Agua y luz. Water and electricity. When you move into a house, this is what makes it a house and not just a shed or storage area. We recently finished up the electricity installation including the fans and it really makes it feel like home when you can just turn on the lights at night, the fans when it gets hot, or turn on a little music.
Outdoor fans for the front deck
Britton also framed in the last bit of the wall and the bathroom loft area. We are in the home stretch!
Bedroom fan and framed wall
Rafters above the bathroom and closet
To install water at the cabin, Britton connected about 300 feet of 1/2 inch tubing, buried about half of it, crossed the property, affixed it beneath the sky bridge and then connected it to the cabin.
Waterline where it travels under the bridge
Waterline where it connects from the bridge to the cabin
Next up was internal copper water lines which Britton soldered. Thankfully we have plenty of leftover copper pipes that we reused from the old wooden house and so this was fairly inexpensive. Britton has also worked a little with copper piping before and so this went fast. There was one pipe rupture but Britton fixed it pretty quickly.
Bathroom plumbing and wiring are ready!
You could call this the house that Britton built. Almost everything he did himself or with one other helper. There has not been a moment when he was not working hands on. An amazing feat. It can take a little longer when it’s just you and you’re learning as you go, but he has been a champ. He’s done a great job!
We are now on to the next phase. The skin. Drywall should arrive this upcoming week and Britton and Waldemar will begin installation. It’s all coming together and really starting to feel like a house. I can’t wait to move in!
It’s summertime and that means things are slow and hot. There are often afternoon rains and everything is super green and beautiful. Lots of fruits are ripe and the flowers are in their showiest state. We also have a few new additions to the farm.
Mail arrival of some new chicks
The chickens and turkeys are doing a pretty good job at reproducing, but we wanted to add in some new genetics to the mix. We shared the order with some friends who are new to chickens and it’s been fun to watch them enjoy chickens for the first time. They are just so super cute when they are recently hatched. Pretty amazing that a little more than 21 days before, they were just eggs! What life energy!
Three of 12 new additions!
We love to eat eggs around here and there is also quite a demand for local, pasture raised chicken eggs. So we thought we would put more of a focus on that side of the homestead.
The rain this time of year can also mean power or water outages. One afternoon the water, electricity and internet went out for about 3 hours. So we decided to go out and have a beer and watch the sunset. Reminds you not to worry so much. Worrying about infrastructure and thinking you could surely do it better than it currently is handled is a classic sign you are still stuck in the old Type A mindset filled with watches, schedules and to-do lists. When you are here things go much smoother if you just go with the island flow. Do what you can, let your voice be heard but don’t worry; they’re working on it. It’s just a little harder on a very mountainous island with limited resources, high heat and a more even work/rest balance.
Enjoying a gorgeous sunset at the balneario in Aguada
When these services go out, it’s a reminder that it’s all man-made. They certainly make life more comfortable. It’s pretty darn hot without even a fan blowing on you. But having them go out reminds you that you should probably have a backup water and electric plan and it definitely helps you appreciate them more than when they are just a given.
We have also been having some really great summer jam sessions with the band. It’s so laid back and chill and we’ve been making some really cool grooves. We jam with new people sometimes that just pop in. Our jam space at Mark’s is very unique. We even made a song called Jam Space, and as you can see in this picture below, Mark’s wife, Robin, made an awesome record for the wall of the song. ~~When the lights go down, you can hear the sounds, of eerie moves and funky grooves. It’s a rather magic place, that we call our jam space.~~
Such a cool jam space and crew of people
The finca is doing well. Summer is the most fruitful season of all. More and more fruits are coming on board. We recently harvested our first corazón fruit (annona reticulata). Very interesting! Semi-sweet with a grainy pear like custard consistency. I’ve read that it is related to guanabana or soursop which makes sense because it looks similar inside. At first it is so weird we didn’t want to eat it, but once we started we just couldn’t stop. Such a Willy Wonka world of fruit here! We’ve found that like children your first inclination is to not like something, but the more exposures you have to a certain food the more you begin to like it and then eventually love it. I would say corazón will soon be a favorite of ours the more we have it.
Corazón does sort of look like a heart – whole and half eaten
When we are out working on the farm we have to watch out to not step on iguanas! They are so fearless of humans, sometimes we see them AFTER we have stepped on their tails and they run off! I know they have become invasive pests of the island, but it still gets me every time that we basically have fricken dinosaurs just roaming free everywhere! Not to mention an easy source of clean meat if it came down to it!
Iguanas are still out en force! Our finca is an uncaged zoo of them really!
It was also recently the primary election season here in Puerto Rico. Mostly it was related to senate and mayoral races, though people can vote in the primaries for the US. Too bad we can’t actually vote in the generals though! There were major caravanas (groups of cars with lights and speakers) and you wouldn’t want to accidently get stuck behind one of them or your plans for the day will include a caravan party for a few hours! A different sort of summer jam!
Elections mean posters, murals and speaker trucks of the candidate
Though Zika messaging is getting out, it doesn’t seem to really have changed anyone’s behavior that I have noticed. I thought this billboard in Mayaguez was kind of funny and misleading. Do you want Sex without Zika? Such a funny question in and of itself. Yes, the Zika virus can spread through sex, but no, they don’t put mosquito repellent in condoms!
Do you want sex without Zika? A lot of funny assumptions in this question
We are currently working on the water hook-ups for the cabin. Britton dug a trench and placed water line from the turkey coop all the way to the cabin. He is now working on the copper interior water lines.
Water line connects at the turkey coop and travels 300 feet to the cabin
It’s summertime and the living is easy. It’s a nice pace. Not many people on the road. Most everyone who is here is here because they want to be. Full-timers. There are some tourists, but they are mainly from other parts of the island and so there is less confusion and hiccups. There are events like the caminata of some guy to raise money for a children’s hospital and the Rincón Triathlon and of course the hot sauce contest coming up. And the flamboyans are majestically fantastic. Summer in Puerto Rico is a special time.
We have been thinking about downsizing our turkey flock now for a while. We really only need one or two toms around to fertilize the girls. The boys tend to fight a lot with each other and a chorus of four gobblers can be a bit much when an airplane flies overhead for instance. (I imagine them thinking HOLY GOBBLE THAT’S A BIG GOBBLE HAWK GOBBLE GOOBLE.)
These guys are so funny and follow us everywhere
Then we had the mama come out of the jungle with 13!! babies and we knew for sure. We could harvest them for food but it’s pretty time intensive and difficult since we don’t have an operational full-sized fridge. So I listed them on a Facebook sale page as well as Clasificadosonline. Within a week we had sold 2 adult females (hembras), a male (macho) and 3 babies (pavitos) with 3 others sold on hold. Even with keeping some for ourselves, we still had more to sell though! So a friend reminded us of the San Sebastian flea market AKA Pulguero which is especially known for all the plants and animals.
When we visited the San Sebastian Pulguero years ago. Not much different today!
This market is one of the largest on the west side of the island and is open from late Thursday until late Friday (like midnight late from what I understand). It hasn’t changed much since we visited it when we were here on vacation years ago. But it is sort of funny how we have changed from the customer looky-loo that we were to being the supplier. I think of it almost like when we visited we were viewers of the movie that is Puerto Rico and now we are players/actors in the show.
Getting everyone loaded up for their first drive!
Anyhow…we weren’t sure what to expect since we don’t have the permisos to be vendors there. But our friend assured us that if we just sold them out of our truck we’d be fine. He even lent us some cages for the birds. So Friday morning we loaded up a pareja (pair) as well as 5 pavitos. We really don’t need to sell any more females, but some people want to buy them together to start their own little flock so she came along as the other side of the pair.
When we arrived at the Pulguero we weren’t sure what to do. So I asked Britton if he’d rather stay with the birds and the truck or do the walk through and see what we could find out. He said he’d stay. I walked through the whole winding path and saw many interesting things. Then I saw a guy who was selling turkeys and thought maybe we could sell wholesale to him. We talked for a while (in Spanish) and he said he didn’t have space for the adults, but I got the feeling I could talk him into buying the pavitos. By the time I returned back to the truck to tell Britton, he was gone. And so was one of our big boys!
I waited for a while and when he returned he said he sold our macho only about 5 minutes after I left -in his broken Spanish no less! ¡Buen trabajo! And that it was a good thing he did because the security guard came up shortly thereafter and said that people are only allowed to sell out of their vehicles in the parking lot until about 10am and it was by then about 1pm. Well, we still had our hembra and the 5 pavitos. Should we just go back home? I told Britton about the man with the turkey stall and so we decided to take the pavitos to him…hey we’re not selling them in the parking lot right?! 😉
Britton carrying the pavitos through the pulguero
We got to the guy and he kept regateando to the point that we just went across to another bird stall where an old-school guy thumped the cage to make sure they all could stand and then bought them right then and there! Not too bad for our first pulguero! And little pava got to ride back with us and join her friends.
On our way home we were hungry and stopped at this place that I thought was sort of charming and funny. Stuffed hamburgers and coffee….hmm interesting combination.
The House of the Stuffed Hamburger
I’m so glad we did. They made super good, inexpensive coffee and Britton was really happy with his hand stuffed hamburger. Hamburgers are one of his favorite foods, but we try to avoid any corporate crap fast food and we want to support local businesses that truly invest in and with Puerto Rico. So this was a great find and cost less than a chain anyway! We talked with the owner a bit and he said he is thinking of opening a shop in Rincón because business is better there. Please do!
Yummy latte
Hey, are you calling me a pig? A piggy ketchup design with burger and plantain fries and a delicious fresh goumet salad!
A fun productive day out and about in San Sebastian!
Well needless to say building a house is hard. It makes it harder when you’ve never done it before. I suppose that is true of everything though and I love a good challenge. I haven’t ever worked with concrete besides putting in fence posts so there has been a bit of a learning curve. Here is a good example of this learning process….
We are working on building basement walls under the house. In doing so I had to build wood forms between the columns that support the house. We used concrete nails to attach wood forms to the columns. Normally this would be fine. What I noticed was one of the columns was very brittle. In fact when we were putting nails in, entire chunks of concrete broke off….
Building Forms Between Columns
We had been suspicious of this particular column since it was made. We had a few people look at it and everyone said something to the effect of, “Oh it’s fine”. I figured that if there was a problem, it would probably be apparent so we have been moving forward with other tasks. When I saw the chunks break off though, I knew that it had become an apparent problem.
When we made the columns we didn’t have a concrete mixer. Now that I do, it is much easier to keep the mix very consistent. I can now readily notice concrete that has the correct level of cement and that was cured properly.
No Cement Mixer
Original Forms
So how do you replace a column that your house is resting on? I did some research on jacking up houses. It is something that is done from time to time so there is actually some information on the subject. Usually people will lift an entire house off its foundation to do repair work. I wasn’t sure how much weight I was dealing with or what kind of jack I might need. After reading up, it turns out that a wood house isn’t really all that heavy (compared to a concrete house). 2x4s plywood, 2x8s and roofing panels. So I settled on a 6 ton bottle jack.
I really only needed to lift the house about 1/8th of an inch off the corner column. Just enough so I could whack the column out with a sledge hammer. The jack worked well for this.
I have never liked being under heavy stuff. Cars on jacks scare the living crap out of me. I just never feel safe. Being under a house on jack stands is even worse, especially when it starts to creek and moan. Online forums had prepared me for this saying that the house will make noise. Even just 1/8th of an inch. Go slowly.
I then was able to pound out the column down to rebar. It was at this point I knew I had made the right decision, it was ridiculously brittle. It took no time at all to remove the column, it basically just crumbled apart.
Column Down to Rebar
I have learned a lot about concrete in a short amount of time. The mix of rocks, sand, cement and water is extremely important to get right. Curing is also important. When we made these columns I had trusted that the guys had made concrete before and knew what they were doing. And for the most part they did, the other 11 columns are fine. It was just this first column that was poured that either didn’t have enough cement OR didn’t have enough water. I think it was a lack of water.
Another part of working with concrete is making forms. The forms are the molds. You have to make them very strong because they will be holding quite a lot of wet concrete and it is very heavy. I have heard of stories of forms busting and cement spilling everywhere. Even a man in line at home depot told me a story of a form breaking. Then you have a real mess on your hands.
I also had to think about how I was going to pour the concrete into this form. The house rests on it so there isn’t any room above. I also wouldn’t be able to pump the concrete in. I decided to make a little scoop on the side of the form where I could pour concrete in.
Also important is to use a bonding agent when trying to join cured hard concrete to wet fresh stuff. I used some bull bond on the existing walls where the column was going to be. There is also rebar that joins them. The connection should be sufficiently strong.
New Column and Half Wall
All said and done, the new column is fantastic compared to the old one, not that it looks all that different. I have no worries about it now. Looking back I can’t believe that I jacked the house up, took out the column and poured a new one. It seems kind of crazy. Its all done now and I have moved on to other problems, which is a good thing.
Rafters above the bathroom and closet 
