Author Archives: Britton

The Ups and Downs of Life

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First the good news:

We have been looking for screen doors for the cabana since we got here.  We checked the Home Depot in Mayaguez and they simply don’t sell them.  They don’t sell the aluminum frames to make them either.  We had heard that there are people who will make them but we just hadn’t either taken the time to find them or they were hard to find.  Not sure which.

One day when we were traveling up to our friends house in Pico Atalya and we passed Rincón Aluminum Works.   We stopped in and asked about screen doors and they asked us for our phone number in return.  Well we don’t have a phone.  This makes it a little more difficult for things like appointments.  We gave them our directions and crossed our fingers that they would find us.  We didn’t see them on the day we figured they would be around so we stopped back by on another day.  They hopped in a truck and met us at the house!  Measurements were taken and we gave them a deposit.

Well today they showed up for the installation!  I am not really used to watching while someone else works, which is sometimes nice and refreshing.  Especially after our whirlwind of sadness that occurred just a few days earlier (more on that below).

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Installation of the Back Door

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New Screen Doors Installed!

Now for the bad news…. The other day early in the morning we found 2 of our neighbors dogs in the yard.  At first we thought a dog was just giving the little turkeys a hard time in their cage, then we saw a dead rooster and another of their dogs running about.  We later came to find a total of 4 of our birds had been killed.

Roosty
Roosty Under a small Tree

It was hard to wake up to this and has been another life lesson.  Life and death is something that we seem to encounter more directly and more often with our new life here than we ever were back in the suburban life we had in Colorado.  We often have conversations about what it feels like to see death because it usually is hidden.  This is why when I brought the dogs back to their owner I also carried along the carcass of a dead chicken;  Trying to emphasize and share what his lack of responsibility had caused, and that there are implications that we had to deal with even if he didn’t.  What makes it more difficult is that we are friends with dogs owner and that adds a lot of complications to the matter.

Another interesting thing we have noticed is that generally speaking, people don’t seem to care about a chicken.  We found this out when we petitioned the city of Greeley trying to allow people to have a small flock of backyard chickens.  The attitudes towards these animals by the general population is so radically different than that of dogs and cats.  Chickens aren’t on what I call the “love list”.

We have chickens not only as a source of food (eggs) but we also enjoy watching them and raising them from chicks and as pets, so it should be no surprise that when they are killed, it hurts.  The only similar thing we can liken this to is to imagine that your dog, or dogs, were brutally killed by another persons animal.  If this had happened the outpour of sympathy would be apparent!  When you tell someone that 4 of your chickens died, it’s like “Oh….and??”.   Even from the organization who was in charge of fostering the animal that killed them gave a similar response.  Aren’t they supposed to be animal lovers?

I suppose there is a love list and an order of priority with worms somewhere at the bottom and human children at the top.  The children of ones own country being above all other countries.  I’ve noticed this pattern before and see it yet again.

Needless to say we are really on guard for dogs as potential threats to our chickens and they are once again locked inside the coop.  We had done this for the hawks, but the chickens had grown to a size where the hawks ‘were no longer an issue.  It is hard and disheartening and takes a lot of momentum away from us to have setbacks like this.  Discouraged and deflated for a few days questioning what we were doing and trying to achieve.

So the screen doors gave us a renewed sense that all is not lost, there will be ups and downs and try to know that we need to accept the things we cannot change, have the courage to change the things we can and have the wisdom to understand the difference.

Power Down

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Power was out all day yesterday 6am-10pm.  This also means that the water is out because they use pumping stations to get the water up the hills and to the houses.  It isn’t uncommon to have the power out, but it usually comes back on within an hour or so.  Many of the houses here have water tanks on the roofs and generators; we don’t.

When the power is out to the neighborhood we can hear the generators humming in the background.  It makes me wonder what they’re powering in the middle of the day?  Almost all the stoves here are gas and a fridge will hold its cold like a cooler for hours on end if not a day if you don’t open it.  Are they watching TV?  Running an air conditioner?  I can only speculate.

For us we still have water that flows in the pipes because we live at the bottom of the hill.  We both had enough to take cold, quick showers (lower pressure), watered all the plants and even filled our swimming pool but we eventually ran dry.

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Enjoying a cold popsicle before it melts while dipping my toes in the pool

We found out that we became more ingenuitive.  We were using the pool water to fill the chicken and turkey waterers, we were using battery power on the laptop to watch TV and movies, used fire to cook and even caught rain from the sky to drink.  Eventually we realized that we really don’t have to do anything or be anywhere so we slept…a lot.  It was a power down for us too.

Later that night we went for a drive to meet up with a friend and saw that the whole town was without power.  Stores were closed, places were dark.  Signs everywhere “No hay luz”.  People were playing dominoes under the city building lights that obviously had a backup generator, there were people at the beach sitting around drinking in the dark.  I suppose these folks also realized they didn’t have to be anywhere either and there wasn’t a way to force that to change.

So it also becomes a practice in patience and not having control.  We noticed it aroused a lot of anxiety in some people too, especially when the repairs were ‘supposed to be done at 4pm’ and the lights were still out and there was no internet to tell us what to do! When people are out of power, some feel out of control, powerless!

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The light of the moon seems brighter when there is no other light

Not having these basic services makes me reflect upon how dependent/independent I am on services and how dependent society as a whole is upon them.  We were dependent upon it because of the food we keep in the fridge, yet independent because we can pick some fruit, kill a chicken or iguana and eat it fresh on a fire with no need for electricity if we needed to.  We use city water but can catch it from the sky.  It sparked conversations about consumerism, survivalism and humanity.  As consumers we look to buy gadgets to fix things we perceive as a problem like buying a generator or tanks to hold water.  As homesteaders we try to look to ourselves and resources on hand to satisfy those needs and purchasing as a last resort.  The realization is that independence is both essential and impossible at this stage in time.

For now things are back online in Rincón. Electricity, water, internet and even the trash trucks are doing their thing.  I think it is a good thing to go without services every once in a while.

 

Earthquakes too?

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Cassie and I were in the cabana making dinner when all of a sudden things started to shake….Then they continued to shake.  Then they shook a little more.  Turns out we had just experienced our first PR earthquake!  It was located closer to the Dominican Republic, but most of Puerto Rico felt it. The USGS reported it as 5.3 then updated to 5.8 at a depth of 91km.

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USGS Reporting Website

I guess we can add earthquakes to the list of new experiences.  It is a strange feeling when the earth grinds against itself for a pretty long while.  There was an earthquake back in Greeley when I was a kid (maybe kindergarten?) but I all I remember was the adults freaking out about it.

Life’s Twists and Turns and a Tropical Treehouse

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The last few weeks have had an interesting theme.  That theme apparently is my old neighborhood friends.  Last week my friend Matt came out to buy a place of his own in Rincón.  We grew up just across the street from each and have been friends since I moved there in 3rd grade.  We have a lot in common and now we also have Rincón in common!

IMG_5235Hanging out at Matt and Jamie’s in Atalya

Another good friend of mine, Logan who lived just up the street has also moved to Puerto Rico and lives in Fajardo!  He moved to the island about a month before we did!  He came over to the west side of the island over the weekend to visit us and Rincón!  They stayed in the hooch tropical treehouses.  It is a pretty cool place with trails cut thru the jungle and lots of bamboo growing.  It was a cool backdrop or scene as if out of a movie to see an old friend.

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Britton, Cassie, Logan and Karin

The bamboo hooches are pretty cool.  We were all pretty impressed by their construction and the jungle area that surrounds them.  The owners have put a lot of work into the area and it shows.

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One of the Hooches

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Bamboo Growing

It would seem that pretty soon the whole neighborhood will be here.  How unusual is it that we all came to a place that we hadn’t ever heard of?  Maybe it is a function of us living in CO and not having the tropical experience?  Maybe there is some kind of cosmic connection?  Not sure but seeing everyone here in the span of a week makes me wonder.