Donaldson Family Homestead

New Blog

2010-03-06T09:17:00.000-03:00

Please join us over at our new blog: www.donaldsonsinkentucky.blogspot.com . It is still under construction, but we hope to have a post up soon!

Hydroelectric Turbine and Highlifter Pump Pictures

2009-10-15T10:02:00.003-03:00

We are still connected this morning and decided to download pictures before we disconnected and packed up the computers.

Here are some pictures of the hydroelectric turbine and highlifter pump in action. In the first pictures, Dane is checking the pressure gauge on the inlet pump.

The turbine is inside the white part below the blue motor which generates 380 volt, 3-phase electricity. The highlifter pump is the long skinny thing with the white hose attached to it on the right.

This picture shows water entering the 1000 liter tank here at the house. It used to take 2-3 days for us to use all the water in the tank for our daily use and the highlifter fills it completely in about 15 hours. With the continuous water being pumped up now, the tank is almost always full.

Final Update

2009-10-14T15:35:00.003-03:00

We have been running on hydroelectric power since last Thursday or Friday. Yipee!! It works great. We can run both computers, the lights, the internet tower and all the internet equipment on it and the equipment here at the house all at the same time and still the batteries are charging. We can only run the clothes agitator intermittently, but more batteries would take care of that. It has been a lot more quiet around here without having to start the motor to charge the batteries. We are very thankful that the Lord allowed Dane to see this project through, and up and running well, before we left! Dane also was able to get the highlifter pump installed and so water is pumping continuously to the house from the creek 300 meters below us. It is so awesome having electricity and water all powered by the running water on the property. No more gasoline expenses for having those things at the house. I do have some pictures of the turbine and pump working, but they will have to wait until a later time.

Time here is getting short and we still have so much to do to get ready to leave. We will be shutting everything down either tonight or tomorrow morning. That means no more phone or email for a while.

Lord willing, I will post again when time allows after we arrive in the states on October 22nd. Hopefully then I can include the turbine and pump pictures.

Please pray for us as we travel to Paraguay, Bolivia, Florida, and then onward to Kentucky.

Have a blessed day,

Jessica

Saying Goodbye to the Animals

2009-10-06T13:57:00.008-03:00

Hector Dos Santos, the man who made the yoke for our oxen, agreed to keep all the cows and goats for Ralph until he can find a caretaker for the farm, so yesterday, we said goodbye to them.

In the morning, Dos Santos came on his horse and took the oxen. Elijah, David, and Abigail accompanied him the two miles to his farm.

Goodbye Broncito and Hierrito.

In the afternoon, Dos Santos and his sons, David and Maxi, Elijah, David, and Abigail returned with Dos Santos's oxen and a cart in which to carry the goats.

They loaded up the goats and tied the remaining cows and little bull behind it. All the children and Dane accompanied the caravan up to the main road to help and to say goodbye.

Goodbye brown kid, white kid, Pintada, Paloma, Teri, and Tito.

Sabbath Day

2009-10-06T13:25:00.007-03:00

On the Sabbath, we took some pictures around the farm.

This is a passion flower vine that the children found.

View from the upper field.

After lunch, we made what will probably be our final trip down to the river. We went on the road that Dane had been making during the drought and that he had hoped to get a bulldozer down. Abigail took some pictures along the way.

The path had grown up some, so Dane and Ralph led the way with their machetes.

At the river. Much to the children's dismay, the water was too cold to swim, but they did get wet up to their waists.

Ralph, cooling his aching knee.

Enjoying the water and the views.

The dogs came down with us too.

Farm Projects

2009-10-06T13:06:00.005-03:00

Dane, Ralph, and Javier have been working to get some projects wrapped up before we leave late next week.

They got all the columns set in concrete for the barn.

The children thought the columns made nice climbing apparatuses. If you look closely, you can see that they are each perched on one.

Orlando Klein, the builder, and his crew came out yesterday to put up the beams. They will return on Friday to put the roof on.

And here is the "heart" of the hydroelectric plant, the turbine, that Dane hopes to have installed this week.

Today it is rainy, but the rain has let up some this afternoon so the guys are down at the spring trying to get the highlifter pump for pumping water up to the house installed.

Lord willing, these projects will be completed before we leave. Check back for an update later this week or next.

Jessica

2009-09-28T11:24:00.010-03:00

It is hard to believe that our time in Argentina will soon be coming to an end and that we will be leaving our home here in less than 3 weeks. What a wonderful and blessed time it has been.

Our plans are coming along, we have been preparing, and we look forward to the upcoming move. Thankfully, John has his U.S. and Argentine passports and is ready to travel.

The weather continues to be cool and rainy with an occasional warm day sprinkled about. The storms have downed our internet for a week on two different occasions which only partly explains the delayed post.

In the last post I said I would post some pictures of the upstairs that Dane had completed before our house guests came from Paraguay. Here is the view from the entry door looking to the boys' room and attic stairs.

This is also looking from the entry area to the doors of the girls room and master bedroom (which was also going to be Dane's office).

Here you can see inside the girls' room.

This and That......

The children are taking a break from their schoolwork right now to help with the moving preparations. Some of their chores include helping with the baby. In the picture below, they made John a stroller from his carseat and the moving dolly.

Some bees have made themselves at home in some boxes Dane has stored in the attic. Yes, those are bees on the boxes and in the air, in the house! The boxes happen to be above the master bedroom so sometimes we can hear them; although, they have not been a nuisance at all up to this point. Dane plans to move the bees to a more appropriate location this week.

The Kiri trees have been in bloom which fills the air around here with a nice perfume and makes the ground underneath them appear to be snow covered from the fallen blooms. It has been fun watching the hummingbirds and bees that are attracted to the blossoms.

Meme (Dane's Mom) made and sent each of the girls a new dress to wear. She also sent some nice denim shirts for the boys that I didn't get a picture of. The children are saving their new outfits for their trip back to the States. Thank you Meme, they're beautiful!

Ralph and Judy Reed (the couple who are buying our farm) were here for a week and were much help around here. They have worked in Mexico as missionaries translating the New Testament into Aztec for the past 20 years. Mr. Reed has just started the publication process for his translation. Judy, a great example of someone who prays without ceasing, has been his assistant along the way.

The Reeds kindly brought with them from the U.S. many needed items for the children like shoes, socks, shoelaces, baby clothes and peanut butter :-)!

After a wonderful week of hard work and sweet fellowship, the Reeds left on the Sabbath to visit Iguazu falls. The children were all teary eyed after they said goodbye. Ralph will return here for another 3 weeks on Tuesday and Judy is headed back to Texas.

Ralph and Dane worked on several projects last week and Judy tirelessly helped around the house and ministered to the children and I.

Dane got our temporary (or maybe permanant) shower completed. He ended up cutting a hole in the wall from the kitchen to the shower area. It turned out very nicely and now taking showers is easier and more private than it has ever been here.

Dane and Ralph used the tractor to level the ground behind the house so that water wouldn't run under the back door during heavy rains. We have already had an opportunity to test it and it works great. No more free floor cleanings at inopportune times :-).

The guys are getting the new barn ready to erect by working on the footings (digging the holes), and perhaps the building guy can start the erection process before we leave.

The biggest project that Dane, Ralph, and Elijah, David, Joseph, and Javier are working on is installing the hydroelectric equipment and electric lines up to the house. The next several pictures show some of that process. Lord willing, the hydroelectric will be up and running before we leave.

Here is one of my little helpers, Miss Elisabeth, helping to make tortillas in the kitchen.

Also, we have been getting and enjoying a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables lately. John has been enjoying them too but in a different way.

And as usual we keep finding interesting critters around here. This is a big earthworm that Joseph found. Anyone want to go fishing?
These two large moths (they are about 8 inches wide as they sit) were attracted to the light in the kitchen.

Abby took a picture of this very interesting butterfly with clear wings. She got it to sit on a fallen Kiri flower for this picture.

The Reeds stayed the night in town before their early bus to Iguazu and so we took some group pictures in their hotel room. We enjoyed their visit tremendously.

Judy Reed taught the girls and Elijah to do some crocheting. These are some of the pot holders, coasters, hot pads, etc. that they have enjoyed making.

Well, I would like to think that I will have another post up before we leave, but if not, I hope to update as soon as possible when we reach the states. Thank you for your patience with me and for all your prayers as we embark on our new adventure. Until next time....

Have a blessed evening,

Jessica

The Past Month's Adventures

2009-08-22T08:51:00.015-03:00

A lot of time has passed since my last post, so this post may be long. I have lots of pictures and exciting things to share.

First of all, Elisabeth, John, and I did make it to Buenos Aires to apply for John's passports last month. It was a fast trip, but very fruitful. We left on a bus on a Sunday evening, arrived in BA the next morning, applied for both a U.S. passport and an Argentine passport, and then returned on a bus that night to arrive back in Misiones on Tuesday morning. Whew!!!! We were tired, but were blessed with John's Argentina passport two and half weeks after we applied for it! Dane just returned this past week from completing the application process for John's U.S. passport, and Lord willing, that should arrive within two weeks. Our littlest guy is almost ready to travel!

We discovered on this trip to Buenos Aires a most amazing thing in this country that I hadn't realized before because I rarely get out. We have known for a long time that the culture here is family oriented and children are looked upon with fondness by most, but I did not know that there was a rule - "Mujeres con bebes tienen prioridad", or in English "Women with babies have priority." Can you imagine what this means? It happened first in McDonald's. Elisabeth and the baby and I were standing in line to use the women's restroom when a McDonald's employee came and got me and informed me of the rule, "Mujeres con bebes tienen prioridad," she said. Imagine my surprise when she ushered me into the bathroom in front of all the other waiting women to use the restroom first! Once in the restroom, there was another line of other waiting women with children, but when they saw me they ushered me in front of them seeing that my baby was the youngest! Ha! What kind of place is this, I thought. It happened again at the Argentina Federal Police where we went to apply for John's passport. We got in line behind about 50 people only to be quickly ushered into the building to a special line for women with babies. What a wonderful concept. I imagine something like this would be so quickly abused somewhere else, but here, I suppose it is a respected cultural thing. Looking back to my trip to Buenos Aires with Abby and Joseph when we applied for his U.S. passport, I now understand why they let us ride the subway for free - they wouldn't allow me to buy a ticket and quickly ushered me through the handicapped entrance to the train because I was toting a baby.

A few days after we returned from Buenos Aires, we had some visitors from Paraguay. Our visitors were strangers to us, but had learned of us through a friend in Texas. They quickly became friends too, and we were so blessed by their visit. They graciously brought their own blankets, delicious homegrown and made foods for all eighteen of us, and their Bibles and hymnals in order to worship and study the Word of God together. They were very forgiving and didn't seem a bit uncomfortable in our modest accomodations. We had two wonderful days of fellowship, food, Bible study, singing, and stories with our guests before they returned to their homes in Paraguay. We basked in the glow of their visit for days after they left. It was such a blessed time for us. They have invited us to come and visit them and we plan to do so in October.

From the top left to right is: Jonathan and Adrianna, Daniel, Matthew, and Irene.
Lower left to right is: Rebecca and Ethel, Esther, and Carol (from Plainview, Texas).

Our neighbors, Horacio and Lucy, over at the Chacra Mariposa, made us a CD of pictures that they had taken when we were there visiting one day and gave it to us as a gift recently. Here are a few pictures from that day. This was just a couple weeks before John was born.

I mentioned in my last post that Dane had finished the floor in the second story. He also got some walls up there too, so that when our guests came we had divided bedroom areas. I still haven't gotten any good pictures of the upstairs yet, but below is one in our new bedroom just after he had finished the floor. We had a bee box wall and curtains for a few nights before Dane was able to begin the real walls.

Here is a picture of Joseph helping me to scramble some eggs. You can see all the additional space that we now have downstairs behind him since we moved the children's beds upstairs. The tape on Joseph's nose was to keep him from picking a scab that was there.

Dane has been working on the outside of the house too. He continues to get it closed in more all the time. He really got motivated to get it closed in quickly recently when vampire bats started attacking our cows at night. Thankfully, that activity has seemed to subside.

Dane has been doing a lot of work on the roads into our farm. Trying to improve the old one and make a new one. The work has been hard and it has been really hard on his tract vehicle and implements. He has had to weld the implement arms and several of the implements. The roads are slowly getting better and better.

Dane has also been working with the bees a lot and has brought home another colony recently. That brings the total to fourteen working colonies. He had a problem with one a little over a week ago and it may have to be exterminated. The colony has grown huge, it is one of the first three that he bought, and it is very aggressive. All the bees here are Africanized and can be very dangerous if a colony becomes overly aggressive. While changing the boxes on this colony the bees began to sting him through his protective gear. Dane set down the box pieces and his smoker and ran down the road to escape them, but they persued. Elisabeth, David, and Joseph were back at the top of the hill in a little shack, not too far from the hives, and Dane began to worry about the bees finding them as the sky was becoming black with angry bees. He went to the window and asked the children if they had been stung and at that moment a bee stung Joseph. The children had to make a run for the truck which by this time was crawling with bees too. Each of them were stung between fifteen to twenty times. Once they were far enough away from the scene, Dane was able to pull over and get the bees that were in the truck out. And since he was about 40 minutes from town, he then drove to the hospital in Obera as a precaution in case one of the children had an adverse reaction. Joseph and David were administered shots to counteract the stings even though they were only showing signs of minor swelling. Elisabeth wasn't swelling at that time, so she was sent here home with Benedryl. We continued to remove stingers from her head that night. The stings never slowed down Dane and the boys, but Elisabeth woke up very swollen and sore the next day and acted quite miserable. By the next day though, she was back to herself. Dane hoped that the temperatures would drop enough so that the bee colony would die due to exposure that night, but they didn't. He returned the next morning and reset their box and he is now thinking of an extermination plan.

Well enough about bees. Here are some pictures of some other interesting insects that we have found around the farm recently.

This one is a newly hatched or emerged (what is the word I'm looking for?) moth. Its wings were still curled and it could not fly.

This is a huge wolf spider that has made its home in our kitchen.

This is a little armored beetle that is marked similarly to a ladybug.

Here is a pretty moth that Abby found on the chicken tractor.

This is a newly hatched walking stick. It was really tiny and hard to get a good picture of.

We just recently had five new chicks hatch too. The children love to watch the chicks run around with their mother.

Here is Elijah testing out Sarah's bicycle with a "spare". An old wheel from a baby stroller. It didn't work well, but it sure was funny to watch him try and ride over the bumps.

Homeschooling is wonderful. These pictures show that even the baby gets involved in school time.

Lastly, we bought our plane tickets and after a trip to visit our new friends in Paraguay in late October, we will be flying to Miami. It will be a sad day when we leave here, but we look forward to our next step in the journey the the Lord is leading us on.

Well, I hope I haven't left too much out about our past month. We hope that all is well with you and yours.

Have a blessed evening,

Jessica

Argentina Homestead Update

2009-07-18T16:47:00.000-03:00

There is lots going on on the Donaldson Family Homestead these days.

I forgot to mention a couple of posts ago that Dane sold all of our honey harvest on a trip to town one day. Everyone he mentioned that he had honey to, asked him to sell them as much as he could. So the honey went, and people are still asking for more. That was a while ago, and we just got a text message the other day, asking if we had any honey for sale from a business in town.

After Dane's successful sale, he set about buying several more colonies. We now have 13 thriving colonies, which, Lord willing, would be a start to producing a nice middle class income here.

Dane and Elijah have spent considerable time caring for and feeding the new bees. Needless to say, the bees have been busy, and despite the winter temperatures, Dane is expecting to start harvesting honey in September.

Here is a picture of several new bee boxes that Dane has painted for the new colonies.

Here is Elijah with a bee smoker as he and Dane were on their way from one group of hives to another.

After Dane's tractor accident, he had some repairs to make on it. Within a couple of days of getting the tractor going again, it blew a head gasket, so he had to take it apart and replace it. He also had the head machined and a valve job done on it.

Dane finished the second story floor this past week and moved the children's beds upstairs. We now have a lot more room upstairs and down. 880 square feet has never felt so roomy! I would have added pictures of the upstairs, but our computer is acting up and we can't download right now - hopefully we can include some next time.

Dane has also been cleaning up the farm and getting it ready to sell. We believe that we have a buyer, a good friend and brother, so we couldn't be more thankful.

The children and I have taken some time off from our schoolwork in order to get ready for our upcoming move. When we get a few more things packed up, we will hit the books again for a few more weeks and then take a break again in October, when we plan to fly back to the U.S.

To continue, the Lord has blessed us with a regular supply of rain these days, and we have had cooler temperatures too.

Diapers drying over the stove

Little John enjoying the buntings and blankets that Meme made

Elijah had five stitches put into his lip at the hospital in town after his sister accidently catapulted a log into his face. In addition to the lip injury, he had several cuts in his mouth, bruised gums, a scraped cheek, and a black eye. As is his nature though, he was more concerned about his sister feeling badly than he was about his injuries. Praise the Lord, he is healing nicely.

Elisabeth, John, and I are traveling to Buenos Aires tomorrow evening, Lord willing, in order to apply for John's United States and Argentina passports on Monday. Dane will have to go soon after in order to finish the process, but hopefully we will have John's passports in the near future. Like Joseph's, we made his passport photos here at the house. He did very well as I took about 50 some pictures of him. We did get several that would make fine passport photos. The following photo won't work because of the wrinkles in the background, but it was a good picture of our newest little guy, so I thought I would share it. Who do you think he looks like? Maybe it's the hair, but I think he looks a little like his grandfather :).

The children never cease to find interesting things around the farm.

In this picture, Abby caught a bird that had gotten trapped in our shade cloth covered garden.

Abby found this strange flower growing on a vine, and Elijah climbed a tree to pick it for her.

And Elisabeth found this butterfly. It looks very much like a monarch. I guess that would be a question for our neighbors over at the Chacra Mariposa (Butterfly Farm).

Jessica

4,800 miles as the crow flies

2009-07-18T13:20:00.007-03:00

Our current project is trying to figure out how the get from here to there:

Here is a picture of where the farm is in Kentucky. (you should be able to click on these pictures to see them bigger)

Here is a picture of the local towns around the farm.

Here is the outline of the farm. It is mostly forested.

Kentucky scenes

2009-07-17T13:28:00.015-03:00

Well, we are moving ahead trying to prepare for the big move.
We have some more pictures from the homestead in Kentucky and we thought we would share them:

Here is the entrance to the farm looking from the county road.

From the front 'yard' looking at the pond. The pond is 15 feet deep.

This is the Allen family cemetary near the entrance to the farm. The farm is on Allen road.

One of the chicken coops. The chicken house is pretty fancy!

Here is the garden, MMMM veggies.

This is the inside of the phone booth. There is no phone inside the house.

Berries ready for auction. We are so excited about the berry farming!

Here is the entrance to the farm looking from the 2nd story deck of the house.

On the left is the chrysanthymums plot, then the grapes (table and wine grapes), then berries (blackberries and raspberries). The strawberries have been planted in another location this year, they rotate the strawberries.

More Berries!

More Grapes! They are 3 years old this year so there should start to be some fruit soon.

Inside the barn.

From the deck, the furnace house and pasture.

Here is the living area as seen from the kitchen.

A view of the upstairs. We don't really have a good idea about how things are laid out but with all the room, we hope that we can be very hospitable.

Donaldsons In Kentucky!

2009-07-01T19:53:00.003-03:00

Well, we have some big news! The Donaldsons in Argentina are soon to be, Lord willing, the Donaldsons in Kentucky!

The Lord has opened the door for us to move and take over an Amish farm in Kentucky, and we couldn't be more excited and humbled to have this opportunity. We are making preparations and hope to be in the U.S. by the end of October.

Here are a few pictures of the farm.

The Barn

The Gardens

House Front (taken from barn)

Right now I don't know what else to say, as we are just in awe at the way the Lord has worked this whole thing out.

We will keep you posted along the way as we make our transition.

Have a blessed evening,

Jessica

2009-05-21T20:48:00.018-03:00

It has been a while since I posted. We have been busy as you can imagine.

John is growing, growing, growing. Getting fatter by the day! Look at that double chin.

He is sleeping well in the night and loves all the attention that he gets during the day.

Here he is with his daddy.

And I had to include one picture where he was awake. I was trying to get a picture of his great big smile, but the camera batteries died as soon as I turned it on. Maybe next time.

Meme, Dane's mother, made and then mailed to us four beautiful blankets for John, three of which have matching buntings and hats. John has been so cozy in them when the temperatures have dropped, and everyone who has seen them has been quite impressed with them. I think Sue "Meme" could make a successful business out of sewing, she really is a very talented seamstress.

This picture is to give a better perspective of what the buntings look like.

The children started their school year the last week in April. Everyone has settled into the new routine and is doing very well. Here are all the scholars at work.

We finally received a couple days of rain! We are so thankful for this provision. The creek and spring are full and we are again doing our laundry out here on the farm. Praise the Lord!

With the drought, our little spring really slowed down. We got to where we were only getting about 100 liters of water a day out of it and most of that was going to the cows. So Dane started concentrating most of his efforts on making a new road into our property so that we could get a bull dozer out here to help make a road to the river before the spring slowed down any more than that.

Dane, some helpers, and Elijah, and David spent a few weeks cleaning up the limit and then Dane hired a guy with a bull dozer to come down it and move some big rocks and clean it up even more. Well the bull dozer was too small to accomplish the task, so that work didn't continue.

Despite this setback, Dane was able to obtain permission from one of the other neighbors to use and improve an old cart trail on his property as a road into our place. Dane then shifted his efforts to this road and it is now nearly completed! Though it still needs more work, we drove in and out of it for the first time yesterday, and what an improvement over our existing boulder road that can only be passed with a four by four vehicle.

One day during the cleanup of the steepest part of the new road, Dane turned over the tractor and was squished between the tractor and a large tree. He had some bruising under his arms and around his chest and had some road rash on his back, but thankfully he didn't have any broken bones and didn't miss a day of work!

While Dane and the boys were working along the limit, they found this strange fruit. The locals call it oveña (pronounced oveinya). It tastes like a cross between an apple and a pecan nut. I have made a few coffee cakes and sprinkled the fruit on top and they were very tasty.

We finally got a new 12volt freezer that Dane ordered from another province. It worked great for about three days and then stopped producing ice, so Dane had to take it to town to be repaired. Thankfully the freezer is under warranty. In the meantime, we are storing our milk and yogurt in a tank that Dane bought to haul water from town as needed during the drought. When it began to look like rain, Dane hurriedly installed a rain gutter on our roof and put the tank under it to catch the water. With the cool nights, the rain water stays relatively cool and helps to perserve the dairy products a little longer.

A couple of our hens hatched some chicks and another is sitting, so the chicken flock is growing.

One of the advantages of getting up early in the morning is getting to see the sunrise everyday. Dane got a picture of this beautiful sunrise on a recent cloudy morning.

It is time for enjoying winter squash. This is a huge one that one of our neighbors gave to us. It took us a week to eat the whole thing. Another neighbor told Dane to come get squash anytime because he had more stored than he knew what to do with. Our winter squash didn't do so well, so we are very thankful that our neighbors are willing to share their bounty.

Also its mandarine orange season now. Our trees are full despite the fact that the trees prematurely dropped a lot of their oranges during the drought. We are really enjoying the fruit.

And if this picture of a tarantula on the toe of Dane's boot doesn't make you want to check the inside of your shoes before you slide your foot in, I don't know what would!

Well I hope this catches you all up on what we have been doing. I will try not to delay the next post so much.

Until next time,

Jessica

2009-04-26T10:20:00.012-03:00

Passover 2009 - Preparing to Eat

The past couple of weeks have been really exciting around here with a new baby in the house. John is growing well and is a sweet baby. All the children want to take care of him, so I've had lots of help. Even Joseph is very gentle with him and loves to put his finger in John's hand.

Taking care of John wore Elisabeth out this night, but I don't think he minded a bit. He just slept contentedly beside her until we took him to bed.

Sarah rocking baby John.

Abby rocking baby John. Look how fat his tummy is getting already!

And two days after John was born, our red cow finally had her calf - a little bull. He is really cute and much smaller than our other calf was when she was born.

This is a picture of a bee panel that Dane took the last time he went up to check our bees. This is from one of the new colonies that we purchased recently. They seem to be doing well despite the move and change of boxes. Dane is currently trying to design a label for our honey and he has incorporated this picture into the background of the design.

Argentina has been experiencing a severe drought. The worst in fifty years. So far, it has lasted for a little over a year and the whole country is struggling because of it. Thousands of livestock animals have died and crops are suffering. Many of our neighbors have seen their springs dry up. The Lord has been very merciful to us in that our spring is still flowing, although slowly. We are very thankful for the Lord's providence. In the event that the spring stops, Dane plans to get water from the river, so he has started clearing a path to make a road down to it. Elijah and David have been working with him and found some great vines for swinging on in the jungle. Yesterday they took us down to see them and all the children took turns swinging on the vines and climbing the giant trees.

Here are another couple of interesting critters we have found lately....

This is a caterpiller that Sarah found that a parasitic wasp had laid her eggs on. The white things on the back of the caterpiller are the eggs.

And here is a little frog that decided to make its home in one of Dane's tool bags.

Well that is all for now. I hope to make the children's school schedule this afternoon so that we can get back to the books this week.

Have a blessed day,

Jessica

He Has a Name

2009-04-14T14:29:00.003-03:00

Introducing John Mark Donaldson:

Little Donaldson #7

2009-04-10T17:10:00.009-03:00

We were blessed with a son Wednesday at 1:05 am. His birth weight was 3.5 kilos (7 lbs, 11 ozs), and his length was 52 cm (20 inches).

Dane is prayerfully considering a name for him, so we will have to update on that later.

Here he is - Baby Donaldson #7:

Here is a picture of the children waiting outside the clinic at the truck. They each got to come in one by one to meet their new baby brother.

The baby and I were allowed to leave the clinic Wednesday after lunch. We returned home and Dane and the girls prepared our Passover meal. What a wonderful day, and a wonderful Passover, Praise the Lord!

Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers.

Have a blessed Feast week,

Jessica

Honey and Planting

2009-03-29T11:36:00.009-03:00

We packaged up some of our most recent honey harvest to sell. Now we just need to come up with a label. Below are some pictures of it. Mmmmm, delicious!

And, yesterday we started planting some seeds for our fall and winter garden. So far, we have planted cabbage, cauliflower, and spinach. This week we hope to get some carrots, lettuce, and broccoli planted too.

In the pictures below, Sarah, Elisabeth, Joseph, and Abby are preparing the dirt and manure mix in the plastic tubing that we cut into little pots to start the seeds.

Lastly, Dane got this picture of a ray of sunlight shining through the clouds. Isn't it pretty?

2009-03-27T16:33:00.003-03:00

Evening sunset, or "moonrise" on the Donaldson Homestead....

Well summer is officially over here in the southern hemisphere and fall has begun. In this area, that doesn't mean much this early in the season; however, we did have a week with some cooler temperatures. Two weeks ago, the days cooled down to the lower 80's and the nights to the upper 50's and lower 60's. This lasted for a week and then the temperatures returned to upper 80 degree highs and upper 60 degree lows.

During the cold spell, the children thought it was really cold, so they all got to test out their new winter coats that their Grandpa John and Grandma Fran sent money for. Here is a picture of Joseph and David one early and "cold" morning. :)

Dane completed a new and improved chicken tractor for our laying hens. The hens didn't take long to make themselves at home.

We would like to expand our flock soon in order to have eggs and meat to sell, so Dane is currently designing a chicken tractor for meat birds and a brooder for chicks as well.

Dane's right hand man, Elijah, has been a big help lately. In the following picture, he is painting bee boxes.

Can you find Elijah in this picture? If you can spot the red shirt in the middle of the picture, that's him. Here he was harvesting bamboo for Dane's chicken tractor projects.

Joseph has been busy finding interesting things lately. In the picture below, he found a brightly colored flowering weed.

This is a picture of a beetle that he found and carried around on a stick for about an hour one afternoon.

And one night in the garden, Abby found this praying mantis.

Lastly, I had another doctor's appointment on Wednesday. The baby has dropped and the doctor doesn't believe that my pregnancy will continue until the 25th of April, so possibly my dates have been off, but we will see. No doubt we are ready to welcome our new little one, but all in the Lord's good time. We will update on any new developments as they occur.

Have a blessed day,

Jessica

Training Oxen

2009-03-26T16:36:00.000-03:00

Dane began training our young bulls to carry the yoke on the 11th. He has continued working with them almost daily for an hour or more each day, and they are beginning to make some real progress.

This first picture shows the bulls when Dane first put the yoke on them. They weren't too happy about it either.

Here they look as if they are pouting. They certainly weren't sure what to think about this new contraption on their heads.

Teri, our calf, has been pretty interested in all the training too.

Here in the next two pictures, the whole gang encouraged the bulls to stand side by side.

Here they are getting a little rewarding from Dane for their cooperation.

Progress seemed to be interrupted for a couple days when the bulls refused to do as they were told; however, Dane made some modifications to their yoke, and this quickly corrected the problem. Each day, the bulls do better and better. They are beginning to understand their commands and Dane has taken them off the property and up to practice on the main road.

We will keep the bulls' progress updated and hopefully will be able to include some video of the training sometime as well.

Till next time,

Jessica

Long Time

2009-03-08T16:46:00.018-02:00

Well I guess it has been nearly a month since I posted last. How the time does fly!

Things are moving right along here on the homestead. We have been busy doing this and that. Dane finished the fencing for the new pasture. Now the cows can wander around and let themselves into the other pasture for water at the spring whenever they want - it makes a lot less work not having to move them around all the time. We are still awaiting the birth of the red cow's calf. We were told when we bought her that she would calf in February, but here it is March and still no calf. She does look heavily pregnant though, so we patiently continue to wait. I can't wait to have the additional milk for making more yogurt, and hopefully we will have enough extra for making cheese too.

It looks as if we are going into the bee business as a joint venture with our friend, Mr. Reed, who hopes to move to this area from Mexico sometime in the not so far future. Dane purchased five new bee colonies from a local bee man and the materials for making several more boxes. He has gotten all the new boxes assembled, painted, and the new bees moved from the bee man's boxes into the new boxes. This brings our bee colony total to eight; however, when the bee man, Mr. Nevendorf, visited he thought that our farm could support thirty colonies, so we hope to add more soon. Also, Dane harvested the honey from our original three hives that he harvested about four months ago, and came home with eight more gallons of honey. Believe it or not, we finished the first harvest, which had been about twelve and half gallons last week. I did this by replacing all of our sugar consumption with honey. I know that sounds like a lot of sweets, but when you make everything from scratch and don't buy anything sweet, it isn't so difficult to do.

This is a picture of some of the new boxes that Dane assembled before he got them painted.

Dane has also been working on a new chicken tractor. I don't have a picture of it yet, but it is going to be a much improved model over that the last version. We are anxious for its completion.

Here is a picture of Dane trimming the pine tree in front of our house. He put his tree saw on a piece of bamboo in order to reach the branches. With his super long tree trimmer, he has been able to trim all the pine trees close to the house.

Sarah and I went to Buenos Aires for a two day trip the last week in February to complete some paper work for Joseph at the Embassy. We also got to visit the zoo, eat at McDonald's and Burger King, and do some shopping. It was a fast and busy trip, but we were able to purchase new winter coats for all the children and I, some socks and underwear, new belts for the boys, sweats for all, and work t-shirts for Dane and the boys. It was fun, but we sure were glad to get back home!

Well the children and I have been busy working in the garden trying to hoe down all the waist high weeds that took over in many places. We hope to finish that this week and then start planting our winter garden. The following week, we want to harvest all the corn and black beans from the field.

And speaking of black beans, we have been picking them for several weeks now, and compared to the store bought dehydrated beans, they are much more appealing to the eye and even more delicious. Black beans are a staple in our diet, so we are very pleased at the results we have had with them. Below is a picture of some that we had just finished shelling.

The children are learning so much and become bigger helpers all the time. Here are some pictures of a couple of our helpers. The first one is of Abby and David (David is hidden behind Abby) scrubbing laundry, and the second picture is of Sarah making tortillas.

I ordered the childrens' new text books last week, so we hope to get started on our new school year within a month. We have enjoyed our break from our studies, but everyone is getting anxious to hit the books again soon. After spending a few weeks to finish up some things from last year, Abby will begin the seventh grade, Sarah the sixth grade (Sarah completed her curriculum last year, so she gets to jump right into grade 6), Elijah the fourth grade, Elisabeth will complete first grade and begin second grade, and David will start Kindergarten.

On another note, I had a doctor's appointment and sonogram last Wednesday. Praise the Lord, the baby looks healthy! The doctor estimated that he/she weighs about two kilos (4. 4 pounds) already, so it looks as if this baby may be a good size seeing as he/she still has a little over six weeks to grow.

Pretty things around the farm......

Abby planted a few unknown seeds that she had collected from our neighbor's farm a year ago and these beautiful plants and flowers grew. Can anyone identify them for us?

Also, Dane found this really cute and hairy caterpillar close to the creek. He brought him up to the house for us to see him, but when he was touched his hair came out really easily, so in the picture he has about a third less the amount of hair that he had originally. He was still really cute though.

And lastly, a heads up for those of you who are preparing for an economic crisis by storing food. Rotate your food stock on a regular basis. Dane came across this MRE that he had in his camping/hunting gear up in the attic and since it is probably more than twelve years old, we opened it to see what was inside.

Mmmmm..... don't those M&M's, or I mean powdered somethings, in the little green bowl look good? Apparently M&M's will turn into dust all on their own. The chickens wouldn't even touch them!

And the cute little bottles of black, not red, Tabasco sauce?

And just so you know, given enough time, cheese juice will dissolve it's own packaging and just about anything it comes in contact with.

Needless to say, we didn't feel that anything was edible, except the chewing gum, but you can't survive on that.

Have a blessed day,

Jessica

Pictures From Our Visit With the News

2009-02-08T15:15:00.007-02:00

The News were so kind as to send us some pictures that they had taken during their visit here. We thought that you might enjoy them. The dates printed on the pictures are not correct. The pictures were actually taken in early December.

Mr. New, Elijah, Joseph, and Dane

David testing some overripe cucumbers to see if they are bitter while Abby and Elisabeth look on.

Sarah, Elijah, Abby, and Joseph :) singing hymns.

Dane and I enjoying some ice cream in Obera.

Our family at the bus station in Obera.

Snake and Other Happenings

2009-02-08T14:40:00.023-02:00

This morning I came down the stairs to find a snake in the kitchen! It was another Jarara, a venomous snake. Praise the Lord we slept in for a while until it was light outside so that the house was lit enough to see it! Anyways, Dane quickly came down and removed its head with a machete. After breakfast he skinned it in order to tan the skin.

Now on to other things that have been going on around the farm.......

The children began milking the cow by themselves several weeks ago. It is so funny to watch them because they all milk her together at the same time - each of them milking out a teet. They have been doing a great job at it too.

Dane has been fencing in our new pasture. Last week he got all three of the hot wires strung and our front gate to the property built and installed. Today, he began stringing the other three ground wires.

The fencing has been hard work - especially for the littlest of our carpenters.

After a hard mornings work, Joseph fell asleep in the grass under a tree.

Our tomatoes are starting to ripen. Here are the tomatoes that Abby and Sarah picked for our lunch today.

We enjoyed some nice rainy days. And the girls and I got some sewing done. In the picture below, Abby, Elisabeth, and Sarah are making some hand towels out of some toweling material that Mrs. New bought for them while she was here on her visit.

Last week, most of us were afflicted with a stomach ailment, but thankfully it passed quickly.

Yesterday, Dane made some bamboo fishing poles for the children and we went down to the river to fish and swim for a while. I didn't get a picture of the poles or the fishing, but I will try to include one the next time we head back down there. The children didn't catch anything, but had a lot of bites and lost all there bait to the hungry fish (grasshoppers, worms, and bad cheese that they rounded up from around the house). Dane decided that they probably need smaller hooks next time they fish.

Creeping things......

This is a picture of a wolf spider, the most common house spiders that we have around here, that Abby caught in our kitchen sink one morning.

And what is this? Abby found this strange looking insect last night.

Well, I will leave you with these before and after pictures of the entrance to our property.

The first picture was taken two years ago and the second was taken today. In the second picture, you can see our new front gate. What a difference in scenery, ehh?

Next to our new gate, Dane hung a sign that says "Donaldson Family" that our friend and escribana, Natalia, made for us.

Fence Posts and Other Things

2009-01-26T15:13:00.018-02:00

The week before last, Dane got all the logs drug up here from the forest, and since he has been cutting fence posts and putting them along the new fence line.

He has learned to make pretty straight cuts with the chainsaw.

After cutting three or four logs, he had most of the posts he needed, so we have a lot more wood left for other things. You can see some of the cut posts along the chicken yard fence line.

Here is a picture of the posts that he has put in for the front gate.

We enjoyed a walk to the neighbor's property to pick pears this past Sabbath morning.

On the way there, we saw this bamboo shoot (Elijah is standing in front of it) that was tiny two weeks ago, but as you can see the bamboo grows very quickly around here.

After we picked pears, we went to check the banana plants to see if the bananas were ripe yet, but they are still too small.

This pretty plant was growing near the bananas.

And this is the view from the banana plants. You can see our house off in the distance.

And on our way back to the house, we found a wild squash vine and picked two nice sized squash and have enjoyed eating them the past couple of days. We love finding wild things to eat around here. We are so thankful that even when some of our crops are struggling, the Lord has blessed us with other fruit of the land.

Yesterday afternoon, we went down to the river to swim and our neighbor, Javier was there fishing. After swimming for a while, he, Dane, and David decided to climb the cliff that separates that particular part of the river from the rest of our property, and they made a very interesting discovery. They found one of our missing goats, or at least her skull. The one that escaped fifteen minutes after Dane got her home from the man he had bought her from. She had made herself at home in a cleft of the cliff and apparently the strap that Dane had wrapped around her horns had gotten stuck on a spine and she had gotten tangled up around some other trees. It appears that she lived there comfortably for a while before becoming tangled. Though we are sad that we lost her, we are glad to know what became of her. Maybe someday we will discover what happened to the mother and her baby that escaped a few weeks later.

Lastly, here is a picture of a strange little bug that Dane found the other day. It was very brightly colored, orange and blue, and ran around with its tail curled up in the air in a defensive mode like a scorpion.

Logging

2009-01-17T09:12:00.015-02:00

The past few weeks Dane has been logging in the jungle close to the river. He found several dead trees there that he is harvesting to make fence posts. The work has been a bit treacherous since the trees overlooked an approximate eight foot drop off onto a twenty foot ledge that overlooked another sixty foot drop off (does that make sense?).

First he macheted a path through the jungle so that he could get the track vehicle down there to haul up the trees. This path clearing took nearly a full two weeks.

Thank the Lord Dane had his trusty crew, Elijah and David, along to help with the task.

After much work, the track vehicle made its way down the new path.

One of the trees was a bit tricky to cut down. Dane had a plan to cut it so that it wouldn't fall down the cliff; however, when the tree started to shift as he was cutting, the chainsaw got stuck. He was able to get the chainsaw out minus the chain. Afterward, he put a used chain on the chainsaw and finally got the tree cut down (and no, it didn't slide down the cliff), but the one mishap ended up taking an entire day.

A couple of the trees that Dane was harvesting were on the ledge, eight feet below the tractor, and the one tree above it that had been troublesome to cut down was huge, so hauling the trees up and around the path Dane had cleared took a lot of trial and error too. Unfortunately, the pictures do not give a clear picture of the terrain - the drop off and angles cannot be made out.

Dane used the track vehicle, chains, a hoist, and a rachet and straps to get the trees up onto the path.

Since then, Dane has been hauling the trees up log by log and dusty log rider (child) by dusty log rider (child).

This is a picture of about half of the logs that he has gotten up to the house so far.

Hauling up the logs will take at least another day or two, and then Dane hopes to start cutting fence posts for a new five acre pasture for the cows. The plan is that our new fence line will also enclose the area around the house and allow us to put a gate in at the property's entrance.

On another note, I forgot to mention in my last post that Dane had completed half of the second story floor in the house, so now he and I have a sort of loft bedroom. In the picture, you can see the beginnings of a wall that he put up that will separate this part of the second story into two rooms.

For now, the children are still sleeping downstairs because it is too dangerous for them upstairs until more walls are built. However, the absence of our bed downstairs gives us all a lot more room.

Other things that are going on around the farm......

The corn in the field close to the house is past the edible stage now, so the rest will be allowed to dry for the animals. But the corn field down the way, is flowering, so we hope to be eating corn again soon. The black beans are growing well and right now look and taste like green beans (which explains why our neighbors, that had never eaten green beans, want to peel the green beans that we give them in order to eat the seeds). The watermelons, cantaloupe, and tomatoes are ripening and thankfully we got to enjoy our firstfruits of those this past week.

We have also had what looks like an end to the drought! It has rained nearly every day for the past week. Praise the Lord! The springs are replenishing, which means now we don't have to pump as much water up from the lower spring to the cows.

Well that's all that I have for this post.

Have a blessed Sabbath day,

Jessica

The Past Month

2008-12-17T17:26:00.020-02:00

It has been a long time since I posted and lots of things have been going on around the Donaldson homestead. I will try to give you a quick recap of the past month.

First of all, we said goodbye to a dear friend and brother, Jim Hartman.

Dane spent a wonderful two weeks with Jim in Pennsylvania before the Lord took him home and we are so thankful that they had that time together. The Lord's providence in the whole trip was amazingly clear - what a blessed gift.

During Dane's absence, the Lord was very gracious to the children and I. We had no major catastrophes and farm life went on. The few trials that we faced were great learning experiences for us all.

While Dane was in Pennsylvania, he got to experience the snow again. He took this picture of it for us. Here in the southern hemisphere it is the beginning of summer, and while he was gone we were having some of the hottest days we've had all year.

Dane was also so kind to take some pictures of the food that he ate while he was there. Our diet here, although very good, is much different than what it used to be. We do miss things like jalapenos, peanut butter, pepperoni, cheddar cheese, etc.

Mmmmmm.........Mexican food!

Mmmmm...... Pepperoni Pizza!

Dane brought us home a bag of corn chips (which exploded on the airplane from the pressure, but we ate them anyway :) ) , a jar of salsa, and some cheddar cheese. They were very happily enjoyed by us all.

And speaking of food - Since the Bible speaks of their cleanliness as a food source, the children and I experimented with eating grasshoppers while Dane was gone. The grasshoppers didn't taste bad, in fact Joseph loved them, but it is hard to get past the idea that you're eating a bug, so we haven't prepared any since. Maybe we will work up the nerve again soon - I'll let you know.

Since Dane's return flight stopped for a three hour layover in Houston, his mother Sue and stepfather, Leonard made the drive from Waco to spend a little time with him. Although short, it was a very nice visit for them all. Meme, as the children call their grandmother, sent us all some clothes, as did Jim's wife, Pamela. Thank you!

The Lord blessed us with another special treat as Dane's return flight conveniently coincided with the visit of our friends, Mr. and Mrs. New from Texas. They met up in Houston and got to travel together all the way to Misiones. We enjoyed a great time of fellowship while they were here and were blessed by their generosity and kindness. They brought Dane some parts that he had ordered for his hydroelectric turbine and some much desired reading material. They were so kind to help us out around the homestead and to lend us some helpful advise too.

Here is a picture of Mrs. New, or "Ni", as she let the children call her, reading to the children. They loved it!

And here, is Mr. New, or "Lolo" as the children affectionately think of him, taking a break from his marathon of helping Dane with some of his projects teaching Joseph to ride the calf.

After five days, we said goodbye to our friends. What fun it was to have them here, and we hope to welcome them back again soon.

All sorts of other exciting things have been going on since Dane returned home. Two of the children have had some pretty bad splinters. Joseph had one that was completely embedded in the fleshy part of his palm below his thumb. It took a local anesthetic and a razor blade at the local hospital to reveal a large orange tree spine in his little hand. And below is the huge splinter (or "kindling") that Dane pulled out of Elisabeth's wrist. Ouch!

One of our dogs was bit by a snake and she has been making a slow recovery. We have found two different kinds of venemous snakes right here at the house in the past week and a half.

One day, while we were working outside, Elisabeth discovered this snake right inside our back door. As she ran to get her father, the snake made its way behind the sink in the kitchen. Dane got it with the snake catcher that he made out of a piece of hose and a rope and on his next trip to town, he took it by the snake guy who identified it as a Yarara (pronounced Jadada), a highly venomous snake in these parts.

And remember this snake that Dane got back in July. It turns out that it is venemous too. We had been told this previously by one of our neighbors who saw the picture of Dane holding it then and then the snake man confirmed it. He found another one just like it - or maybe the same one - living in the big Ford truck under the carport. We don't know which one of the snakes bit the dog, but we are now convinced after what the dog has gone through (I will spare you the details) that dog's are quite resilient animals.

We still have so much to learn about farming here. Tending to the soil is an ongoing need as we are learning the hard way when it comes to many of our garden plants. The green beans did great, as did the lettuce and swiss chard but now seem to be suffering from some type of deficiency, so we are trying to rectify that problem. The tomato plants are growing in abundance, but have slow developing fruit, another sign of nutrient deficiency, so we are working to rectify that as well. I think that we are learning a lesson in the dangers of cross pollination when it comes to melons and squash, as those plants are thriving, but have little fruit. We have found that corn, onions, cucumbers, cabbage, black beans, parsley, and leeks do great here with little attention at all. Praise the Lord, we have more of these things than we know what to do with, a particular blessing since we have been eating a vegetarian diet since the proprane refrigerator stopped functioning properly. We have also been picking pears by five gallon buckets full off our neighbor's property for a couple of weeks now. Yum! We certainly have come a long way from last year's gardening venture and are thankful with what the Lord has seen fit to provide us and pray the lessons we are learning now will pay off in the year's to come.

Here is some of the corn that the children harvested yesterday and fruit from the Philodendron Selloum plants that grow right outside of our house.

As you can see, we sure are enjoying the corn.

Here are some pictures of other interesting things that we have found around the farm:

Abby found a twig outside that had what looked like a shell attached to it, so she put it in our pen cup. Well two days ago, we discovered what the shell like thing was - an egg sack for praying mantises. We had no idea they were so small when they first hatched. Interestingly, they let themselves down to the floor on strings of spiderlike silk.

Here is a pretty moth that Abby caught in the house the other day.

And one of the children found this interesting looking little bug on the firewood pile. It looks kind of like a bug version of the long horn cow.

And lastly, Dane was marking off where he wanted to make a new road on our property using Google earth and made a silly observation. He said, "I was looking at the river Bonito that runs next to our property and I thought hey, that kind of looks like the gulf. Anyways, it puts our house a little too close to Oklahoma but oh well. We would own everything from Wichita falls to Texarkana, and down to Houston and over past San Antonio."

Have a blessed day,

Jessica

Until We Meet Again Good Brother

2008-12-14T08:59:00.001-02:00

Yesterday’s Sabbath was the beginning of our good brother Jim’s eternal rest with the Lord. Praise God and may he be glorified! Jim received comforting assurance from the Lord and enjoyed these days with his wife, family, and brethren and went home to the Lord in the evening. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

He ran his race, he kept the faith and endured unto the end proclaiming and not being offended of his lord Christ Jesus.

The Dane Donaldson Family

A Prayer Request

2008-11-25T10:35:00.002-02:00

Dane left for Buenos Aires last night to complete Joseph's United States citizenship documentation and to complete some other paperwork for our land title here in Argentina. From Buenos Aires he will fly to Pennsylvania for two weeks to spend some time with our good brother, Jim.

It seems that Jim's cancer is continuing to spread. He now has tumors in his liver, his chest, and one pressing upon his brain. Jim is at peace with what the Lord has given him. You can read his latest post on his blog at the following address:http://jmhj.blogspot.com.

Please pray for Jim, his wife Pamela, his extended family and friends, and for Dane as he travels to and from the United States again.

Dane took our camera with him, but I will continue to keep you updated over the next couple of weeks.

Jessica

2008-11-22T07:31:00.004-02:00

We had a great week and are enjoying some of our first fruits of spring. Everything seems to be growing well and we are trying to stay on top of the watering and weeding. We haven't had any rain in a couple of weeks, so we have had plenty of dry days for working outside.

Sarah completed her 5th grade curriculum on Tuesday. We are very proud of her, as she worked very hard to finish up all her subjects just a couple weeks past our original stop date that we extended due to our long winter break. Now she will get to take a break from her studies until we start our next school year in March. She has been such a help this week, making bread, tending the chickens, cutting vegetables for lunch, etc, etc. Her siblings still have several weeks until they complete their schoolwork, but there does appear to be an end in sight.

In the following video, you can see how laundry is hung when the correction (corrección) is moving through. It requires a lot of fancy footwork and can be quite amusing to watch though not experienced directly.

The corrección consists of a particular type of ant that travels in armies by the thousands in search for a new home. They cover the ground in an area so that it appears to be moving. The ants are quite determined and don't bother much during their move which typically lasts only about an hour or two, but if someone unknowingly disturbs them, the result is often painful as you can imagine.

Well that is about all that I have for now. Have a blessed Sabbath Day!

Jessica

More First Fruits

2008-11-20T21:55:00.004-02:00

Dane had two and half of our bee supers processed yesterday at the honey coop in Obera and he walked away with about 12 gallons of honey which comes to about 110 pounds! INTA, the ag coop in town, was promoting their new honey extraction facility, so there was a television crew on scene filming the process. For being there and helping, Dane got all the honey processed for free!

We enjoyed some honey this morning on pancakes....Mmmmm, and after lunch we made butter and honey rolls.....Mmmmm, for our Sabbath morning breakfast.

Thanks be to the Lord for this wonderful provision and we look forward to eating, sharing, and maybe even selling some of the honey.

First Fruits

2008-11-20T08:52:00.002-02:00

Our first fruits of the season. We are so very thankful to the Lord for His provisions!

New Washing Machine?

2008-11-18T12:34:00.004-02:00

Having an engineer around can be quite an adventure. For example, yesterday, Dane did the laundry. In what, you might ask? ............

The Cement Mixer

The whole day's worth of laundry in one load, and it actually came out nice and clean!

2008-11-15T09:12:00.012-02:00

Farmer José invites you to check out some of the things that are growing around here.

Cucumber plants.... about 70

Watermelon plants.... about 32

Tomato plants... about 200

In this picture: carrots, green onions, swiss chard, green beans, and cabbage

This is one of our two corn fields. Dane spaced the corn out so that we could plant beans and squash between the plants. This past week after two full weeks of hoeing Dane, Elijah, David and the Lima boys, Ricardo, Lucas, and Matias finished hoeing it and the girls planted lima beans next to the corn stalks and about six different varieties of summer and winter squash between the corn plants.

We also have about eight canteloupe plants growing, about a dozen okra, and about twenty voluntary sweet pea plants.

Last week in the larger field that Dane had finished plowing, he, his helpers and the children planted potatoes, corn, and black beans. We still have more potatoes to plant and the areas that didn't get planted we will plant, Lord willing, the rest of the miscellaneous seeds that we have left.

Our bell pepper seeds never sprouted, so I replanted some last week - we will see what happens. We either planted too early (they like really warm soil) or they are not tolerant of the soil conditions in which we are trying to grow them. The egg plant seeds never sprouted either, but we likely won't replant those this year. Furthermore, some pest decided to eat up all of our lettuce seedlings, so we hope to replant them in the coming week.

On to other things.....

One of our chickens laid an egg prematurely last week - it didn't have a shell. But it was still just an egg on the inside. Our neighbor joked that it was fine to eat, but we'd never get a chick out of it.

The man who makes yokes in our area, Mr. Hector Dos Santos, made and delivered a yoke for our two young bulls that Dane hopes to make oxen. It is beautiful and Dane looks forward to having time to train them.

Dane also cut down two dead trees yesterday morning and made these stairs to get up into the second story more easily. He hopes to begin laying the floor for the second story this next week. Anyway, the stairs turned out really nice and eventually we will use them to get into the attic from the second story when Dane builds the staircase on the outside of the house.

The children really have enjoyed going up and down the stairs. We have had to keep a close eye on Farmer José who also likes to go up and down because at this point there is nothing to go up to - just rafters.

I forgot to mention in my last post that the new boxes that Dane gave our three bee hives were almost full of honey two weeks ago, so Dane prepared some supers and Elijah and Abigail painted them. He put them on the week before last and the bees are already working to fill their new additions. How exciting! Dane is making plans for a harvest soon.

Dane also prepared two nucleus boxes and put them out in the forest in the hopes of attracting two more hives. Honey is a high demand product in these parts and it is hard to come by. We haven't been able to find any in the store for about three months now. The local ag extension office has a coop that will extract local farmers' honey and bottle it and put the individual farmer's name on the label for a small fee. Until we aquire all the necessary equipment, it sounds like a great deal for getting our honey processed.

We are so very grateful to the Lord for all these blessings. We pray that we are good stewards with the things He has entrusted us with. Furthermore, we pray that the Lord sees fit to bless us with fruit enough for ourselves and for our neighbors.

Have a great week.

Jessica

A Time to Sow

2008-11-08T10:02:00.017-02:00

The weather has been beautiful here and spring is in full swing. We continue to plant and prepare to plant in different places around the farm. Dane is nearing the completion of plowing the field that we planted corn in last year. The field was rough planted then (Dane just burned the vegetation and cleaned it up enough to put the corn seed in the ground) and it has never been plowed until now, so it has been a lot of work clearing rocks, roots, tree stumps, etc. It has been hard on the little crawler tractor too, with Dane breaking the suspension once, a plow blade another time, and bending another plow blade possibly beyond repair. Dane increased the field about three times the size that it was last year in order to plant potatoes, black beans, and corn. Last year we grew enough corn to feed our chickens for about six months, so we are excited about the possibility of growing more and being able to provide for all the animals for the year. Below is a picture of the part of the field that is ready for planting.

This is a picture of some potatoes that we are chitting in preparation of their planting next week.

We have also been cleaning up around the little corn plants in the other field in preparation to plant lima beans and squash. In fact, the girls started planting lima beans yesterday, until Dane who was clearing out some weeds with the tractor in some of the wider spots between the corn turned the tractor over on its side. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the planting came to a halt as all the children watched with amazement as their father, who has got to be the strongest man in the world to them, winched the tractor right side up with chains, straps, and a strong old stump left in the ground up in the field.

We have also gotten three long rows of tomatoe plants planted in the garden and hope to get another one planted this week.

Here is a picture of some huge leeks that grow wild around here. We have many in our garden and I use them for cooking all the time, but all of them started from wild leeks that the children gathered from around the farm and transplanted into the garden.

We have been enjoying the first fruits of spring. The Brazilian Cherry trees on our property have yielded their fruit and we have enjoyed the picking and the eating. We also discovered another type of cherry tree in the pasture. The berries taste just like a bing cherry and have the same type of flesh and texture, but some have two or three smaller seeds instead of one. Anyway, we have enjoyed them alot too.

Dane and Erik Barney worked on the hydroelectric project this past week. Barney brought a turbine that was built at the university to be tested on Dane's setup, but it didn't make much power because this particular type of turbine is really not suited for the situation that we have on our creek. The professor was very impressed with the piping and dam and the force of the water coming through the pipe which is encouraging to Dane. With the right type of turbine, we could possibly have enough energy to power several houses. So, the project continues and Dane is still contemplating building his own turbine or purchasing a prefabbed turbine.

The cows and chickens are doing well. We are still getting around a gallon of milk a day from our cow, who appears to be holding back on us, but we are very pleased with a gallon. And, our egg production has increased to fifteen eggs on average per day.

Where do little boys who have just had bathes go? Straight to a muddy spot in the yard - that's where.

We went and played in the creek this morning and the children have just returned from there again this afternoon.

This is butterfly season around here and some of the butterflies are huge, so naturally some of the caterpillars are huge too.

This is a short video clip of all the butterflies around the house. They zoom around by the hundreds.

We hope all is well with you all. Take care and until next time.

Jessica

Rainy Days

2008-10-26T14:48:00.011-02:00

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

2008-10-11T16:06:00.013-03:00

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

2008-10-04T16:35:00.005-03:00

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

2008-09-28T14:13:00.033-03:00

Planting and Lots of Other Stuff

2008-09-27T13:36:00.029-03:00

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

Toritos

2008-09-14T10:18:00.018-03:00

Lots of exciting things have been going on around the homestead the past week.

We now have two mostly brahma (father full-blood, mother 3/4) bull calves that Dane will either train to be oxen or we will use one as our bull and eventually eat the other. Teams of oxen are very common here, and having strong work animals does sound very appealing to us. After all, the grass is plentiful and fuel for the tractor is a never ending expense.

Dane got the gate for the hydroelectric dam built. This is a picture of it right after he got it painted.

Dane has also nearly got the field above our garden ready for planting corn, beans, squash, watermelon, and cucumber. I think the next step is to spread the fertilizer and lime and then work it into the soil.

Here is a picture of the bamboo chicken tractor that Dane is working on. We have so much bamboo on the property, and many people like to build with it, so this is his first attempt at making something with it.

The children have gotten really good at moving the cows around. In the picture below, Abby is moving the gray cow out to her grazing area, early one morning.

Dane and I were researching how to make our own rennet for making cheese and we found online that vegetable rennet can be made from boiling the leaves of the stinging nettle plant. It turns out that we have lots of "ortiga" on our property, a variety of stinging nettle, so we picked some and cooked it up. In our research, we also found that stinging nettle is very healthy to eat with a nutritional value similiar to spinach, so we ate it. Next time, we will actually have to test whether it will set our milk for cheese.

This next picture is of a beautiful moth that made its way into the house. She decided to lay eggs (that we promptly removed) on the curtain before we let her back outside.

This moth we found up in the second story. I heard a big commotion of flapping wings against one of the windows and I thought a bat must have flown into the house, but upon further inspection Dane found the moth. The picture doesn't do it justice, but the moth had a wing span of at least six inches.

The next two pictures are of some wildflowers that the children picked around camp. We have some really neat and exotic ones coming up right now.

Well Abby, Joseph, and I are preparing for our trip to Buenos Aires to apply for Joseph's CROBA (Consular Report of Birth Abroad) and for his U.S. passport. Since his Argentina passport photo turned out pretty bad, and they printed it anyway, we decided that he should practice for his U.S. passport photo.

OOps, how did this one get in there?

The Post Is Finished

2008-08-28T15:10:00.029-03:00

We were without internet for about three days and had patchy touch and go service for another few, but I think we are up and going good now. We have lots of pictures to share of our last couple of weeks on the farm. This has been a post in progress for many days now.

As usual, Dane has a variety of projects going. He read that tea seed oil (not tea tree oil) is a very healthy cooking oil like olive oil that is used commonly in China. It can potentially be used to make biodiesel as well. Since we have six acres of tea and tons of tea seeds just lying around, Dane decided to try pressing some. He used his vice to do so, and stuff came out! :-) Next, he wants to take some to Obera to be pressed in an actual seed press to see what the end product is. The oil will have to be processed and that is going to take some more research too. Anyway, it is exciting to think that eventually we might be able to supply our own oil needs.

Here is what the tea seeds look like before they are shelled.

Here are the seeds with their shells removed.

Dane worked on getting the wood up around the attic until he ran out of wood. The rest of the attic and the columns he enclosed with plastic to help keep out the rain and insects. Since it is a possibility that we may not get the rest of the wood that we ordered from the sawmill, Dane may just brick in the two unfinished exterior walls around the first level porch and remove wood off the back wall to finish the attic and brick the back wall, but we will see.

The vertical wood around the attic has turned out very nicely. We like the contrast.

Dane has also been working on plowing a field above our garden. It is going to take quite a few passes with the plow and disc to chop up all the vegetation, but we hope to plant corn, beans, and squash in this one and half acre area in the next few weeks.

Here is Dane working on the disc.

Dane purchased all the pipe for the hydroelectric project. It is going to take one hundred meters of it.

Dane bought a few fruit trees: two peach, two plum, two pink grapefruit, and a persimmon.
He planted them high on the hill by the internet tower. Being low in the valley, we get later frosts, so we thought the trees might do better at a higher elevation. The pasture where the tower and trees are is about 40 meters higher in elevation than our homesite.

This is a picture of the persimmon tree in the corner of the garden before Dane got it planted.

These are all the other fruit trees in the garden before they were planted.

We discovered that we have a mulberry tree right by the house. I don't know how we missed it last year.

Three brothers: Elijah, David, and Joseph.

One morning Joseph pushed a chair up to the kitchen counter and grabbed a sponge and started cleaning. It was cute, so I had to take a picture of him. He was very serious about his work too.

We Have Cows!

These are our new cows. They are both pregnant. The grey cow is supposed to have her calf any day now and the red and white cow is due in February. We pray we are able to milk them.

Here they are resting in the grass one afternoon.

Here are Sarah, Abby, and David petting the red and white cow. They have requested a brush to brush her hair. Lol!

This is a picture of Patita, our little female duck. Our male duck disappeared a couple of weeks ago. Sadly, we probably won't have ducklings for a while until we can get another male duck.

Well that is all for now, but it took me so long to get this post out that I already have pictures and things to tell about for another. Hopefully by next week I get it up.

Take care,
Jessica

He Has a Passport

2008-08-16T13:31:00.015-03:00

After applying for a passport twice and fifteen months later, Joseph has his Republic of Argentina Passport! Abby, Joseph, and I traveled by bus to Posadas, the capital of Misiones province, on Thursday morning and picked up Joseph's passport from the Policia Federal. We are very excited and thankful. Praise the Lord!

I will explain why we had problems getting his passport for those of you who may not know the story. Joseph was born two and half weeks after we arrived in Argentina as tourists. It turns out that here in the province of Misiones there had been an ongoing problem of poor mothers selling there babies to foreigners. Several cases came to light and all the babies involved had falsified birth certificates, documents, etc. So when we applied for Joseph's passport, it immediately made some red flags go up. The passport agency of the Federal police never contacted us to let us know, but after several inquires by us they asked for a copy of my permission to fly while I was pregnant. I had misplaced mine, but thankfully my midwife had another copy and promptly sent it to me. We had to have this translated and I missed the deadline to get it to them, so the original passport application was denied. We reapplied with the permission to fly document in May and this time they approved the application. Thank the Lord!

Here is Joseph looking it over.

We still need to report Joseph's birth and apply for his United States Passport at the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires. I scheduled an appointment to do so on September 16th, and plan, Lord willing, to travel with Joseph there the night before. Abby willl most likely accompany me to help. Dane plans to travel to the embassy at a later date to complete the paperwork.

Also this past week, Dane completed two more sections of wall around the attic. He is leaving the top foot on the ends open for now because he doesn't have a good way to reach that area to work without a ladder. He may just screen in the open part later for more ventilation instead of putting up wood. We are going to see how it goes and how it stands up to the rain before deciding.

These are some pictures that Dane took from the attic when he was up there working one rainy day.

Dane is continuing to try to get all of our projects underway. Besides working on the house this past week, he worked on getting the beehives ready for occupants, he bought all the piping for the hydroelectric project and a couple more used implements for the tractor/crawler: a seed planter and a sicklebar. He didn't make it to the fabricator to discuss the distillery components but will probably do so next week.

The children have been busy picking wildflowers. They like to bring me home little bouquets and have me take pictures of them, so here is the latest one.

Well that's all we have for now. Until next time.

Jessica

Spring is in the Air

2008-08-09T15:00:00.009-03:00

The old peach tree on our property has beautiful blossoms on it.

The temperatures have continued to stay nice. This "winter" has been considerably mild compared to last year's. Most days are in the 70's and the nights fall to the 50's. We have also had little rain, aside from a nice sideways driving rain and hail storm that wetted us inside our still unfinished house and knocked out the power to our internet tower for nearly a week.

The flies and moths are beginning to make their appearances again - another sign that spring is approaching. We have been amazed at the hundreds of different moths and flies that are in this area. There were few days last spring that we did not see a new flying insect that we hadn't seen before. This is a picture of a beautiful moth that came into the house the other night. At the top of its wings it had a glittery silver band and the circles in its wings were transparent.

We are pleased to announce that we had our first visitors from the U.S. two weeks ago, Mr. Reed and Mr. New. These two Christian gentlemen were in Argentina on a business trip and graciously stopped by our neck of the woods to see this area and to visit. We had a wonderful and uplifting time of fellowship with them and hope that they will return for another visit sometime.

Projects, projects, projects....

Dane's list of projects is growing. He got one of the eight sections of the attic roof done and we are very pleased with the outcome. He hopes to get the others completed soon.

In the meantime, Mr. Barney, the engineering professor from the University in Obera who has 40 years of experience with microhydro came out here a couple of weeks ago and looked at the creek down from our house, and the river and said that he thought the creek has plenty enough flow to build a microhydro electricity system on it. He felt that putting one on the river would be too complicated and expensive. So, after some careful calculations done by Mr. Barney on his watch calculator and Dane on his cellphone calculator, they are thinking that the creek has enough energy to supply our home with 7 -30 kilowatt hours / day, depending on how much rain we have had. We are excited about this. Mr. Barney is now waiting for Dane to build a dam so that they can install a turbine. Dane worked on site for a couple of days and says he is ready to do the concrete work. Lord willing, our microhydro system will be up and running soon!

Mr. Barney and Dane also have an alcohol microdistillery unit in the works. They have started making plans to build one so that we can supply our own fuel needs here eventually. They have begun the search for parts and have been visiting with local fabricators. Lord willing, we should be able to supply all of our fuel needs with just a couple acres of sugarcane in the not so distant future.

The time to plant things like sugarcane, corn, and many of our garden vegetables is coming upon us, so Dane has purchased a couple more implements, a disc and a box blade, so that he can prepare the planting sites.

We have decided that we want to keep our chickens in chicken tractors. They have become a terrible nuisance and instead of interrupting their free ranging, Dane has started plans for the construction of at least two tractors that we can move them around in. The current chicken house will most likely become a tool shed in the future, and the chicken yard, an all purpose animal enclosure.

Needless to say, Dane has a lot to do, but this fact is a great blessing, and I pray that the Lord be magnified in all our family endeavors.

Here is a picture of all the children working to make sweet rolls one afternoon. Cooking is one job they all are usually more than happy to help with. They did an excellent job on them too!

Abby and Sarah also helped me butcher two roosters last week. Besides the killing, the girls completely cleaned one rooster and and removed all the meat from both after they were cooked. They were very excited about their contribution to the menu the next day. We enjoyed a nice pot of chicken and gravy over rice.

We also wanted to give a special thanks to Kris Ante over at http://www.anteagrarians.com/ for nominating our blog as a Brillant weblog in July. We really appreciate our friends in other places that have an interest in our family's adventures. Kris, her husband Logan, and their three sons are on their own agrarian adventure in Texas. Through their blog, we have enjoyed having the privilege of watching their Christian agrarian homestead take shape.

Well I just stepped outside for a minute and our goat and her two kids have apparently decided to let themselves out of the pasture. I snapped a picture of them by the tent. The kids are growing so fast.

Well it is time to get the next meal going.

Take care,

Jessica

On the Homestead

2008-07-18T16:10:00.021-03:00

It has been nearly two weeks since we posted. We are really enjoying our new house and have been busy cleaning, and organizing. Dane has been working on all sorts of projects as usual: plumbing indoor and out, planting trees, moving things into the house, cleaning up the camp, working on the 4Runner, cutting paths along the edge of our property in search of an area suitable for a better road, etc. He discovered that a road on the riverside of our property probably won't be possible because of the rough terrain. The children and I began their schoolwork again and we are working to settle back into a comfortable routine with it. Our day is considerably more efficient now that most of our things are in one place (in the house) instead of spread out around camp. Also, Joseph has a lot more freedom to run around since he has a concrete floor in which to walk. We are all very thankful for that.

The weather has been really beautiful. It really doesn't feel like winter at all. It has been in the 70's during the day and in the 50's at night for at least a couple of weeks now. We are enjoying it tremendously.

Things we've found......

Last week Dane found a green snake in the driveway. The chickens thought they would make lunch out of it, but Dane got it first. We have no idea if it was venemous. The snake didn't have any fangs, but it kept trying to bite Dane. I think the chickens had it pretty agitated. He let it go in the garden.

Abby and Sarah found a "siamese" leaf. It was interesting, so we took a picture of it. We put a single leaf next to the conjoined one for comparision.

Last week Sarah found some wild onions and parsley in the forest along the trail to the big creek. It is always exciting to find wild plants that we can eat. We ate them before we could take a picture of them.

On their excursions around the farm today, the children found these beautiful wildflowers.

They also found some mondo grass or "monkey grass" that had some pretty blue seeds. The picture is a little blurry because Elisabeth was wiggly. Mondo grass makes a good ground cover and border plant, so the children planted some of the seeds in the garden for us to later plant around the house area.

New Additions......

Our smallest hen, who had chicks once before, made a nest in the tea, instead of the hen house, and four of her nine eggs hatched. Two of the chicks didn't make it, but so far the other two seem to be doing well. They are so cute when they are brand new.

Good Help is hard to find....

Here is a picture of Sarah carrying in the day's laundry. She had quite a load :) . We are very blessed to have so many little helpers.

Fun Stuff....

Daddy is Joseph's new best friend. He doesn't need mommy as much anymore and has discovered that it is pretty neat to hang out with daddy.

Today we went down to the river that crosses the corner of our property.

Here they call it a creek, but where we come from - this is a river. The name of it is Arroyo Bonito. This is the first time that most of the children and I have been to it on our property. We usually visit the river on our neighbor's property because it is easier to access; however, Dane cleared out a trail for us when he was surveying our property earlier in the week. The part on our property has lots of rocks to sit on and rocks in the water to swim to. There are even a few rapids.

We've Moved

2008-07-05T10:43:00.017-03:00

We are very excited to announce that we have moved into the house. A week ago Sunday we moved our kitchen into the house and then the following Tuesday, our beds. The house is not complete, but enough of the exterior walls were done on the ground floor to keep us dry, so we couldn't resist the urge to get out of the tents and into it. We are living in the bottom story until Dane completes the second story and attic. Eventually our bedrooms will be on the second floor.

This is a diagram of our "one room house" right now.

This is the end of the kitchen with Dane's office area. On the right you can see the back door, our washing machine and a refrigerator that we use as a pantry because it takes too much energy for our energy operation.

This is a picture of the kitchen area from where the beds are. At the ceiling level you can see the unfinished second story floor and the gold colored door that will eventually lead to the staircase on the outside wall of the house. And Sarah is in the background and David from the nose up is in the foreground.

This is the sleeping area.

The new living arrangements are wonderful. We are really thankful for the Lord's blessing of this house. For the first time in eight months we can walk around without our shoes and we have a mud free zone in which to spend our time. We also have doors now, so the chickens can't let themselves into the kitchen anymore. However, there is one small catch to that - we have not gotten glass in our front and back doors yet, so occasionally our smaller chicks fly through the doors. Below is a picture of Dane sending one out football style. By the way, he did finish that wall around the front door last week.

After moving in, the children and I spent the week organizing and cleaning the mud from all the furniture and appliances. Dane worked on plumbing for the kitchen and shelves for our books and clothes, among other things.

Dane also worked on the plumbing outside. He dug ditches for the pipes and this is a picture of him digging a hole for the septic system.

Dane also started cutting up the wood he got from the sawmill for firewood.

On another note - Check out this huge grub worm that Elijah found. We are always surprised at the enormousy of the insects here.

Also, thanks to everyone who voted in our poll. Eighty percent of the votes were for Dane to install the wood vertically around the attic. Hopefully, he will get to that soon.

We plan to start our schoolwork again in the morning, so we are off to prepare for that before we go to bed. Until next time - we hope all is well with you all.

Jessica

Firewood

2008-06-28T19:22:00.003-03:00

Dane went to town this Thursday and bought about $25 dollars worth of firewood from the sawmill. It should last us a few months :-).

We got a little wood from there a few weeks ago to try it out and it burned pretty good, so we decided to get a big load, so that Dane wouldn't have to hunt down fallen trees in the forest right now while he concentrating on the house.

Also, Dane finished the attic floor and then enclosed the attic with a sheet of plastic to protect it from the rain until he gets the attic exterior done. So far so good, three days of rain and no leaks!

Here is a picture of our homesite from the other side. On the far left is the chicken coop, then you can see the house with the plastic enclosing the attic at the top, then the 4Runner, our kitchen tent on the far right, and a wet weather creek in the foreground.

Even though we don't have all the exterior walls or any of the interior done on the house we plan to move our kitchen into it tomorrow and hopefully our beds by midweek. It seems surreal. Yipee!!!!!!! We really appreciate our experience in the tents and the lessons we have learned. It has been a humbling time that has freed us from many of our vain and materialistic ideals. That being said, Dane is really excited about packing the tents up and putting them into the attic until the Lord takes us to....... :-)

The Creek

2008-06-28T18:00:00.005-03:00

We have a large spring fed creek on our property about 250 meters from our homesite. This creek runs year round and never drys up. It flows through a beautiful and rocky terrain until it joins the river that crosses the corner of our property.

We pump clean, crystal clear, and great tasting water from one of the large springs that feed this creek up to our camp for our water needs.

We've had a few days of rain and the water level is up a little, so we went down there today to take some video.

Winter in June

2008-06-15T18:01:00.016-03:00

The temperatures are definitely getting colder around here, making the days significantly shorter for us. Getting up early in the morning for school work when it is dark and cold to sit around a stove that doesn't warm up fast enough was getting to be really difficult. Our fingers and toes were suffering. As nice as our kitchen tent is, it just doesn't hold the heat enough in near freezing temperatures. So, we are attempting to adjust our schedule a little. Right after we take a much needed break from our studies, we will begin our school days again after the sun comes up.

The days really are beautiful with temperatures ranging from the upper fifties to the seventies. We are very thankful for that. The nice day temperatures and weather have allowed Dane to get a lot of work done on the house. The week before last he got most of the exterior walls, minus the attic portion, trim and other finishing touches, done.

When Dane ordered the wood for the house, he ordered red wood. However, the wood that we received is multicolored. The house is not looking like what we had in mind and we are a little disappointed about that, but nonetheless we are very thankful that we will soon have a house to live in, Lord willing. We still have the option to paint it later.

Also we have been discussing whether Dane should put the exterior wood around the attic in the same direction as the rest of the house (horizontally), or if he should lay it perpendicular to the other wood (vertically) to break up the boxy pattern some. I have seen other houses where the wood is laid horizontally up to the attic and then the wood is turned vertically to break up the pattern. Our attic is very large and we have some crazy color differences in the wood, so we are still in discussion on whether changing directions will improve or worsen the appearance. We put a poll on the right hand side of our blog page, to see what you thought would be nicer. We'd love to hear your opinions.

The picture below is of the attic portion that still needs to be closed in.

Last week, Dane started putting down the wood for the second story ceiling/attic floor and will probably finish that in the next couple of days.

Here is a picture of the wood Dane is laying from the attic view.

This is a picture of the wood from underneath. The second story ceiling view. It is really pretty.

Also, a week ago Saturday, our goat had her kids, two little girls. They are healthy and as cute as they can be. We are very excited about increasing our herd. We really miss having a flock of goats to tend to, as well as the milk and all the good stuff that we enjoy making with it.

Here they are...

The excitement of the kids' birth took a toll on Joseph who fell asleep at the table when I ran out to get a picture.

Furthermore, our garden isn't doing very good, despite our efforts, so yesterday I spread lime on the entire thing. Our soil is just too acidic for most of the garden vegetables that we are trying to grow. Plants sprout up right away, but die off quickly or just don't produce much fruit, so we are hoping the amendment will improve our crop next time around.

I am sure that there is so much more to tell about the last two weeks, but it is time for dinner, so maybe in another post. I thought that I would include a couple of pictures of the other children. The first one is of David who is three now.

This is a picture of Elijah, Abby, Elisabeth, and Sarah chopping firewood.

Last Week's Happenings

2008-06-11T18:34:00.002-03:00

We had a nice week last week. The weather was warmer and we had some rain.

Dane went on a marathon sanding and painting streak and got all the exterior wood for the house done, so putting it up should go quickly, Lord willing.

Here is a picture of it as the children were counting how many pieces he had painted on Sunday. At that point he had painted 204 for the day, but he continued on an hour or more after that.

Elijah, who turned seven last week, lost his job painting to his Dad, so he started making the frames for the new bee hives that we hope to establish. He is starting to get good at driving nails.

Our chickens stopped laying eggs a few months ago, and we bought our first store bought eggs last week, a whole 30 dozen of them. Ironically, four of our hens started laying again two days later. Of these, one has insisted on laying her egg in Joseph's bed. The first day I found an egg in the bed I thought it was funny, but it has been a fight to keep the hen out of our tent ever since because the zipper isn't functioning properly. Needless to say,we have found an egg in the tent nearly every day for a week. This has led to discussions on expanding the chicken yard and ending this free ranging bit. We certainly want our chickens to free range, but here in these parts the vegetation is abundant and so are the insects, so a very large enclosed area would work nicely and keep the birds out of our area. My mother always thinks it is funny when we are talking on the phone and I have to excuse myself to shoo chickens out of the kitchen tent. Yes, living without doors can be very interesting.

This is a little video of Abby spinning Joseph on a tote lid on the table.

With the rain this week, Joseph had to spend some time off the ground to keep him from getting too muddy. In the below picture, he had just fallen off a chair and into the mud. Sorry, the shutter of the camera got a little stuck.

Last week Dane took the U-joint off the Toyota to replace it; however, the new one did not fit. We decided to go to town in the big Ford truck to replace the part and to do our monthly shopping. Unfortunately, the truck slid off the road and got stuck in the mud on the uphill just in front of our neighbors' home on the other side of the creek. This is the same spot where the gravel truck got stuck a year ago. As Dane was trying to get us back on the road, the truck ran out of diesel. There hadn't been any diesel in town the last two trips Dane had gone and he had gotten word that there was some that day, so therefore, another reason to take the big truck. We ended up walking home and taking the Toyota without a U-joint or rear drive shaft. This meant Dane had to drive the truck in four wheel drive without functioning rearwheels. I didn't think we would make it, but thankfully, the Lord saw us to town safely.

The next day Dane and I spent the afternoon trying to get the truck out with the little crawler. I steered the truck while he pulled with the crawler. We finally got free after two and half hours when I figured out how to be helpful and not counterproductive (the truck is big and I am little - I can't see which way the wheels are pointing and it took me awhile to figure it all out). It is amazing how strong that crawler is. No tractor could have pulled that big truck out, but the crawler did! Afterward, I learned how to drive the crawler and got to drive it back to our farm as Dane drove the truck. The crawler had left some huge ruts in the road about two foot deep, so Dane returned to the site with hoe, shovel, and pick ax to do some road repairs. All and all it was an exhausting and exciting afternoon!

Here is a picture of what the house looks like today (Tuesday). Dane finished the exterior wood on the northwest facing side except for the attic at the top.

This is a picture of a huge cockroach. For a roach, it was pretty. It had an armor-like shell and neat colors. I can say this because Dane found it outside on a piece of wood, not in the kitchen.

Still Learning

2008-06-01T19:24:00.028-03:00

Well we had a good week here. The weather was colder, so it was hard to get up in the mornings. I think it was in the lower thirties most nights and mornings, but warmed up to the sixties in the day. We slept very cosily in our tent under lots of blankets and in the morning we all crowded around the wood stove while I made breakfast and the children did their schoolwork. A couple of mornings we woke up to lots of frost.

The frost looked kinda like snow.

It was on the clothes on the laundry line too.

Early in the week, Dane finished putting cyclone fence around the goats' corral, so that they would be more secure as they learned the electric fence.

We have gained the confidence of the pregnant goat. She comes running up to us now when we take her something to eat. The other goats, the momma and her kid, are still pretty skiddish, despite us milking the mother every day. And for this reason, we lost her and her kid yesterday just as we lost the first goat when Dane brought them home. We turned the goats out into the other fenced area (the three acres of jungle that Dane fenced) in order to give them more grazing. Well, we discovered right away that finding not so friendly goats in the jungle was going to be a problem (this isn't Texas - no wide open spaces on this farm). We all manned a post as Dane searched through the brush looking for them. After a while, I spotted them and hollered to Dane which direction they were headed. He saw them just as they jumped through the fence and into the tea tree jungle.

This is a picture of the fenced in area from the outside looking in. It is all jungle in there. Coming from west Texas, we thought it would be great to give our goats such a nice place to eat weeds without us having to buy and haul food to them all the time.

This is the tea tree jungle.

We have decided that the tea tree jungle is some sort of black hole because goats disappear in there without a trace. We have about five acres of old black tea trees downhill from our camp that have grown to about twelve feet in height. In between the tea rows, there are pine tree tops that were chopped down and left to rot and intermingled with this are vines and other brush. Dane and the older children covered two treacherous miles of it, going up and down rows, a week ago in search of the first goat and never found a sign of her. Elijah said that in one of the rows he was walking up an incline covered with pine needles and he started to hear a bunch of crunching below him. He suddenly crashed through a pile of brush that had been hidden by the pine litter only to find Sarah, who had fallen into the same trap in the adjacent row, at the bottom of it. He said, "I fell through and Sarah was in there!" We are sure that the goats are in there, but we have not seen or heard them since they entered. They have plenty to eat and drink and are at little risk of being taken by predators, so I guess we will be searching for them from now on every time we go down there.

In the search for goats we found lots of berries. These berries are all over the place in clearings around the forest. They aren't very sweet, but we still enjoy snacking on them when we find them.

This is a picture of a giant spider web along the trail to the spring. It is hard to tell from the picture just how big it is, but it spans nearly a four foot by four foot area. I haven't seen the spider that lives there, but judging from the size of the web, it might be a big one.

Dane continued to work on the exterior walls of the house this week. It looks very nice.

Our chicks are growing and are doing very well. Our other chickens have started laying again too! We are very excited about that.

Dane just got back from moving the three bee boxes from the neighbors property to Jim's property. He said it all went well and he feels a lot more comfortable working with the bees now.

Also, I forgot to mention in the last post that we finished taking all of our corn off the cob and bagging it to feed the animals in the future. We ended up with about 150 pounds of corn from our small corn field. Not a lot, but it gives us an idea how much we need to plant the next time. We are also using the husks in our wood burning stove as a source of fuel. They burn very well.

Goats

2008-05-25T11:09:00.015-03:00

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

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

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

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

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

This is a picture of one of the mandarins.

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

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

Here is a picture of him in his beekeeper gear.

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

Taking Pleasure in Our Work

2008-05-17T14:21:00.016-03:00

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

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

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

Other projects of the week included:

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

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

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

This is an inside view of the wall.

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

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

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

This is one of the banana plants.

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

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

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

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

Working Solo

2008-05-10T11:16:00.018-03:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time To Plant

2008-05-03T13:50:00.012-03:00

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

Mud, mud, and more mud.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well, lunch is calling now.

Until the next post,

Jessica

Into the Rainy Season

2008-04-26T12:00:00.023-03:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just a Note

2008-04-20T19:40:00.002-03:00

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

The Rain Has Cleared

2008-04-20T15:42:00.002-03:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wow....

One big worm!

Anyone want to go fishing?

This Week in Review

2008-04-06T15:34:00.017-03:00

This past week Dane and Javier finished putting up all the beams for the second story of the house. They also framed up a few walls. It is really exciting to see the house starting to come together. We look forward to having actual walls around us again, but living in tents has not been bad. It has opened our eyes to many things and we have appreciated all the lessons we have learned from the experience.

The week before last we got an email from the Argentina Federal Police in Buenos Aires saying that Joseph's passport application was denied because they were lacking some paperwork. Thankfully, they told us that we could reapply for the passport without cost to us, so we traveled to Posadas on Thursday to do this; however, we were asked to return tomorrow so that the gentlemen in the office could find out all that is required of us in Buenos Aires for the second application. Lord willing, this time around all will go without a hitch. We will let you know how that goes in the next post.

Here are some other pictures of things of interest from last week.

I got stung by a bee, I think, or it may have been a wasp. Anyway, my right hand has been swollen for about three days now and really itchy. The swelling is starting to go down now and I no longer look like I have a boxing glove on my hand. Since we are now raising bees, I am glad to know that I am not allergic to them.

This is a picture of a "pepino del monte." We found these wild cucumbers that the Sosa's have told us about growing near our garden fence. They are small like the size of a baby carrot, but they taste just like a regular cucumber. It is so much fun finding wild edibles. We also have wild blackberries and many kinds of wild fruit trees in the forest too. Another wild plant that is good to eat is the bamboo. If the bamboo shoots are picked when they are small, they can be cooked and eaten. We haven't cooked any yet, but have picked some and eaten them raw.

This is a picture of Abby putting the baby to sleep. He looks nearly half her size now, but she is very good with him. Many nights she sings to him and bounces him to sleep.

Well it is time to start getting cleaned up for the day. The mornings and the evenings are starting to get colder now, so we start bathing earlier.

Sabbath

2008-03-30T10:16:00.005-03:00

Yesterday, we enjoyed our Sabbath Bible Study. We are reading from the book of Isaiah and are learning to sing the psalms in meter, which is a lot of fun. Even Joseph, the baby, hums along while we are singing.

In the afternoon, the children enjoyed their rest time and made "tepees".

The Beams Go Up

2008-03-30T09:10:00.014-03:00

This past week Dane got the four big beams up for the second story floor of the house. We all wondered how he was going to do it since the beams are 4x12x19feet long, but he and Javier did it, and made it look easy. Before the beams went up, Dane sanded them and Javier put two coats of what they call barnise, on them. Now the guys are working on sanding and finishing all the other smaller beams. Lord willing, they expect to have them up by the end of next week, and they will move on to the walls.

Little Helpers

2008-03-25T19:54:00.013-03:00

What a blessing to have little helpers.......

Abby the Chicken/Duck Herder

Dane's carpenter students: Elijah, David, and Joseph

Cooks in the kitchen: Sarah and Elisabeth

Laundry Helpers: Sarah, Elisabeth, and Elijah

Concrete, Swinging, and Ducks

2008-03-23T10:23:00.009-03:00

The past couple of weeks have been busy for us. Dane, Javier, and Andres finished pouring all the concrete for the bottom floor of the house and they poured all the columns too. The final product is really nice. I thank the Lord for providing my husband and his helpers the strength to make it through those back breaking hours of labor. They are done pouring for now and will begin sanding the wood for the house.

Some of the concrete making tools became fun playthings for everyone. One day when Dane took a strap off the wood to move it, the strap disappeared quickly. The children had found the strap on the concrete and took it to the old peach tree and made a swing out of it. Also the rope that the men were using to hoist the concrete up to pour the columns became a swing and an elevator to the roof. What fun!

A few weeks ago we enjoyed some duck meat at the Sosa's and this week they gave us a male and female duck so that we could start raising our own. We are pleased with the new addition, but are anxious to provide them with some water to play in. The Sosa's assure us that the ducks are used to not having water to play in, but a duck out of water just seems unnatural to me. Anyway, here is a not so good picture of them hiding in the weeds of their new home.

The children and I have busied ourselves with our usual work these past couple of weeks. We enjoyed the chicken that I butchered, although the meat was a little tough. The children's schoolwork is going along very well too. In addition, I have added several of our email updates from 2007 to the blog, so if you are interested in rereading those, look in the archive folders for them and watch for more to be added soon, Lord willing.

Chicken

2008-03-12T22:24:00.004-02:00

I killed and butchered my first chicken today, an old rooster! It went well. Susana was here to help me and give me moral support. I wanted to try skinning the chicken, feathers and all, instead of removing the feathers and then skinning the bird, so that is what we did.

We decided to butcher most of the chickens (one a week) that we bought from the neighbor in town and replace them with new chickens. We really don't have any idea how old these chickens are and the hens' egg production is really poor. We are only getting one or two eggs every three days now.

I put the meat in the freezer and will cook it tomorrow. I will let you know how it turns out.

Jessica

School Days

2008-03-12T22:01:00.004-02:00

We finally got the children's school books that we ordered from Rod and Staff. It only took them a month to arrive to us in Obera. We had anticipated that it might take up to three months. The books were shipped by way of DHL, so we could track their progress. They actually arrived in Argentina from the United States two days after we placed an order for them. Once in Buenos Aires they were handed over to a third party to deliver to Obera. They seemed to bounce around the country and were even in Obera once, but we missed them before they bounced around some more and returned.

The children started their school year here at the farm last week on the third. It is going really well. The children begin at six o'clock am and finish for the day by noon. The schedule is great for us because then we have the entire afternoon to work on other things. This year, Abby is in the sixth grade, Sarah the fifth, Elijah the third, Elisabeth the first, and David is learning letters, numbers, colors, etc.

Thank You Lord for Times of Rest

2008-03-09T13:12:00.000-02:00

We really appreciate those times that we have to rest from our work.

This is a picture of Joseph practicing to stand. He needed several rewarding kisses from Dad.

These pictures show Dane playing with some of the children.

Here is a picture of Abby taking a nap in the grass under a tree. She looks so peaceful, doesn't she?

One Sabbath Day......

Here we all are eating watermelon at our neighbors', the Sosas.

After lunch we swam in the river. This part of the river is on the Sosa's property. In the picture, Dane and Javier are swimming upstream in the rapids with Elijah and Abby. Although they were having fun, I think they decided swimming upstream was too much work for a rest day.

Critters and Such

2008-03-09T12:44:00.000-02:00

Well we finally did have some chicks hatch. We had two hens that decided to sit and between the two of them we ended up with four chicks. Not very many, but we have had had some problems to overcome in our chicken rearing and we are very pleased that the Lord saw fit to give us four healthy chicks. That was a couple of months ago and the chicks have already grown quite large.

The children are always finding interesting insects. This is a picture of a huge praying mantis.

This is a big cicada. These things can produce a deafening sound!

One day when we were swimming in the river, Andres saw a black snake in a tree over the water. Dane got the snake and he and Javier killed it. This picture shows the children posing with it.

Well it is hard to see in the picture, but there is a toucan in the tree. We have enjoyed seeing many on our property lately. They are really large birds and make a funny croaky sound.

This isn't a critter, but in the forest there are some huge cactus. They grow as tall or taller than some of the trees. Their trunks look just like the trunks of the other trees (woody or with bark). I found these when I was chasing the toucans into the forest for a picture.

God of Wonders

2008-03-09T12:31:00.000-02:00

One cloudy day starting at 12:30 pm, there was a complete rainbow around the sun. The rainbow remained for three hours. It was truly an awesome sight.

Building Fences

2008-03-09T11:36:00.000-02:00

Things have been moving right along for us here. Dane finished fencing in a one and half hectacre (about 3 acres) section of our farm so that we can buy some animals. A lot of work went into making it: looking for trees, chopping down dead trees, cutting posts, clearing brush, crossing ravines, setting posts, and stretching wire. The fence turned out really nice; in fact, it is one of the nicest farm fences that I have ever seen. All the fence posts came from our property which makes it even nicer. The fence is a solar powered electric fence with a charge of 3000 volts (Ouch!). Anyway, we look forward to having some livestock again for milk, cheese, and meat.

I had to include this picture of Elijah and David helping Dane to move posts from the forest up to our homesite.

Starting a Blog

2008-03-09T11:15:00.000-02:00

Well we decided to start a blog. We thought that since I have such a hard time sitting down to write and always have a mountain of pictures when I do, that a blog may be a better medium for sharing our experiences. I hope to post a little something of what we are doing at least once a week.

This blogging business is very new to us and will take us some time to figure out, so please bear with us as this page may be under construction for some time. We would like to add all of our previous email updates that we have sent out over the past year in order to keep a better log of our progress.

Check back often for future and past updates and be sure to leave your comments!

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

2007-12-20T21:43:00.000-03:00

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