Rainy Days

We have enjoyed some rainy days this past week. It has slowed things down a bit around here, but we are so thankful to have the plentiful showers and a dry roof over our heads. Our garden plants are especially liking all the water.

We are getting just over a gallon of milk each day from the cow now (we milk once a day in the morning), and what a tremendous blessing it is to have the milk.

The first couple of weeks we weren't getting much milk and Dane could tell that the cow was really holding back. She looked and felt so full, but Dane could never get her to let down. Finally, one day he told the children to let the calf in near the cow while he milked. Well, that did the trick. She let down and that first day we had nearly two gallons of milk! We are so thankful for the fresh milk and look forward to making cheese and other dairy products again.

We have also been blessed with anywhere from nine to thirteen eggs each day! Yeah! Praise the Lord!

Dane has a plan going for the hydroelectric system. The dam and piping is completed and all that is lacking is the turbine, motor, and wiring. He plans, Lord willing, for the turbine to drive a three phase motor that will generate 380 volts to transmit the power some 250 meters to the house. Then at the house, he plans to use a power supply to convert 380 volt - 3 phase to 24 volt DC up to 40 amps. Then he will use a three-stage charge controller to charge a 12 volt battery bank and divert the excess power to heat water.

In the meantime, Dane and Professor Barney plan to install a turbine that was made at the engineering university in Obera for test purposes and if it has good results Dane may pattern his turbine based on the same design. Professor Barney would like to hold an onsite demonstration for his students if it all works out. The turbine is a banky style cross flow turbine with a simple design that is easy to build and has high efficiency.

We have seen some interesting things around the homestead this past week.

Below is a pretty moth that made its way into the house the other morning.


Our guymbae (?sp - I'm sure this spelling isn't anywhere close) plant is fruiting, which is very interesting. The fruit will open and close several times over the next couple of months and in the process will do some very strange looking things.

We have also enjoyed seeing several toucans on the property over the past couple of weeks. They are camera shy and I have failed to get an up close picture. There is one in the following picture in the top of the tree at the center of the picture. You might be able to make it out if you click on the picture to make it bigger.

We hope to get some more planting done this week. It is time to plant squash, beans, and more corn.

Well I better be off to get some house work done. Hope you all have had a great week too. Take care.

Jessica

Plant Acacia Trees...check, Build Dam...check, Got Milk...check

It was a busy week for us around here last week and Dane was able to complete some of the projects that he has been working on.

First off, he got all 3,000 acacia seedlings planted with the help of three of our neighbors, brothers, Roberto, Ricardo, and Lucas. I am sorry to say that we didn't get any pictures of the planted trees, but maybe Dane can do that sometime when he goes over to check on them. The trees will need to be cared for pretty carefully because it seems that the ants, the biggest nuisances of all around here, really like them.

Dane also put together a milking stanchion for us to milk our cow. She is getting used to it and we have really been enjoying the milk. Her calf is only a little over a week old now, so we plan to start separating her from her mother at night, so that we can get a bigger catch in the morning.

This is a picture of the cow in the stanchion being milked.



This is a picture of some of the deliciously creamy milk that we have been getting.



Dane also completed the dam for the hydroelectric project.

These next three pictures show the dam with the gate that he built in the middle. The piping begins in the pool above the gate. We will try to include some better pictures in a future posting.

The piping extends 100 meters from the dam along the creek. The span includes two waterfalls in order to increase the force of the water when it meets the turbine which Dane hopes to get installed next week.

This is a picture of the water coming out at the end of the pipe. A little more work needs to be done to remove the air out of the line so that the water will flow at full potential.

Also this past week we did a little more planting. The children and I planted watermelon, cucumber, canteloupe, and a few more green bean plants. Thankfully, everything that we planted previously is sprouting and doing well with the exception of the bell peppers which haven't made their appearance yet. I also accidently planted some okra in the middle of Dane's first row of corn and the two types of plants are coming in together, I don't know if this is a problem or not, so I am contemplating whether I need to plant some more okra somewhere else.

On another note, Dane was in a minor car accident last night when an oncoming car lost one of its wheels. The wheel hit the 4Runner and caused some damage to the front of the truck and the front wheel on the passenger side. Praise the Lord no one was hurt and Dane was able to change the tire and drive home. He thinks he can repair the truck this next week.

The weather here couldn't be more beautiful. The days and nights have both had comfortable temperatures nearly the whole week. We have enjoyed some rain and are very thankful that the Lord has seen fit to water our newly planted seeds and seedlings.

This morning Dane took this picture of the cows grazing out in the yerba field. You can see clouds forming and rising above the river in the distance - a beautiful sight to behold.

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Babies

It's a Girl!

Thursday morning our gray cow had her calf. She sure is cute. We are really excited to add to our herd and we pray that we will soon have fresh milk. We have been working with the mama cow and it is going to take some time getting her accustomed to milking, but thankfully we have had two successful, but admittingly scary, trial attempts so far.

And Thursday afternoon, we got to see this baby for the first time:

We aren't sure if the baby is a boy or girl, but baby Donaldson number seven is due around April 25th. We couldn't be more excited! Praise the Lord, the baby appears to be healthy.

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