out on the land sooner.

Dane has been very busy with work from Brown – McKee and the children and I have been busy with schoolwork and housework. After six years of struggling to get done we have settled into a great homeschooling schedule. The children begin their work in the morning and are done by lunch every day. All it took was time restraints for each subject and our concentration problems seem to be solved. We now have the entire afternoon everyday for cleaning, running errands, or studying Castillano.

We continue to learn and to be humbled by our experiences here. We have visited our neighbors, the Sosas, on the farm above ours a couple times. They are simple people that would appear poor to most, but I don't believe they are. Mr. and Mrs. Sosa have twelve children, but only five are still living at home. They live in a small wooden house with a dirt floor and no electricity. For light at night, they run a line to their truck battery to power one light bulb in the middle of their house. When we were there one evening they served us cookies and bread with lunch meat. Mr. Sosa and one of his daughters sang hymns while his son, Javier, played the guitar and his other son, Andres, played the accordion. It was really nice and it made Dane and I realize that things are just things. With this house planning business, we say we want this and we want that, but in the big scheme of things, all is vanity.

The funny thing about not knowing a language very well is that a lot of words are difficult to distinguish between and if you mispronounce a word, you may in fact be saying a word that means something totally different. For instance, mimo (pronounced mēmō) means "mime", but mismo (mēsmō) means "the same". Other words that have been difficult are: hambre – hunger, hombre – man, and hombro – shoulder. We continue to make all kinds of funny mistakes. We are always laughing at ourselves.

Well that is all I can think to tell at the moment. We hope each and every one of you is doing well, and we love to hear from you. Here are some miscellaneous pictures that you may enjoy.

May 5 - Donaldson Argentina Update

May 5, 2007

Hello from Misiones, Argentina. A few weeks have passed and we have lots to tell about our adventures here, so much so, that I’m not even sure where to start.

First of all, we have not gotten much done on the chacra, but we are making all kinds of plans. The quotation from the electric company to get electricity out there is pretty expensive, so Dane has been researching hydroelectric power and other sources of alternative energy. He visited with Professor Dick Barney at the Engineering University here in Obera, who has been building hydroelectric turbines for 30 years, and he offered some of his students to help Dane when he begins the construction of ours (sounds like fun!). Senor Barney also has a truck that runs on ethanol and he told Dane that if he grew a hectare of sugar cane and bought a distiller than he could produce more fuel than he could use in a year, so, as you can imagine, Dane is very excited about the possibilities. In the meantime, while the hydroelectric project is being planned we are going to try to get out on the land using a generator and some batteries for electricity.

In addition, the water pump is also going out on the 4Runner and Dane has not been able to find a replacement in Argentina. A man at the auto parts store has been calling around and wants Dane to take the pump off the truck so he can try and match it up with something; hence, we will be without a vehicle for a while again and that will keep us from getting to the chacra too, but we have plenty of time. Dane has taken some great pictures when he has been out there.

Hacking through the monte, we found…..

a spring….

and Elisabeth.

David nearly lost two of his toes in one of the bicycles. He was sitting in a chair while Elijah was getting on his bicycle and swung his foot into the gear mechanism of the bike right as Elijah took off. When Elijah heard David scream, he quickly got off the bicycle and dropped it, jerking David out of the chair. Two of David’s toes on his left foot, the little one and the one next to it were caught in the gear and completely severed except for a small piece of skin on the underside of each. We got him to the hospital and they were not real hopeful that they could be sewn back on until after they viewed the x-rays. Remarkably both toes were severed at the joints and neither bone had been broken, so two hours later they put him under anesthesia and sewed them back on. The surgeon told us to make sure that the toes continued to have circulation in them and to come back immediately if they turned black. Amazingly, he was on his feet running after four days, and his toes appear better each day. We have before and after pictures that we debated about sending, but they are pretty gruesome. If you want to see them, let us know.

Furthermore, we made a couple of trips to Posadas (90 kilometers away), the capital of Misiones, in attempt to get our residency paperwork filed and to get Joseph’s documentation and passport; however, both trips produced nothing. We needed three things in Posadas: to apply for Joseph’s Argentine passport, to get Joseph’s birth certificate legalized so that it would be accepted in Buenos Aires when we filed our residency paperwork, and to get a Certificate of Good Behavior. The first time we went to the Federal Police they would not process a passport application for Joseph because the Registry of Persons here in Obera had made a mistake on Joseph’s DNI card (like a social security card) and the mistake would have to be fixed in Obera. So, we went to the Police Station to get our Certificate of Good Behavior to show that we have not committed any crimes in Argentina since we have been here, and found out that we would need another form from Obera to do so. Next, we went to get Joseph’s birth certificate legalized at the Ministry Interior, but they sent us to the Registry of Persons on the other side of the city – the office was open, but the people were on strike and would not help anyone that came in. Because of these things, we left Posadas without accomplishing anything. We spent the next few days getting Joseph’s DNI card corrected and obtaining a form from the police department in Obera. A week later we went back to Posadas thinking we had what we needed to get some work done. We went back to the Federal Police to apply for Joseph’s Argentine passport; however, their machine was broken and they said to come back in a week. The next stop was the police station for our good behavior certificates, but we arrived five minutes after they closed (I had no idea that they closed for siesta an hour before everyone else). Hoping to achieve at least one of the things that we needed to get done, we went to the Registry of Persons only to find that their office was again on strike for another week and a half. We left Posadas again without accomplishing anything. In the meantime, we have to have our documents retranslated and legalized here in Argentina because I had them done in the U.S. I should have known better, but since it looks like it might take a while to get the things done in Posadas that we need for the residency application, we have plenty of time.

We got our tourists visas renewed for another three months. After spending days trying to decide how we were going to cross the border with our large family and avoid taking our vehicle with Texas license plates just for new stamps, the Lord showed mercy on us and our neighbor who works for emigration here, arranged for us to drive to the Argentina – Brasil border to get stamps on this side of the border. The military personnel at the border were very kind and stamped our passports as if we had left the country and then returned again without our actually having to cross over to Brasil. This saved us a lot of money and time.

We now know that we can get packages without having to go all the way to Buenos Aires to get them. We went to the post office three weeks ago and there was a form in our box and the post office guy said that we had to go to customs in San Javier, about 45 kilometers away to get it. We went to the post office in San Javier the next week. We had to wait for about thirty minutes for a customs agent to come from down the street. When he got there, he opened the box, went through it, and charged Dane five pesos customs tax for the items in it. The customs guy was a little confused by all the toilet paper. Grandpa John and Grandma Fran had sent two jars of peanut butter and about ten Charmin to Go rolls from Florida (we are prepared and armed now for those outings to places without toilet seats and toilet paper- whew!). Dane told the man the toilet paper was a joke, but he doesn’t think the guy thought it was very funny – we did.

In addition, we have all enjoyed the many different kinds of critters around here. Everyone knows that things are big in Texas, but I bet the insects here would outsize most insects of Texan persuasion. The children have been really anxious to send some pictures of some that we have seen and some that they have collected. We will include some in this mailing and maybe another. Our neighbor’s cat has moved in with us and we all like him a lot. We try to keep him outside, but he takes every opportunity he can to get in one of the beds. We have found him sleeping with Joseph so many times that Dane joked that Joseph likes it when mommy purrs, since Joseph typically sleeps with me.

This is a moth the size of an adult’s hand in the bathroom.

This is an eighty eight butterfly that Abby found on the chacra. Dane also found one with an eighty and Sarah found an eight hundred and one.

This spider was on the wall in our bathroom. I think it is a wolf spider, but it is hard to tell because there are about a hundred baby spiders on her back. Creepy!
This tarantula was on the wall in our kitchen. We have been told they are edible, but I don’t anticipate cooking any – ever.

These two pictures are of a butterfly that Abigail caught in the house the other day. It is the size of an adult’s hand.

Here is a picture of el gato snuggling with Joseph in Joseph’s bed.

Here is another picture of el gato sleeping in Joseph’s bed.

Below are some other pictures we thought that you might enjoy.

This is a picture of David, Abby, Joseph, and Elisabeth in the front yard. The girls were trying to keep David busy after his accident because he got pretty bored sitting in a chair all day.

In this picture, Dane is holding Joseph while he is sleeping.

Smiling baby.

All of the family, except Dane and David who are behind the camera.

Well that is all for now. We hope you enjoy the pictures, and we will update again soon. We hope all is well with all of you.