scarlet macaws on the Osa Penninsula

christmas comes

It feels a bit like Christmas, at least a bit more than it did this time last year. We’re putting up a tree this week, hauling in a Norfolk pine that manages to survive in the tropics and allowing him a holiday high up in the canopy for a week or so before he returns to his regular spot outside the house. A month ago I made a plum pudding, it’s waiting patiently for the 25th. And on Sunday we made mincemeat pies. Really delicious, we didn’t used suet, instead substituting vegetable shortening, and we can’t buy currants or sultanas here so we used more raisins and substituted dried bananas and fruit leather for the candied peel. We substituted rum for brandy and used allspice rather than mixed spice, we also added some black pepper and a pinch of salt. This makes about 3 pounds of mincemeat, it’s best to make the pies a day before you want them: the flavours get a good chance to blend. Though perhaps make a smaller one to eat right there and then, so tempting straight from the oven.

Mincemeat
8ox apples, preferably green, grated
4oz suet
6oz raisins
4oz sultanas
4oz currants
4oz candied peel
6oz sugar
Juice and peel of a lemon and an orange
2 tsp mixed spice
¼ tsp cinnamon
Pinch of nutmeg
3 tblsp brandy
Mix together all ingredients except brandy. Put in very very low oven until suet melts and coats other ingredients (or alternately leave out in sun). Wait until cool and mix in brandy, keep in fridge or can with hot water bath until needed.

Pastry
1 ¼ cups flour
½ tsp salt
½ cup cold butter
1/8 – ¼ cup iced water
Mix dry ingredients first, chop in butter, rub to breadcrumb like texture, add water to firm dough, allow to rest for 20 minutes, roll out and line pie or tart trays.
Fill with mincemeat, cut more pastry strips and lattice pie tops, bake in 350F oven for 20-30 minutes until just golden. Sprinkle with sugar if desired and serve with thick cream or vanilla ice cream.

work

Yesterday we planted out yard long beans, 16 of them spaced along a fallen pejabaye palm. The palm will rot down over the next two months adding lots of great nutrients to the growing beans: slow release fertilizer I guess you could call it. They are planted in an area I’m calling the salad bowl, a sunny spot nestled between passion fruit and black pepper with jungle on one side and orchard behind. We planted katuk and cranberry hibiscus in gentle curves and purple spinach in circles. We also have some older chilis there, peppers and tomatoes which we’ll eventually harvest and take out. This will be my main work area on the lower farm. I need to make a bench and a covered work table and enclose a space for compost bins. We have impatience started for the flowers and I want to bring in some white ginger – the flowers are delicious and very pretty, a soft luminescent white. Peter’s not so keen on the white ginger, it’s an invasive, but I think we could grow it in big tubs. I have to research other edible flowers, they add so much to a salad. We also have Malabar spinach and I need to transfer some purslane to the spot too. We cut down maybe 8 pejabaye palms to allow more light in and used the leaves for mulch, the whole area is ankle deep in palm leaves right now. I think I’ll wait for them to break down a bit more before bringing in the purslane, it’s such a small ground cover type plant it’ll struggle just now. It looks great. I’m hoping that in two months I’ll have enough to begin harvesting salad greens for the farmers’ market.
We have to plant out the same in the upper farm as well, but right now our cuttings and seedlings are too small, it’ll be at least another two weeks before they are ready. The ground isn’t prepared there yet anyway, we have to harvest most of the yampi to free up space. Ah, what lovely work awaits us.

. . .

It’s one of those wet tropical mornings where everything is damp and chilly. The mosquitoes are out in full force and I’m sitting with the fan on wrapped in 3 layers and longing for a pair of woolly socks. It’s November: a good time to plant, the beginning of the rainy season, not a good time to wash clothes.
My life is changing again, and again for the better. I’m leaving school. I really don’t know how I feel about this, I keep expecting pangs of regret and fear, but nothing comes, just a sense that this is right. I always thought I would be one of those lifers, someone who would remain immersed in schools until they dropped, but at 40 I’m bowing out, hopefully gracefully, and taking up another passion. And it’s okay.
I’m stepping into a life that feels ready made: I’ve been working at the farmers’ market for 4 months now and this will continue and develop as I move from working a stall by myself or with Heather, to sharing stall space with Peter. I started with selling mixes of dried fruit, then added sprouts, and now we are making granola bars with the fruits and the cacao we grow. When the salad greens are ready we’ll sell those too and we’re working on jams, pickles and preserves to add. On the farm I’ll be working with the salad greens and the fruit trees, propagating and grafting, and on the landscaping side I’m working with Peter, but concentrating on edible landscapes. This is a dream. I’m very happy.
We just came back from a job on the other side of Costa Rica on the unspoilt Osa Penninsula , a wonderful eco-lodge called Sabalo Lodge, an hour’s boat ride along wide tropical rivers and dense mangrove. I thought the mangrove would never end and then suddenly we stopped before a wide open lawn shaded by coconut palms, delicious. The owners, Dan and Holly, are creating a beautiful secret space, tucked away from everything, collecting their water, creating their electricity and caring for their guests. We were there to work, but felt very well cared for. Peter laid down a good orchard with a rich variety of fruits, we worked with epiphytes and flowering shrubs and I worked on edible landscaping, 4 beds with a good variety of greens, tubers, herbs, spices and vegetables. It was great fun, 10 hour days, but rewarding.

new

I’ve been experiencing an enormous surge of creative energy recently, resulting in a really good shift towards a different direction in my life. It all began with fruit. There is so much fruit here that I have been drying the surplus and in August began to sell blends of dried fruits at the Saturday Farmer’s Market in town. My little business is called Homegrown Organics and is expanding. The fruit is all organic, all local and all fresh – meaning it’s freshly dried the week before the market. I share the stall with Heather who’s selling plants and is expanding into herbal medicinal preparations. We also made seaweed emulsion and are carrying that too.
The blends are what I harvest so the fruits change, but in general I always have banana, pineapple, papaya, carambola and a fruit leather – often cas or guanabana. Then I have different blends, a tropical which is plain, a cacao which has cacao nibs, a hot, which has ginger, a coconut mix and a sour mix with sour carambola. It’s great fun. I love the harvesting, the prep and the social buzz of the market.
Over the last year the garden and working with plants has given me more joy and satisfaction than working in education. I’m ready for a transition. I’m growing sprouts for the market too, it’s difficult to get a good selection of seeds, but I’m growing mung and will add lentil and mustard soon. I’m also beginning growing edible leaves to make up salad bags. This is more a long term project, but slowly, slowly it’s coming together. By the end of the year I’ll be working with edible landscapes. It feels wonderful.

breathe

I feel bathed in air, the beautiful fragrant cool moist air of a tropical morning. It feels like all I have to do today is breathe, what a great feeling. My mum is here and she seems to love this place just as I do. I’m so happy, I’m hoping she’ll come to live here part time. There’s a frog to my left, a large sleeping female Red-eyed Leaf Frog, (Agalychnis callidryas), before me sitting on the orchid is another, the Lemur Leaf Frog (Phyllomedusa lemur). A leaf falls from the fig tree, slowly parting the air until it touches the grass. Everything is beautifully still.
It’s been a really busy month. The garden has been full of growth and I’m doing all I can to keep up with the weeding and harvesting. My dear friends arrived and a lot of work was needed to make the house shine and the garden just right, and then my house needed a thorough clean for my mum and then there was the trip to the hot springs and the city and then and then and then. It’s been busy. But today is all about just breathing.

back on

It’s Friday afternoon, the monkeys haven’t started their afternoon chorus, so it’s not 4:30 yet, but it must be close. The temperature dropped out of the muggy and into the cooler, stiller part of the day where the air feels heavy. I think it will rain tonight. I’m sitting on my deck eating sweet tahini from a jar and all is well. All is well. Young Jack is at my feet, Hoss and LJ are off with friends, there’s a toucan scritching his beak somewhere to my right, a house gecko above me. Surrounding the computer are vegetable starts: chili, pepper, tomato, katuk, cranberry hibiscus, pumpkin. There’s pomelo seeds drying and a mabola slowly moldering. At the other end of the deck a load of cacao is fermenting beside some sea grape seeds. Yes, all is well.
I’ve been sick, with parasites and the concoction of herbs I’ve been taking has created a massive die-off which has lowered my energy and resistance, so I have a sore throat and a cold too. But I think I’m on the turn. I’ve been running ragged for the last two weeks preparing the house and gardens for visitors, but they are now here and happy which is a load off my mind and work schedule. I’m tired, but it’s good.
My mum flies in next week for two weeks and I’m very excited. It’s been almost three years since I’ve seen her and this is the first time she’s ever travelled on her own. It’s also the first time she’s ever been to the tropics, but I think she’ll like it.

been away

This I think is the longest time I've spent away from the blog in over a year. I've been busy, but more than that my computer finally died. i hopefully will have another, a very kind friend is sending one by the end of the month, until then . . .

boa

I was cycling by the snake man’s yesterday and he called me in. he had a 10 foot boa curled up below the sink in his bathroom. She was beautiful; fat, sleek, almost marbled in her scales, curled elegantly with her head resting upon her tail. I could feel her smoothness and her weight just in looking at her. someone had seen her below his house, he was very happy to be rid of her: his cats had been disappearing. It was lucky he hadn’t killed her, perhaps because she really was big. The snake man said when he grabbed behind her head she simply pushed her head back and trapped his hand – tightly – between her head and her spine. It took two men to carry her. She certainly looked strong and very heavy. She was a chocolate brown with tawny patches above, a creamy mottled with lichen green below. He was going to take her far out into the forest. She’s the second boa I’ve seen here.

The first was on a walk home last year. It was when I lived in Guanacaste and wasn’t so wary of snakes. I was scrambling up the hill path I used every evening. Hoss was before me and a friend visiting from the States was behind. Suddenly Hoss stopped and his energy changed from forward scout to cautious uncertainty. I pulled him back and there just by the path was a big boa, maybe 7 feet. His head was up and he was moving it from side to side. I think Hoss was happy to be pushed behind me. I shone my torch directly at him and slowly he receded. He was no threat to us. Beautiful though, very creamy colouring with large uneven patches of a greenish toned brown.

I found a dead snail eating snake on the path. He was about 20 inches long, dark grey with black stripes, below a cream flecked with black. I didn’t look too closely – the ants had found him also.

five fruits

Fruit season has begun in an explosion of scents, colours and forms. I’ve encountered four fruits brand new to me this week and rediscovered another. The mangosteen tree is a beautiful triangular shaped tree with dark green shiny leaves, it reaches about 15 feet in height. The fruits are like a child’s drawing of ‘fruit’ – round and plump and purple with a pretty, leathery dark beige/purple cap. Opening the fruit reveals a soft intensely purple flesh which cushions three seeds enveloped in white goop, much like the cacao seeds have. It is this white goop that one eats. The taste is strong and to me it tasted like tamarind: tart, sweet and sour. I liked it very much but was sorry to see so much of the fruit was inedible.
The second fruit grows on what looks like a cecropia tree. The fruits grow in clusters and look like large muscadet grapes. They too have sweet white flesh surrounding a hard heart shaped seed which dries with a green coppery tint. We can’t find the fruit in any books or on the internet, but we believe it comes from Brazil. There are several trees growing in ordered rows in an old established orchard, so we know they are edible!
The third fruit is either a gnip or a local lychee depending on who you ask. It is smallish, green and slightly ovoid and grows in clusters. I don’t know what the tree looks like but the leaf is long and pointed, and leathery, a little like a eucalyptus. Inside the thin green shell the flesh is tan and soft and surrounds a hard egg elliptical seed. Very sweet and juicy.
The fourth fruit is nanci. These small round fruits grow on large stately trees. The fruits look like large currants and are orangey yellow. Inside the flesh is again a clearish white and surrounds a single small black pip. They are not so sweet and the ones I had tasted overripe to me, in fact they tasted of blue cheese! In Guanacaste these fruits are much larger, about the size of kumquats, here 15 would fit on my palm.
The fifth fruit is breadfruit. In the past I’ve waited for these fruits to become soft before I opened them. This time I cooked it as a vegetable. George says, “when there’s breadfruit, don’t need no bread”, and he’s right. I shallow fried thin slices with garlic and chili, the taste was fabulous, like overly soft fried potatoes, but smoother and with more taste. Difficult to describe. And very filling.

Seaweed

We are harvesting at the beach, no, gleaning is a better word. Recent storms and who knows what have washed a lot of seaweed in. It’s beautiful stuff, not the heavy bladderwrack that filled my childhood in Scotland, or the giant kelp that washed up on the Californian Pacific: these are small bundles of fairy foliage, in reds and metallic blues with tiny globular air sacks, almost like moss. It’s easy to gather, and a bit like a ‘treasure’ chest, for hidden within and amongst the seaweed are many bright colourful objects: plastic trash. We gather a trash bag of plastic for every 2 of seaweed. Rainbows of bottlecaps; toys; shoes; so many straws; nylon rope; bottles, especially those little sample bottles one finds in hotels (or cruise ships??); toothbrushes; wrappers, and then minutia - shreds and shards of plastic.

Plastics, like diamonds, are forever. The pieces we gathered were, in the main, recognizable, and in this tropical sea probably looked enough like colourful fish, to be swallowed by turtles, birds and larger fishes. The shards and shreds, and straws, being smaller were probably being seen as food by smaller sea creatures. The action of waves, water and sun which has ground rock to sand and worn shells to dust, will over time wear plastic pieces into smaller and smaller ‘mouthfuls’ for smaller and smaller ocean species. “Nurdles” the raw materials of plastic production find their way by the billions into the ocean every year, as do polyethylene beads which are increasingly being used as exfoliants in products as diverse as paint scourers and body creams: just the right size and colours to be confused for fish eggs. Plastic particles are small enough to enter the very bottom of the oceanic food chain, eaten by larger creatures plastic trash is accumulating in the stomachs and intestines of most of the world’s sea creatures. In a study of fulmars washed ashore in the North Sea, Richard Thompson (University of Plymouth marine biologist), found 95% had an average of 44 pieces of plastic in their stomachs.

Of course there’s more: from ‘The World Without Us’:

“free-floating toxins from all kinds of sources – copy paper, automobile grease, coolant fluids, old fluorescent tubes, and infamous discharges by General Electric and Monsanto plants directly into streams and rivers – readily stick to the surfaces of free-floating plastic. One study directly correlated ingested plastic with PCBs in the fat tissue of puffins. The astonishing part was the amount . . . the plastic pellets that the birds ate concentrate poisons to levels as high as 1 million times their normal occurrence in seawater.”

What to do? Be aware, be conscious. Don’t buy overpackaged items, support companies which use recycled materials, reuse those recyclables. Avoid plastic bags like the plague . . . and pick up trash.

Seaweed Emulsion

Seaweed along with a good nitrogen supply can deliver everything a plant may want: up to 60 trace elements, natural growth hormones, natural disease control and a great food for beneficial fungi. Strong stuff!
Making the emulsion is simple.

First rinse the seaweed (or let it sit out in a couple of tropical storms!), to leach out salt and sand. Chop enough to fill a bucket then add water – rainwater is best. Adding molasses will speed up the process, a ½ cup will do. Let the bucket sit covered for a week stirring every day to aerate. When a foamy, filmy, yeasty surface develops the emulsion is ready. The emulsion is best diluted, 1 part emulsion to up to 5 parts water. Use as a ground soak or as a foliar spray.

#$%*!

This morning I woke to a dark house, I tried the light. Nothing. It’s not unusual for power cuts, especially after a night of heavy rain, but something felt different. Maybe a branch had knocked down the line. I went to look. I looked and looked at the place where my power line was yesterday, but there was nothing there. There are two power cables leading from the road to the houses. Our neighbour’s was there. They have the higher cable, we the lower. Ours was simply gone. I walked to the road, yes, there about 10 metres in from the road was what was left of our cable, cut and hanging in a sad, naked mess. Someone had stolen the cable. How . . . low. Cables, like everything else in Costa Rica have recently undergone a price hike, cables by 40%. So now people are just stealing them. Can you believe it? I walked back to the house staring at the place where the cable should be. It’s 200 metres from the road to the house, that’s a lot of cable. Then I got worried, what if they came to the house and why didn’t I hear them and why didn’t the dogs bark, and who were they? No point in calling the cops, no point at all. They probably wouldn’t even come out for it. There’s no point, they wouldn’t catch the thieves, and if they did they would in all likelihood be bought off.

Costa Rica is no place for law enforcement. Firstly the police make $200 a month, so bribes are taken just like tips. Secondly the police are never locals. They are stationed in different parts of the country, live in the police station for three weeks and then are moved somewhere else. The idea is that non local cops will not be part of the community and therefore not have family ties or friendships with lawbreakers. Perhaps, but the result is that I who have lived here 10 months can point out the thieves, the drug dealers, the thugs, but the cops who have no frame of reference, can’t. Every time they start with a clean slate – they don’t know where to even begin. And the community is tight, the thief or attacker or dealer is always someone’s brother, son, nephew and the family will take gather round them, maybe even threaten revenge. Then, if the amount stolen is less than $210 it doesn’t count, it’s not really considered theft. If there is no sign of breaking and entering then it’s not treated seriously, the thinking being that the ladron just wandered in and ‘found’ your valuables. And lastly it is fairly acceptable to take from foreigners because we have more. Yes, that last is true, most of the time, but it’s hardwon and certainly not easily replaced. And what the hell kind of reasoning is that anyway????

It’ll cost $700 to replace the cable. For me that’s a month and a half’s wages. And with new cable, who knows if they won’t just come back next week?

This is the kind of thing that makes people leave. Lack of trust is very tiring.

odd

It’s been an odd week. Sunday was a blur with new ideas, high energy and inspiration. Monday was the opposite in every way until a dip in the ocean balanced me out. Tuesday was laden with internet followed by delightful social surprises, and today has been a social buzz for this normal recluse. Talk about extremes and facets. Odd.

I’m working on a web site which I’m excited about. All my confusion and conflicted emotions around land purchase in this area finally burst with an idea: a guide to responsible land purchase in Costa Rica. Rather simple, but something I can get behind, at least feel I’m doing something. It’s a work in process, I’ll publish the url when I can. Thank you to Bryan for working on the site and Jon for critiquing.

Another idea: I want a stall at the farmers’ market. Two reasons: firstly I have some beautiful organic wild harvested and homegrown goodies, and secondly I think I need to make some effort at being social, and the farmers’ market is the one place where everyone gathers. Okay, a third: I like making things. So today Heather and I trooped to the beach and gathered seaweed to make seaweed emulsion, and noni for noni tea.

worthy reads

I’m reading a couple of books just now: ‘Sea Change: A Message of the Oceans’, by Sylvia Earle, and ‘The World Without Us’ by Alan Weisman. ‘Sea Change’ is part memoir, part natural history, part warning about what we are doing to the world’s oceans. Full of beautiful descriptions of sea creatures from Humpback whales to the bioluminescence of millions of krill, Earle fills you with the beauty in the first part and then delivers a strong message of what we are doing, exactly, to Humpbacks and krill in the second. Having lived almost all my life near the coast watching sea water – slate grey, black brown, green, turquoise blue, lap against shores – boulders, shingle, shells, red, black or white sand, I’ve had the greatest respect for the ocean, and a total ignorance of what really happens below those waters. With Earle’s book, and I just finished, ‘Underwater to get out of the Rain’ by Trevor Norton, I’m learning a little more and becoming increasingly convinced about what we have to do to keep our world a livable environment.
I’m re-reading ‘The World Without Us’. This is a brilliant ecology book. It delves into what would happen if humans were to suddenly and completely disappear. Thus it takes a very serious, and potentially incredibly depressing subject – what we are doing to our planet, and works backwards, outlining the way nature would rebalance the environment. It’s a fascinating read and while it delivers a powerful illustration of how, especially in the last 50 years or so, we have really damaged the planet, it’s written with such affection for both humanity and nature that one feels that recovery is not only possible, but probable. I really believe that this book should be required reading in every 10th grade class. And again in every University.

Starfruit and Chili Preserve

1 pound starfruit
3 – 4 chilies, depending on taste and heat of chili
Juice of 1 lime
2 inches ginger
½ cup unrefined sugar
salt
½ teaspoon of cinnamon, optional

Finely chop all ingredients and cook uncovered over low heat for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. You may need to add a little water, red wine or orange juice. While hot pour into sterilized jars. A sweet sour spicy preserve, great with cheese and bread. I can imagine it would be wonderful with stilton (not having tasted stilton in 2 years, I can only imagine).

Starfruit (Carambola) Salsa

2 starfruit
Juice of ½ lime
½ chili, or to taste
2 teaspoons of unrefined sugar or 1 teaspoon of honey
½ red onion
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
salt

Finely chop the starfruit, onion and chili. Mix all ingredients together and leave to blend for at least 2 hours. Serve with tortilla chips.

today's harvest

Today was a good day: 2 pineapples, two handfuls of cherry tomatoes and a dozen starfruit (carambola). The beds I made by piling heaps of dead leaves over and again has become the most delicious compost. I started the piles 3 months ago. The only issue I can see is that it looks like it needs nitrogen – some west Indian creeper was growing from it and the leaves were much more yellow than the patch growing from the clay soil beside it.
I was very happy to take the starfruit: it’s the first time the tree has given fruit and there is quite a lot, it’s difficult to see as the fruit is the same colour as many of the leaves and each side of the fruit is the same shape as the leaf, so you have to be standing at the right angle to see the fruit. I made a chili relish and a salsa.

waking frog

A red eyed tree frog visited last night and spent the day sleeping on the deck. Sleeping he’s paler, the colour of a banana leaf, and in profile he is streamlined, clamped tight shut against the surface he’s clinging to, all limbs tucked in. Above he is green, below he is pale yellow with blue or purple vertical stripes on his sides and orange and blue legs with big orange feet. His eyes are blood red with a black elliptical pupil.
I happened to be passing him at dusk just as he awoke. He was several shades of darker green, like the colour of a old fern. He raised up and stretched just like a cat, arching his back, straining his skinny legs so they shook with the stretch. And he yawned. I’ve never seen a frog yawn before, it was the same as you or I, a great big mouthed gape and the skin of his neck folded upon itself several times. He closed his mouth and blinked and then with one leap jumped over 8 times his length and landed on a vertical post in the most perfect impersonation of spiderman: you know the pose with back legs apart and crouched, hands almost together below his chest? At that very moment the frog chorus began and he turned his head to the direction of the closest sounds. He looked very alert, clearly listening and watching and then off he went in great bounds towards the others.

Addendum:
This morning I shared the bathroom with a toad. He was delightfully full and round and his front legs were bent out at the elbows, his feet tucked under him like an old man with rickets. The line of his mouth took up the bottom of his head, such a wide mouth, I think as wide as mine. He was an olive brown above and a muddy cream below. His eyes were black and he watched me with his head slightly cocked. I marveled at the difference between this stately, rotund, placid fellow and last night’s athlete with the spiderman crawl and the go faster stripes.

muscle rub

A good long day in the garden can leave muscles sore and tight. This recipe makes a super simple and effective muscle rub which also eases sprains. And it’s actually good enough to eat.

Wide mouthed jar
Sesame oil
Ginger
Turmeric
Lemongrass

Fill the wide mouthed jar 2/3rds full with grated ginger and turmeric and finely chopped lemongrass, add sesame oil to fill the jar. Screw on lid and shake vigorously. Leave in a warm spot for up to two weeks shaking daily. After two weeks strain oil into dark glass bottle. Spread this warming, relaxing oil into sore muscles or sprains.

If you live in the new world tropics, add juanilama, hoja de estrella and zorillo for a super muscle rub / insect bite oil.