From the garden - BEETS!

Well, I've had my first, teensy-tiny harvest from the new garden. Okay, I'm not counting the fact that I've already cut and used some of the leaf lettuce. But I'm really excited about my first batch of beets!

Maybe you can tell what a true novice I am, by how pleased I've gotten over such a little bit of produce.

Since this is my experimental garden, I'll tell you what I've learned.

I planted the beets on December 5th, using the directions for spacing in the book Square Foot Gardening. I planted two squares of beets, each 1' X 1', with 16 beets in each square. I wondered about having them so close together, as I'm used to seeing beets in Honduras which are about 4" in diameter, and clearly planting so many in such a small space was going to produce smaller beets. The author of the book suggests that intentionally harvesting smaller produce results in tastier and more tender veggies. I decided to go with these directions for this first batch, and make adjustments, as needed, on the next batch.

The book recommends harvesting the beets 8 weeks after planting, when they are about the size of ping-pong balls. Today is 9 weeks from planting. My beets along the edges of the squares were larger than ping-pong balls, but the interior plants have much smaller beets. As you can see in the photo, I only pulled the larger beets, and there were only 5 of those. I'm leaving the others to continue growing. That's not a problem, except that I'll need to plant more beets at one time, if I'm going to have enough full grown beets, all at the same time, for a family meal.

We had extremely little rain during the time these beets were growing. I was watering regularly, but I could tell that the plants perked up after a rain, and they looked happier on overcast days than on sunny days. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to continue to grow beets through the rainy season, but that will be an experiment for later in the year.

The temperatures this year have been warmer than the same time last year, and it has been much sunnier this year. Since I've only lived here on the property one year, I don't know if last year or this year was more typical. So, I guess I'll still be learning for a while.

This small batch of beets I boiled and used to make pickled eggs and beets. Oh, the beet leaves are edible too, but we're not fond of them, so we've been using them for bunny food.

There's . . . something . . . out there . . .

Last night, fairly early (say, maybe 9pm) I heard sounds coming from the woods. The rest of the family was in our other building watching a movie, and none of them heard anything. I had heard these same sounds once before, about a year ago.

At first, it sounded like a pack of small dogs, all yapping at one another. The sounds seemed to call and reply, but also to overlap. Not like a whole bunch of dogs barking frantically, but like dogs in a group, calling back and forth.

This lasted long enough for me to realize that the sounds didn't quite sound like dogs, exactly. My second thought was that perhaps my husband and kids were outside playing, and were making these sounds. I remembered that I'd gone through the same series of thoughts when I heard these calls last year - thinking they were dogs, then thinking they were . . . something else. Something I couldn't identify.

My dogs, who were all in the house when I heard the sounds, went crazy with desire to find the source of the noise, so I opened the door and they shot away in the direction of the sounds - but they were back in a few moments, apparently not having found anything close enough to home for them to chase off.

The family has discussed the possibility of these sounds coming from birds (but at night? - that seems odd), coyotes (which we have around here, but aren't they more likely to howl than to bark?), and monkeys (which we do have locally, on a nearby mountain which is a national park, but we've not ever seen any of them). In the end though, we're left with only the knowledge that there's something out there . . .

Finally!

Several long-awaited events have come to pass in the last few days.

Our container shipment from MD, which arrived in port in Honduras in mid-December, finally got through customs and arrived at our house this past weekend. Hurrah!

The big new batteries, for our solar power system arrived in the shipment. Allen is busy working on a bridge project right now, but as soon as he has a free day - probably this weekend - he's planning to install the new system and we should be back to having enough power for our daily lives, without having to suppliment with the expensive running of the generator! Hurrah!

We just got word this morning that the final, on-paper notification, regarding the dismissal of our tax audit, arrived from the IRS. So, we have officially gotten beyond this tax audit, without having to pay anything additional to the IRS. Hurrah!

This all calls for a celebration, and a big Praise God! - don't you think?

Garden Update - February 1, 2011

There's a lot of activity in our little garden these days. Gus has been working exceptionally hard on the construction of new garden areas. David is great at cleaning up our dirt (shoveling it through a screen to remove rocks) and filling buckets with dirt to carry to the garden. Rachel turns out to be a fine planter. I'm the one who plans, waters and harvests. Boo pitches in where needed, which is a great help to everyone.



This past week, Allen, Rachel and Gus built a small screened shelter for use in the garden. It won't help with crawling or burrowing pests, but we're having quite a time with grasshoppers eating the cabbage plants (though ignoring plants right next to the cabbages), and we're hopeful that the screened area will help with that problem.



Everyone pitched in to sort out the worms from the wonderfully composted dirt they created for us, in big plastic bins behind our kitchen. We collected several buckets of good, rich compost. This was added to certain sections of the garden, where we'll place plants which don't appreciate manure as an addition to the soil. The worms are definitely thriving, and it was a big job to collect the dirt without losing worms in the process. Turns out, however, that our worm population is so high that we won't be missing the few worms that ended up in the garden.



We've added radishes and corn to our list of plants we're growing. Tomatoes and green peppers will be planted once we get a free moment. Everything is still experimental, so I'm keeping records of when each item is planted, how they thrive (or fail), and when we can harvest food from them.

The weather has been good. We actually got some cloudy days and some rainy nights recently, which the plants appreciated. Even in January, with cooler air temperatures, the sun can be challengingly bright and hot for the plants.

If you click on the picture below, you can see the view I get to look at as I work in the garden. I really do appreciate the views we enjoy up here!

A School Construction Project

When we have funding, we help with construction projects at private schools. This past week, Allen traveled to the department of Santa Barbara, to check in on a school we're helping. The round trip took eleven hours. Here are a few pictures of the school.

It's not easy to take a picture of a puppy . . .

Here's the proof, from our recent photo shoot with our new puppy, Bunny:







Turns out, it's just like trying to take a picture of a toddler - when we distracted her with a stick she forgot all about dodging from the camera!

An Unexpected Double Bunny Situation

We recently acquired another puppy. This makes six dogs for us. The new pup is a mutt, mostly lab, with characteristics indicating that there's a good bit of hound dog in her ancestry. She has a thin face, long floppy ears, and her legs and feet appear much too large for her body at this point. When excited she wags her entire body, and she tends to leap while running. She's adorable, although she may grow up to be an odd-looking adult. We mostly bought her for her potential to grow huge (based on the size of her mother).

The pup has a sweet, loving temperament, and has been named "Bunny," because of the ears and the huge legs and feet. We also thought that a huge dog named "Bunny" would be kind of funny.

Last night, Russell and Iris dropped by the house. Russell had some paperwork he needed to handle with Allen, and he said Iris was coming along because she had a surprise for me.

Well, I was certainly surprised when Iris handed me a teensy tiny bunny. A real bunny, this time, not a puppy! A lady on the street was selling the baby. Since we recently lost both of our pet bunnies Iris thought of us, and got it for us.

The baby bunny is so small that we're not certain it's eating solid food. We're waiting to see how it does before we get too attached, but at the same time, the baby has already been named "Thumper."

Oh, I don't have the camera today (Allen took it along with him, on a trip to visit a project site), so I'll have to add pictures of the two "bunnies" a bit later.

There's a poinsettia in the middle of my veggies

This year, I was able to participate in a charming Christmas ritual which I have neglected since living in Honduras - the traditional killing of the poinsettia plant.

Before Christmas, I happened to see a lady in town carrying around about a dozen plants to sell. It was an interesting and healthy-looking collection of flowers, including a geranium, some snap dragons, and one poinsettia plant.

Well, I haven't had a Christmas poinsettia in years and years - which is sort of odd, when you consider that they are native to Central America. In a rush of Christmas spirit, I bought that plant, even though my experience with plants in general, and poinsettias specifically, hasn't been encouraging.

I put the plant in an antique crock on my kitchen counter, and watched it change from a healthy plant to a less healthy plant, to an eyesore. The demise was slow, but steady, accelerating when David, unbeknownst to me, watered the plant with enough water to drown the poor thing.

When all the craziness of Christmas was behind us, I looked at what was left of my plant. All of the green leaves were gone, but two sets of red (are those leaves, or flowers?) were left.

I started putting the plant outside for part of each day, as I knew one reason for its decline was not getting enough light in the kitchen. Gradually the plant showed some will-to-live, and I needed to put it somewhere safe, where it wouldn't get scorched by the very bright sun we had in early January, where I wouldn't just forget about it and finish it off with neglect, where the dogs and cows couldn't get to it, etc. The only location I could come up with was the vegetable garden.

There was a spot in the garden where I had planted some lettuce seeds saved from last year, and nothing ever came up. So, I plunked down the poinsettia there, amongst my other types of lettuce plants.

It is now putting out new leaves! Hurrah! I may have started a new ritual - the resurrection of the Christmas poinsettia! Sounds more like an Easter tradition, but I'll take what I can get. When the plant gets bigger, I'll have to move it to a more appropriate location, as poinsettias can grow to be a large shrub here, and I don't think I'll be wanting a large shrub in amongst my lettuces.

And that's the story of why there's a poinsettia plant in my vegetable garden.

My Garden in Progress

Back in November I finally started my garden, something I've been planning for a couple of years. I actually did a bit of vegetable gardening last year, in 5 gallon buckets. This year I was ready to start on a more permanent garden.

One of the first problems related to setting up a garden was choosing a location. Our property is large, and there's a nice garden spot downhill from our house location, but it was far enough away, and along a steep enough path, that we didn't feel like the garden would be convenient enough if we located it there.

Before we'd purchased the land the trees had been harvested from the flat land at the top, where we've located our buildings. As a result, much of the soil has washed away, and the ground is rocky and not especially fertile.

As you stand on the flat, high part of our property, where the buildings are located, you can barely see the garden. You can see the temporary fencing (to keep the dogs and cows out), but the garden begins just on the other side of a ridge.



Below is what you see as you approach the top of the ridge. The garden is still very much under construction, as you can see.


And here (below) you can see the garden up close. Closest to the gate is a section of garden which is mostly lettuce. There is also garlic, a few very tiny cabbage plants, two snapdragons and a poinsettia. I'll explain about the poinsettia tomorrow. The second section has beets and carrots, and space for additional beets and carrots, to stagger the harvest. The third secion has bush beans and some beleagered pea plants. Unfortunately I've found that the zampopos (leaf cutter ants) really like pea plants. I've been fighting them off, but I'm not sure I'm going to be successful enough to actually harvest any peas.



You can also see, in these photos, the next part of the garden, which is still under construction. Christopher digs down (breaking up and removing lots of rocks in the process), and then he, Bethany, and David fill the section with a mixture of topsoil and dried manure.



We're getting close to our earliest harvests - leaf lettuce, beets, and carrots.

A Tale of Two Construction Projects - here's the second one

As you can see from the photos, this is a larger church than the one I wrote about yesterday. The smaller church from yesterday (in Belen) is the first church building for a congregation which has outgrown it's beginnings as a house church. That church has about 60 people in regular attendance - about half adults and half children.

The church in the photos above is being constructed in the town of Guacutao, and it is the project of a congregation which has outgrown an earlier church building. The congregation of about 250 people currently worships in a church building which seats 250 - so they can't fit any extra people during special events, outreach services, etc, and they need room to grow.

Although the Belen church was being built of adobe blocks, this larger church is being constructed of cinderblocks.

Church construction projects continue to crop up all over Lempira. We've seen a decrease in funds being donated for church construction projects, so we're not able to materially help all of those who ask.

A Tale of Two Church Construction Projects - here's the first one

This week Allen visited two churches, which had asked us for help with their construction projects.

The first project, shown in the following pictures, is located near the town of Belen.

Mixing concrete

Foundations

Some members of the church congregation

There are certain things we look for, before we consider helping a church financially, with their construction project:

First, the land must be owned by the church, not by an individual.

Second, the church must have enough congregational support to get the foundation and walls constructed without our help. Most of the churches in the rural areas of the mountains are constructed from adobe bricks, and this type of construction isn't expensive, but it is labor intensive. By the time the congregation has achieved this much of the construction, they will truly feel that the construction of the church is their project, not something the gringos have given to them. Sadly, when outsiders completely give a church to a congregation, it isn't rare to find that the congregation expects outsiders to pay for ongoing maintenance and other expenses, too. We feel it is important for the church congregation to have full ownership of their building - we just help out some in the process. We've also had instances where, when we've helped finance an early stage of construction, the churches were slow to continue the construction, seemingly waiting for us to do more. By helping with the roof, we guarantee that after we've helped, the church will at least have enough of a structure completed to hold services in.

The church near Belen has fulfilled the first requirement, and they're on their way toward the second. Allen was able to give them some helpful pointers, on ways they can improve the wall construction, during this visit. Once the walls are completed, if we have the funds available, we will purchase supplies needed for the construction of the church roof.

I plan to post about the second church construction project tomorrow.

Things I never saw in the Suburbs

Before moving to Honduras, I lived most of my life in the Maryland suburbs - a rather affluent part of the US. I was thinking of starting a series of blog posts on things I see along the roads where I live now, that I never saw in the suburbs. Here's the first installment, which was the inspiration for the series.



From the Land Cruiser (that's the vehicle's snorkle you see on the left side of the picture) . . . what is that beside the road? Surely it isn't . . .



Yep. It is. Cow carcass.

"If That Cat Could Talk, What Tales He'd Tell . . . "

Here's Smudge, the cat, back where he belongs on David's (unmade) bed.

Smudge is David's best animal friend, and he's been missing for the past month. Being a tom cat, he tends to roam about a bit, get into fights, etc, so for the first few days of his absence we weren't especially concerned.

But weeks passed without any sign of Smudge. Most of the family had (silently) assumed that Smudge had met an untimely end. David didn't make this assumption, and no one wanted to tell him that with the passing of so much time it was unlikely that we'd be seeing Smudge again.

Last night I was up in the middle of the night, killing a mouse, when I heard a commotion on the front porch, then noises on the metal roof. I went outside to see what was going on, and there was Smudge looking down at me! I called to him, and he came right down the ladder that was up against the house, and willingly let me pick him up and carry him into the house.

Smudge was very hungry when he got home, almost choking on the cat food I gave him, because he was trying to eat so fast, but he doesn't appear to have lost weight during his time away from home. He's a very good hunter, so that's not especially surprising. He's got a few nicks and cuts, but he's not really hurt anywhere. So, I do find myself wondering - where has he been for a month? What was he doing? What brought him back now?

Smudge isn't telling. But he's clearly glad to be home again, where he can luxuriate all day on David's comfy and unmade bed. David isn't making the bed, because he doesn't want to disturb Smudge.

Visiting Rodeito Feeding Center

Since our arrival in Lempira in 2005, we've felt compelled to help with the problem of malnutrition in the mountain villages. With food prices climbing, the need for feeding centers has grown significantly. We are now providing food to 74 feeding centers, scattered throughout several departments. Keeping the participants in the program accountable - to make sure that the food gets into the bellies where it is most needed - is a big task, and part of this involves us visiting the centers to see them in operation.

Back in October, when Allen's parents were visiting for Russell's wedding, they traveled with Allen to visit the feeding center in Rodeito, Lempira. Here are some pictures from that visit.

A Hodge Podge

I've been too busy to blog . . . so here are the highlights:

Allen is home from a six week visit to the US. He visited friends, spoke at churches, and loaded the annual shipping container in Maryland. We're glad to have him back!

Another bridge project is underway, so most of this past week Allen and some collection of the children have been out working on that. It's a fairly large bridge, so they'll be working on this one for a while.

We've been baking and decorating mountains of cookies to give away as personal gifts (not as gifts for all the pastors - that would take forever). We're almost done putting together the platters of cookies; I'm hopeful that the last ones will be delivered tomorrow.

Once the cookie baking and gift delivering is finished, we'll start in on the cooking and baking for the big Christmas Eve dinner being held at our house. We'll only have our family, Iris' family, and Rachel's boyfriend, but that's still a pretty big gang of folks to feed. We splurged on a big turkey - an expensive, imported item for us. We're all looking forward to the feast!

My garden is going like gangbusters. It's just a little, semi-experimental garden, since I'm such a novice gardener, but I now have lettuce, beets, carrots, cabbage, bush beans, peas, and garlic growing. The weather this December is much hotter and sunnier than last year, so I'm having to watch all these tender plants pretty closely. It's also the dry season, so I'm doing frequent waterings. So far, it's still fun.

This past week, Allen bought another cow. This one was pregnant. It's a kind of funny story. Allen went to see the cow late this past week. The owner of the cow and Allen dickered on the price, but were unable to come to an agreement. That night, someone set off fireworks right where the cow was and got her all upset, so that she was running all over her little yard in panic. The owner was terrified that something might happen to the cow, or the unborn calf, if he didn't sell her and get her out of the city right away. (At Christmas, firecrackers are pretty much a constant all over the cities of Honduras.) So, the owner called us and agreed to the highest price Allen had previously offered, and then we suddenly owned a very pregnant cow who had to be moved ASAP!

Yesterday morning Allen, Bethany and David drove to town and started walking the cow, very slowly, toward our property. They didn't make it. The cow was done, and wasn't willing to walk another step, when they happened to be at the property of a friend of ours. So the friend agreed to let us keep the cow there, and to keep the cow and calf (once it arrived) until we were ready to move them the rest of the way to our place.

This morning we got word that the cow's water had broken, and later that a local animal midwife had been called in, because the cow was having difficulty delivering her very large calf. But all came out well in the end - we have a new female calf, large and healthy! Pretty neat, huh? The next thing on my agenda is learning how to milk a cow, and starting to make cheese. I'm excited about the possibilities!

The container Allen loaded in Maryland is now in the port here in Honduras. It will be going through customs this week, and soon we should have it here. Please pray with us that we won't have problems as we get the container through customs and unloaded up here in Gracias. Once the contents are unloaded, we'll be busy busy busy putting together the gifts for the pastors and the orphanages.

That about covers the excitement at our house. Merry Christmas everyone!

Did you pray for us today?

I was just wondering, since it seems like someone might have been praying when Russell fell off the roof today, and only sustained a badly sprained ankle.

He was cementing down some clay roof tiles on our team house, when he slipped on some wet metal roofing (that's what's under the clay tiles) and discovered that there was nothing to grab onto, to keep himself from falling. At an estimate, he fell maybe 18 feet.

He drove himself back into Gracias, and then went to the hospital, where they did an X-ray and put on a cast. Apparently the damage is a very bad sprain, not a break, but it did involve some bone damage, and they want him in the cast for the next month.

So, if you pray for us (even if it wasn't today) . . . thanks!

Sorry for the silence

I've had lots on my plate recently - fortunately nothing bad, just stuff that needed to get done, and I've not had much of interest to say here, or time to say it.

I do have an update on the IRS situation: we still haven't received the official notice that we won't be required to pay additional money. So, while this isn't exactly bad news, I don't yet have the "closure" I've been waiting for. You can keep right on praying about this - I certainly am!

I've started gardening, which has taken up some of my time, as well as that of the kids. I'll share some pictures soon . . . right now they'd mostly just be pictures of dirt, so not all that interesting. It's weird to be planting in November and December, but I've noticed that the neighbors have new gardens sprouting now too, so I'm certain that I'm on the right schedule!

So far I've planted lettuce (three varieties), spinach, carrots, beets, and garlic. The kids are preparing the new garden beds ahead of my planting, so I'm putting things into the soil gradually, as each bed is set to go. Soon I expect to put in beans and peas, tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers. Everything is an experiment for me, so I don't have a big overall plan, unless you consider "learn from my mistakes" to be a plan. ;-D

I've also been working on a newsletter, and trying to get lots of housework and schoolwork done before the big container shipment arrives. It's all keeping me busy.

Now, just to add a couple of pictures to this post, I thought I'd show you a couple of interesting bugs we've recently found:




The caterpillar above is about 3 inches long. The pictures don't do it justice - in real life those "branches" growing out of the caterpillar look exactly like a real plant. That's some impressive camouflage. It's pretty hardy, too - Boo keeps bringing it leaves and it's living in a container on the kitchen counter. I'm pretty sure a caterpillar this hardy must be something that will decimate the garden!



The cats were playing with this moth, before Rachel grabbed it for a picture. The red you see on one side is a small wing peaking out from under the larger wing. There's a matching red wing on the other side, but it's tucked up so you can't see much of it. The moth is on a 3 x 5 card, so you can judge the size.