Category Archives: Tropical Plants and Food

Spring Update at La Finca

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We figured it might be a good time to post some updates on the progress we have made on various projects that we’ve written about.  Looking back it becomes apparent that we have made quite a bit of progress!

Gateway now
Overgrown -Shortly after we moved here

Cleared
Cut Way Back -Now

There are quite a few royal palms, mango and almond trees hidden in the background that we are still working to uncover.  Huge beautiful trees that are simply buried by all the growth.  Below is a picture of a small royal we finally got to after taking down countless other trees that sprung up over the years.

Logs
Small Royal Palm

The area that is over grown is super cool to walk around because you get inside the jungle and under the canopy.  We aren’t going to continue cutting down too much further except to expose some of these hidden gems.  We want to keep the forest in tact as much as possible and make pathways thru it, plus some plants and trees we want to grow thrive on the shade.  The turkeys will like it there too.

Jungle Path
Path Into the Forest

Jungle
Shaded Area


Turn the sound up to hear all the birds/sounds!

The gardens we have planted all seem to be doing pretty good.  The lettuce is doing well and we’ve been able to start eating it.  The giant pumpkins we planted are flowering and growing all over the place.  The amaranth is just now starting to take off and the corn seems to like it here.  Pretty much everything is growing that we have tried.

Amaranth
Amaranth

Cilantro
Cilantro

Corn
Pop Corn

Romaine
Romaine Lettuce

Pumpkin Flower
Pumpkin Flower

Lime Tree
Limes on our New Tree

Jobo Blossoms
Jobo Blossoms

Peanut
Peanuts

We also finished up the coop and moved all the chickens into it.  They have lots of room.  Cassie and I also decided to build a porch on the front so we can sit down after working in the yard.  It is nice to have somewhere flat and shaded to park some chairs.  We’ve gone full hillbilly.  I just need a banjo.

Coop Front
Porch on the coop

Coop Side
Side view

Almost all of the chickens are doing good.  I say almost because there was one incident where our little friend Mohawk got taken by…A hawk.  Maybe we should have named her “Lesshawk”? Polish hens are well known as being ‘hawk bait’ because they have poor eyesight especially from above.

We had been letting the chicks out and they were foraging for food behind the coop.  We were sitting on the deck and out of nowhere a large red tailed hawk swooped down at the chicks.  Most of them ran, but poor Mohawk didn’t run.  Mohawk: “Huh, where did everybody go?”

Lesson learned.  It’s too soon to let them out.

I think the hawk is going to be the most formidable opponent to our chickens.  We want to let our roosters grow up as we have read that while a red tailed hawk might attack a full sized hen, it would have to eat it on the ground.  The roosters would attack the hawk.  So it might be a deterrent.  The other option is to make a chicken run but we really want to free range them.  We hope that when the chickens are full size, the hawks won’t prey on them (often).  I might need to scare them off with some firecrackers and other assorted toys (R/C airplane?).

We did get a few roosters and one that is a Jersey Giant and should grow to 10lbs +.  Google them, they are HUGE birds.  I mean…Huge.  Hopefully it isn’t too mean to us..lol.

Chicks Chillin
Chicks Roosting in the Coop (Chicken guessers, what breed is the front chicken?(hint: 5 toes)

All in all things are shaping up as we planned and we are having a lot of fun in the process.  We have lots of mangoes falling on the roof of the cabana and can’t wait until they are fully ripe so we can start eating them!  Spring in the tropics is much like the warmest days back in CO except that you will never be surprised by a random winter blizzard.

We bought a lawn mower to help keep things under control.  I do think I’ll need a riding mower someday but we will see how it goes.
Mower

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Ag Fair in Mayaguez =4 More in the Flock

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There was an agricultural fair going on in Mayaguez this past week and our neighbor who is a student there encouraged us to meet him there and check it out. It was really fun and right up our alley. They had lots of exotic plant vendors, the USDA, and other agricultural organizations. They also had farm animals in one of the tents as well as fair food and crafts.

Ag Fair in Mayaguez

Univ of Mayaguez Pigs

I was like a kid in a candy store and was so excited about all the different plants and animals. We picked up a large lime tree that was already producing limes. We also saw a huge pen full of dyed baby chicks that they were selling for $2.

Colored chicks

The practice of dyeing chicks colors is generally safe as long as they use food grade dyes. However, there are some concerns  about the practice most notably that people often will buy a baby chick like this as a novelty item not intending to actually raise the chicken and so they get thrown away. We didn’t buy any but it was pretty tempting especially at that price.

Our friends, however, also visited the fair and they knew we were set up for chickens, so they bought four of them and played with them for the day and then brought them to us. They are so small especially compared with our now 6 week old chickens. We weren’t sure how they would work all together adding in such young ones, but they are fine! Because there are some older pullets in the flock that are watching out for them, we don’t even need to put them under a heat lamp. They just huddle under the older birds’ feathers at night.

Colorful chicks
Our friends named them already: Grinch, Tanner and Smurf shown here. Also not shown is another one called Black Eyed Peep.

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It’s Growing Good Here!

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Britton and I were talking the other day about seasons and how here in Puerto Rico most people just refer to the seasons as the dry season (or high season for tourists) which is the winter and the wet season (or low season) which is summer. But there does seem to be some sort of spring going on right now. I watch the weed seeds emerging and many of the trees are in bloom and setting out new growth.

Mango Tree blossomsMango babies!

I would say we planted our test gardens at the right time as they have really taken off. The light spectrum/photoperiod seems to be different here and things seem to flower earlier than they did in the long days of Colorado summers. Still, I think our gardens will produce a good amount of food.

Garden
Everything is growing well: cucumbers, melon, giant pumpkins, lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes, chard, arugula, peppers, carrots

And we have made a lot of progress in the clearing of the acreage below. It’s hard work clearing out overgrown land that has been taken over by trees and vines for the last 20 years. We finally have some room to move around a bit more. We will soon be planting more fruit trees just in time for the rainy weather to keep them hydrated so that we won’t have to water them by hand anymore.

House and land

 

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BK The Termite aka Chainsawing the Jungle

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I have really been enjoying the labor savings a chainsaw provides when clearing our property.  There is kind of an art to it as well.  I have read a few books/manuals on felling a tree as well as bucking it once it has fallen.  There are a few forces that aren’t covered in any of the manuals that I’ve come across here that adds an element of danger.  Vines.

The vines bind the trees at the top creating a hinge point that doesn’t allow the trees to fall as they normally would.  I’ve had trees that literally hang in mid air once  the trunk has been chopped.  The only way to get them down is to either wait for the wind to work them down, or to take the surrounding trees down with it as a group.  It requires a little more thinking and planning.

Still Standing
Algarrobos Tree (BK standing at the base)

Of course all the fun is over when the tree is on the ground, then the bucking and chopping starts to get it into manageable sizes.  The tree being cut down here is an Algarrobos and is about 60 foot tall.  These particular trees can grow up to 150 feet with a 6 foot diameter base.  I think the trunk on this one was maybe 12 inches in diameter.  We kept calling them “eyeglass case” trees because the fruit look like leather cases you would keep your eyeglasses in. The fruits are inedible, but the wood is more useful than most of the other weedy trees.

Eyeglass FruitEyeglass Case Looking Seed Pod

With the chainsaw as I said, you can make a hinge that will guide the tree where to fall.  This particular cut is going a little against how the tree would naturally fall, which is why we had to wait for the wind to take it.  The hinge technique worked perfectly and it fell exactly where I wanted it to.  It’s fun to learn and use new tools.

Once it is down the processing begins!  The trunk is straight and I think we can make use of it.  It is kind of sad to cut down a tree that has been growing for a long while.  We are connected to it in a way that I’ve never really thought of before.  I mean I’ve bought wood furniture, firewood, wood to make fences and build houses but I’ve never actually been a part of the process of killing it and chopping it up.  It makes you appreciate it more, just as growing fruit trees, vegetable seeds and animals make us appreciate our food much more. We feel so much more connected to everything here.

Hardwood

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