Pandemic Update
It is Sunday today, so we are in lockdown. All weekends now are total lockdown and weekdays are open in the morning until 7pm and then you must be in your home again. 

After 6 months of people being unemployed and no travel allowed, the country has decided to open up a few more things starting tomorrow. People will be allowed to get their 1st haircut in 6 months with an appointment and limited occupancy in salons. Some retail stores can open up again and deliver your purchases to you outside. I am not sure how that will go, since most retail stores here do not have online stores and if they do, they are not updated with any regularity. I guess we will see. The stores have to jump through some hoops to prove they have a Covid-19 committee formed and sanitary measures are all being followed. After they get your certificate, they are allowed to operate with many limitations. I am not sure how many places will actually be open or who have received their certificate yet. Also, I am not sure how many places still exist after being closed for 6 months.

The airport might open at the end of the month. Right now, they are only open for humanitarian flights and some cargo. A few of the airlines have announced flights beginning in September. The country is only allowing citizens and residence to fly back and that is if you get a negative covid test within 48 hours of flying to Panama. Then you must self quarantine for 14 days while they monitor you. 

Schools are still being conducted online and the school year is close to 2/3 over. My son has his trimester exams at the end of the month.

Stores have limited supplies. Most of the food basics are being offered in the stores, but a person has to be very willing to go with alternative options right now. For the last couple of weeks, it has been hard to find onions. Sometimes, it might be dish detergent that is hard to find.....you never know!

Last week while I was getting everything together before the weekend lockdown, the stores were out of propane. Panama uses propane tanks and do not have any natural gas lines. 

I am hoping that someday we can get back to normal, this new normal is not working very well. 

Ducks
Our farm now has 8 new ducklings. They like their little house so well, that we have to close it up during the day forcing them to explore. :)

Things to know about our ducks:

• Each duck poops about 100 times a day, that is 800 duck poops the farm gets each day. They are little fertilizing machines!
• Once they are bigger, they will eat about 2 pounds (almost 1 kilo) of bugs a day. Living next to the jungle and having a crop of coffee trees means we have plenty of bugs to keep them well fed and entertained. Best pest control we could ask for.
• Duck food is not sold in Panama or at least not that we have found. They are eating chicken feed right now to supplement their foraging. Chicken feed does not have niacin which is a key ingredient for ducks. So far, I have not found Brewers Yeast (great source of niacin,) but I did find 1 bottle of niacin capsules for humans. So, we either add the niacin to their water or feed treats that are good for their development. (They prefer Rick to hand feed them their peas.)
• Our ducks are scared of everything and want someone to lead them around, but yet they are scared of anyone that might lead them. So, you walk by them and pretend you do not see them and they will follow you. :)
• They do not have feathers yet and are not waterproof and cannot control their body temperature well. However, if it is raining, they get so excited and play in the mud puddles until they are too cold and forget how to warm up in their house. Rick and I had to go out in the heavy rain last night and shoo them from under the truck into their house with the warm light. I was laughing too hard as they were circling our truck and Rick was having no luck by himself. Round 2 with both of us finally worked.

Coffee
Tomorrow we will also start our harvest. There are a few coffee trees ready to have their first picking. Normally, I am excited when harvest starts, but this year the Mayor is putting restrictions on people that pick coffee, due to the virus. The last message I read from the Mayor said that workers could only pick from 1 farm and would not be allowed to move from farm to farm.

Typically, a group of good pickers would work on a farm for a couple of days until all of the ripe cherries were picked and then they would move to the next farm for a few days. They continue to do this for 2 weeks and then circle back to the 1st farm and start all over. If they are only allowed to work at 1 farm this year, it is better for them to work at a very large coffee farm where they would have more days of work than a small farm with only 2-3 days of work every 2 weeks. 

Without pickers, we may be forced to try and pick the entire farm ourselves. Not that I do not pick cherries every year, because I do.....but Melvin is pretty sure I am one of the slowest pickers ever. Haha. 

We usually have about 6 pickers and 3 people processing (Rick, Roger and Melvin.) Last year, I did not help at all because I had torn my Achilles Tendon and was recovering from surgery. I think I only helped with: cooking, feeding everyone, paying them at the end of each day, scheduling...things like that.

We are working through some options now and trying to be creative for this year's harvest. 

Achilles Tendon
It has been a year since I had my surgery and I had hoped that everything would be great by now. Unfortunately, either something went wrong with the surgery or when the country shut down and I had to stop physical therapy something went wrong......not sure what happened. At this point, my muscles and all of the other parts did not heal correctly and without a completely new surgery to fix it, I will never be close to normal again. I limp, I have trouble walking uphill, no running or jumping, the list goes on. Now that limited physical therapy is available again, I might improve a little. So, not good news, but at least I am able to walk...it could be worse. I already had my day of pity, so now it is time to just move forward.

I think that is the theme for 2020, just keep moving forward even if it is small little steps at a time. 

Generator
Last year, we splurged on a generator for the house. The power here in Panama is not stable, and costs roughly the same per month that we were paying in the USA. The power generally goes out at least 5 times a week. Usually it is only for a few minutes, but if there is any heavy storms, it will go out for hours at a time. Then if there is a tree that takes out a power line or a car accident that hits a pole, it can be out for a day or two. (This happens more than one might imagine.) The generator we could afford and that was available to purchase here in Panama is a very basic diesel model with no brand name. 

At the beginning of the pandemic and when we realized that we would be in lockdown in our houses for extended periods, we stocked up on 2 cans of diesel fuel. Knowing that the rainy season was coming soon we would probably need the generator. We only use the generator when we know the power will be out for an extended period. We do not run it all night and if we are doing things outside and do not need to be inside the house, we only use it every few hours to keep the food in the fridge and freezer cool. So, the generator only had 20 hours of use before the pandemic and was still fairly new.

However, the first time we really needed it during the lockdown, it did not want to work. It made large "pop" and "bang" noises along with some fire shooting out the muffler. My husband spent hours and hours cleaning, researching, breaking the fuel pump, replacing the fuel pump, researching high altitude and diesel generators...you name it, he tried it or researched it. After at least 50 hours of working on the thing over the last few months, we finally found a diesel generator mechanic. I arranged for him to make a house call next week. Rick, not wanting to not waste money having the mechanic do some of the routine, obvious things, went down to the gas station and got some new diesel and changed the fuel out. Now the generator works!!! It turns out the fuel we purchased right before the pandemic was not good and we went months without a generator because of crappy fuel. 

Granted, all the cleaning and tuning that Rick did also has made it quieter, but now 5 months into the "Stay at Home" we finally can supplement our power with the generator when we need to. Yay!!!!!

Cameras
One of the live feed cameras was having issues this week. Rick went to investigate the issues and found that the ants had taken over. There were ants (which by the way bite) everywhere and it looks like they started eating wires to the camera. Thankfully we had 1 spare camera to use as a replacement and now I pray the ants stay away from the others!  I have never seen ants eat wires....I think it is a conspiracy and they are secretly or not so secretly trying to take over the farm.

The ants here are brutal. Not only do all of them bite, but they are ruthless. If you drop a piece of food or a bug comes along, they are right there ready to haul it away.

If you walk outside, it is best to stay on the graveled pathways. If you stay too long in one place anywhere that there is dirt, they start climbing your legs and biting you. I have heard that they do not like coffee grounds, so if I see a large ant hill forming too close to the house, I will dump some coffee grounds on it, but they just seem to move 5 feet away and start again. :)

Birdfeeders
​It turns out when you are basically unemployed and unable to work with all the restrictions and closings of businesses right now, we seem to have extra time. For a few years, we have talked about putting up a bird feeder in hopes of having them eat in one spot and not sample a little from each piece of fruit on the trees. Here is the new platform feeder, I will let you know if it works or not later...haha.

We have also made quite a few hummingbird feeders out of different bottles. The hummingbirds are loving it, but so are the bees! The ants and the bees find the feeders as quickly as the birds. Right now, I think we have about 15-20 hummingbirds that jet around us. They sound like light sabers and will hover in front of faces now. The pictures below are of "Chirpy." He is such a chatterbox and chirps nonstop. Which alerts the other birds that he is there and they come swooping in to smash him. They chase each other all day long and make hip-checking in hockey seem tame. 

We know they are territorial and as we first started watching them, were concerned about how mean and aggressive they were. However, they do share some of the feeders at the same time and seem to be friendly with each other at other times. So far we have identified a few of their games. King of Hill or King of all of the Feeders is one of their favorites and they have one feeder by some trees that seems to be home base. Then there is Tag and Destroy. This is one of the more violent games and they zip around and bump each other hard. There is the basic Chase game with so many of them around, they are just zooming through the air and around obstacles. So far Rick and I have not been hit by them, but I am sure it is just a matter of time.

Made in the USA
Rick needed a part and he had used products from BrassCraft before and figured it would be a good product. After he brought the part home he realized that Made in the USA also means not good enough for people in the USA. Frequently we wonder if Panama is one the destinations for goods that have been rejected from everywhere else. 

Living near a Jungle
There are many great things about living near the jungle. All of the wildlife is both a blessing and a curse. Monkeys, toucans, fireflies, parrots....all great and fun to watch. However, the bugs and creepy crawly things are like things from a prehistoric movie. If Jurassic Park wants to make a sequel they should film here. The dragonfly I saw this week was as big as my face!

Weather
Last year in June, we had 10 inches of rain. This year in June, we had 17 inches of rain. As I have been writing this, it is again raining. It is our rainy season right now, so afternoon rains are expected, but not this all day rain. Right now there have been too many tropical storms (in my opinion) in the Caribbean and these grey rainy days are just depressing. At least the temperature is never too bad, 65-80 F (18-26 C) all year long.

We are now going from one of the very strictest countries to now just a strict country for quarantine. We are still only allowed out for a few hours a week during our designated times. I get the 8am-9am time slot 3 days a week. We must wear a mask and most everything is the same except for these new items for us..yay:

1. You may purchase 1 bottle of hard alcohol, 1 bottle of wine or a 6 pack of beer now
2. Children are allowed to be out with a parent during the parent's designated 1 hour time slot
3. Hardware stores, doctor's offices, gardeners and a couple of other jobs like plumbers, AC repair ... are now allowed to open up after they form a health committee and have a plan in place to prevent any spread of the virus.

It seems like almost freedom from what we had before, however, it is really now more in line with what many countries did to begin with....maybe even a little more strict than average countries.

They do keep threatening to remove the alcohol privilege again if people do not follow the rules. I feel like I grounded teenager who gets their x-box back, but is warned that it can be taken away again if anyone in the country misbehaves....sigh.

Our son has no interest in going to the hardware store or grocery store with us for the 1 hour and I would never expect to take him, so really that does not change our life. Rick having access to the hardware store and beer, does make him a happier though!

Work around the Farm
We are still getting some work done even though the farm is not open yet. Roger was working on the beetle traps, Melvin sprayed the trees and they both chipped up some more tree limbs. They also have done some road repairs and are working on the drainage that runs under our driveway. 

Virtual Tours
We are now starting to work on setting up virtual coffee tours. It will be a little different from our hands-on tours, but still fun. It will take both of them to do a tour (one to do the camera/phone and one to be the guide) and we still want to keep the tours small, so people can ask all the questions they want along the way....guess we will see if it is worth it. :)

Rick finished getting a few more frames and sign blanks ready. We only have a few more trees available for the tree-lease program and then that will be closed off again until next year. 

Our new de-husking machine is about ready to use. It still needs a motor and pulley to work, but we had to wait until the hardware stores opened to get those. Now that hardware stores can start to open back up, we should have the machine ready to go by next week.

Flowers
More and more flowers are now blooming all around the farm. We are getting rain 1-2 times a week and everything has started to flower and grow. 

Rick's Tree Frog
Rick and Frogerita have become friends. Rick checks on her a few times a day and she seems very happy to be living on the side of our house. Yesterday she decided to hop off the house and be social. Here she is on Rick's knee. She is not afraid of us at all. After this picture, she hopped away and we found her back on the wall this morning.

Other than that, we are just getting little things caught up around the farm. I think we are getting used to the new "normal" for now. 

Panama gets more Strict
​Each evening there is an update from the government and if you don't pay attention you could end up in trouble. The rules keep changing. Almost daily we get the numbers of people arrested for going outside and violating the lockdown rules. Most days it is close to 600 people a day which is 6 times the number of people that they are reporting are newly infected. So, Panama keeps adding more restrictions, which are really only followed by the rule abiding people to begin with and the people that keep breaking the rules continue to do so. 

New additions since my last post:

1. Men and women cannot go out to the grocery store or pharmacies on the same day. Women are restricted to Monday, Wednesday and Friday for their allotted 1 hour (plus driving time of 30 minutes before and after their 1 hour time slot.) Men get Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for their 1 hour assigned time. No one goes out on Sunday.

2. Yesterday they decided that people might try and gather for Easter celebrations, so they have banned everyone from leaving their houses on Saturday and Sunday this week. (This only impacts the men that had 1 hour on Saturday, because Sunday was already banned on the previous addition.)

3. No music this weekend, that would imply you were celebrating. The translation on this one was not very clear....

4. Masks must be worn when outside of your house.

5. New penalties added to drivers caught outside of their home not during their designated time: Vehicle will be towed and driver's license will be suspended for 3 months, plus the regular penalties....

Not quite sure how much more strict they plan on getting, but I think we are the only country that is now a "Dry" country during this pandemic. Alcoholic sales are still banned.

The little things make me laugh
As we comb through the sites to see what new rules are being added each day, the homeschool jokes still make me laugh. Thankfully, my son's school is getting more organized and is getting a handle on the virtual schooling. Between Google classroom and video conferencing classes, he has some sort of organized education right now. Unlike Europe and North America, our school year had just began when this all started. I think he was only on week 3 or so of the new school year when classes were cancelled. I am not sure how this will change the school year for them in the long run, since most of the public schools do not have the resources for virtual school....guess we will find out later.

Fruit on the Farm
As our dry season is starting to wind down, we are seeing more and more fruit ripening. We have 1 mature mango tree that is producing hundreds of mangoes. I keep cutting them up and freezing them for later, we cannot eat that many at one time! We also have a couple of pineapples, bananas and mulberries that getting close. This will be the first year for the mulberries, so we do not expect a lot...maybe enough for 1 pie.....crossing my fingers. 

A Little Work
There is no coffee sales or coffee tours allowed right now. No income coming in, no stores to buy equipment open...not alot going on right now.  We did finally get an exemption to pick up Roger and Melvin to bring them to the farm without fear of penalties. The country does want all farms to continue growing their crops and maintain the farms in the area.

Melvin and Roger seemed excited this week to take a day off of confinement to get some exercise in and get out of the house for a short time. 

Rick, Melvin and Roger went through half of the field mulching all the debris on the ground. Next week they plan on finishing the other half. This becomes harder to do if we don't get it done before the rains come again. I am not sure if Roger and Melvin were sore, but Rick was worn out after the day of mulching. It had been 2 weeks without any physical work like that.

Egg Decorating
The days all seem to run together right now. Most of the time I am not aware of what day it actually is anymore. We decided to color our eggs a little early this year. We set up a video chat with family in Oregon and decorated eggs together. With access to some brown eggs, food dye and markers we spent some time catching up with family and making masterpieces. :)

Animals
Our dogs are taking this down time hard. They miss all of the activity that usually happens here and have taken new delights now in antagonizing a new dog on the other side of the fence at my neighbor's house. When they are not allowed to do that, they have been moping in the house. Before the quarantine, they would escort guests and volunteers on hikes, follow coffee tours around (getting in a few bonus pets along the way) and watch/supervise all the work being done.

The cat seems to not notice that anything is different. She still wants her 10 minutes of attention and that is it. She continues to go outside, roll in the dirt, hunt grasshoppers or lizards.

I think the lizards are getting smarter and avoiding the front of the house where the cat keeps watch. Now they seem to follow Rick. :)

Being the Teacher
School is not going very well. We are going on 2 weeks of having to enforce school work assigned by the school. I believe he is all caught up, but with 12 classes and everyone having different methods...it was touch and go for awhile. 

As we are all caught up (hoping that is actually true) and I have put in for hazard pay (still waitin on that) I decided we would attempt Zumba class together for P.E. today. For those that remember that I am still recovering from an Achilles tendon injury, my zumba was a little modified and embarrassingly very clunky. We made it a total of 12 minutes before he convinced me that getting his "steps" in would be healthier for both of our sanities. I will keep you updated on our progress.

Total Quarantine
Panama is on day 2 of total lock-down. We have had different versions, each getting stricter than the last, until they finally locked it down. (The different versions were something like this....they all kind of ran together and I might get a few of the older rules out of order.)

1st version: Drinking alcohol was banned and people were told to stay at home. Schools, churches, large gatherings were all closed off. 

2nd version: All stores were told to close except for necessities. Restaurants, grocery, pharmacy and food chain supplies could stay open.

3rd version: A 9pm curfew was ordered, no groups over 10 and borders to the country were closed. Some roads to different parts of the country were closed off.

4th version: Curfew was changed to 5pm and they became more strict on restaurants and other stores.

The next day...it was 5th version: Total lock-down. 1 person in your house is allowed to leave for 1 hour a day to get necessities at the pharmacy or grocery store. The time you are allowed to leave depends on the last digit of your ID, So, I can leave at 8am to get necessities and Rick can leave at 2pm. Not that we plan to go use our time allotment until we need milk or something....There is no end date assigned yet, so we will just have to see how long this lasts.

Getting Prepared for the Lock-down
We all knew that a total quarantine was coming. So, we arranged to start some projects on the farm to keep us busy.

While still social distancing, we ordered trucks of sand, gravel, blocks. plumbing stuff....

As an agricultural farm we were (and technically can) stay open with limited employees. We just cannot offer coffee tours, ship coffee or meet up with people to deliver coffee, but we are suppose to continue growing the coffee. However, for the safety and well-being of our employees we did close completely by the time the lock-down was in place. 

So, Rick is working alone on the construction of the new bathroom for tours, while I get to do the less labor intensive jobs. Yay me!

Coffee Trees
The coffee trees are doing great. I think this might be our biggest year yet. Below is a picture of a tree from a neighboring farm and a picture of a few of our trees. A lot of work has gone into our farm and I am just hoping we keep enough of our customers after things stabilize to continue improving.

A New Concern
Yes, we have the regular concerns about covid-19, income, water coming to the house, will we have electricity today, will the internet be on all day, but we have had to deal with a fire-bug on the hill too. Which by the way made us lose electricity for a day.....so not cool!

This is land a little lower on the hill from our farm. No one lives there and we are not sure if the owner set it on fire to clear the debris or if someone does not like the owner of that land, but whatever the case may be, they have lit this land on fire twice now.

The local fire truck is unable to get up our hill and when the firefighters were brought up for the 1st fire, there was no water in the line to put the fire out. One neighbor has a well and I guess they did the best they could filling up little backpack tanks or something with the well water and sprinkling it on the ground. However, the next morning, the ground was still smoking and the power poles were still burning. A few days later they lit the land on fire again. We are hoping things are a little quieter for awhile around here.

A Couple more Pictures
Here are a few more pictures from this last week:

1. Blooms from a coffee tree.
2. Sacks of parchment coffee in storage that will be need to be hulled and roasted when we can ship out coffee again.
3. and 4.  Mangoes and my mango cobbler that I am now making lots of.
5. 6. and 7. All of the flowers and plants around here are flourishing and reminds me how not everything in the world has changed. There is still beauty and wonders to appreciate.

Connecting with People
My friends Chris and Kelly, from my long ago past in college-prep boarding school, started getting people from our school together last night on a video chat. I was up until 2am connecting with people that I have not seen in many, many years. 

Chris reminded me of the time that he helped me dye my hair brown in the darkroom during photography class. If he actually finds the picture, I might post it in a future blog. Having blond hair and brown eyebrows, I was always asked if I dyed my hair. I had decided that maybe I should have been born a brunette like my parents had been. How I got Chris to assist me, I do not remember, but I remember that I looked very bad as a brunette and tried to wash it out as fast as I could. My hair turned orange for weeks and I eventually cut it off and had very short hair for awhile.

Totally made my night! Was nice connecting with people from my past, just what any doctor would have ordered.

​Staying up late meant I woke up late and missed my allotted time to get supplies today. Thankfully, I did not have anything that I needed!

Back to Work
As the dogs are now in time-out for agitating our neighbor's dog (my dogs miss people on our farm,) my son is in restricted to using electronics in his room (okay....that is totally a reward to him,) Rick is working on the bathroom.....I guess I should go do something productive now too.

During Panama's summer vacation, we are typically busy with coffee tours, finishing the harvest and getting things lined up for the new year. We also start pruning trees, getting projects finished up that require non-rainy days...

This month has been all of that and more! Thankfully, we have had 2 groups of Workawayers that have helped out. :)

Roger has invented the "No Scorpion" dance and convinced Kat and Kolin to participate. I don't think it worked, but it was funny to watch them. 

This is going to be a crazy coffee year. The trees are blooming 4 months early and that would mean these cherries will probably need to be harvested right in the middle of the rainy season. I guess we will wait and see what happens, but I think our farm might have its busiest year yet.

I have become addicted to the craft projects (bead by number) and use it as my evening wind-down time. I spend 30-45 minutes each night while Rick and I watch TV, putting the little beads on the canvas. I only have one more to do and they do not sell them anywhere around here....I really miss having access to certain stores. :)

By the time that I drove by this area, they had already cut most of the tree down. This is not an uncommon thing to see around here. Trees and powerlines frequently battle it out. Unfortunately, they both lose. The power goes down and the tree has to be cut up.

I am loving the sunsets and sunrises each morning. It is very beautiful this time of year. We also, get an afternoon rainbow on most days, sometimes even a double or triple rainbow. 

Melvin gets a day of being the "Gardener" this week. He has been wanting to add more color to a few areas. Most of the farm is very green, with the occasional white flowers when the coffee trees are blooming, but it is nice to see some yellows, reds and well....other colors too.

We have upgraded our internet slightly. I do miss the days of high-speed internet, but with all of the good parts of our life, there are a few pitfalls to. We now have 7 mbps, upgraded from our previous 5 mbps. Yay us!!!

Achilles Update
My ankle gets slightly better every day. I can walk a little further and the swelling at night is less than it was. I still limp and am limited to walking...no running, jumping or skipping for me yet, but at least I am still improving, even if it is not as fast as I would like.

Upcoming

• School is about to start up again for our son.
• My coffee roaster is almost finished and will need to get painted soon.
• We are working on getting our Agro-tourism certificate. I think step 1 might be done!
• We will be de-husking and roasting all of the coffee from the 2019 season soon, it still needs a few more weeks of resting first, and so do I.  :)
• We are discussing new updated water-pipe options with the neighbors, thinking that new PVC pipes after over 20 years of the old PVC pipes being repaired so many times, might improve our water input this year. Trying to figure out budgets for that now.
• We are also discussing options on what to do with the bumpy road up our hill. It is actually pretty good right now after a tractor spent 3 hours on it. However, we will have to do something before the wet season comes and the dirt just turns into mud pits.

Too many expensive projects to do them all correctly! Maybe we take a dartboard with pictures on it and just pick which one we work on that way....although, I am not sure if they sell those here. 

I am sure I will have more updates by next month!

Thank you!
We want to thank everyone who supported us through the 2019 year and followed our progress.

Here is a list of a few of our 2019 accomplishments:

• Built a new Roasting House
• Built a new Storage Warehouse for the coffee
• New digital live-feed camera system (and the 2 major repairs to it)
• Surviving an Achilles Tendon surgery
  
• A bigger Generator (for all those power outages)
• Building a rainwater catchment system (for all the times the water is out - works during at least half of the year!)
• Covered walkway so that we can process coffee in the rain
• Fixing the road and ditches for another year (although, sadly it is time to do that again)
• Getting to be a part of people's memories....

​It has been quite the year! Many challenges, but also many solutions. We are excited to see where 2020 takes us.

2020 - Coffee Tree Update
We expect to have a few challenges this year with the coffee trees. They have decided to start blooming 4 months early. Does this mean we will have 2 harvests this year? The thought is that it does mean that, which means we need to come up with a way to dry the coffee during the wettest part of the year. 

This farm has never had 2 harvests, nor have the farms around us....so this is all new territory and we hope that we will be prepared for whatever happens.

Recovery
I am slowly moving forward on my recovery. This has been a long and challenging few months. There were days that I felt that I would never get better and then there were days that I could see a small light of hope way, way off in the distance. 

I have removed the house of most of the equipment that has gotten me through the beginning stages of recovery. I am now down to 1 pair of crutches, that are mainly there "just in case." I walk with a huge limp now and my ankle is swollen each night, but at least I am mobile. :) My physical therapy sessions are not as painful as they were in the beginning and some of the ​kinesio tape designs are more intricate now.

My dogs ended up being more helpful than I expected and as I am writing today, I am hopeful that the worst is behind me, at least for this little pitfall.

Roasting House
There are just a few minor items left to finish the roasting house. Melvin finished painting it and Rick is moving items into it. As we are finishing the last finishing touches to the roasting house, we are now against the clock with the harvest now approaching quickly.

Harvest
The harvest has started and we are busy with tours, harvesting, getting ready for the holidays and now working on improving the floor in the solar drying house. Life on a coffee farm!

Workaway
Some of you have met us through the Workaway program or have read other posts about Workaway. For those that do not know about the program, it is a program for people traveling that either want to travel on the cheap or want to learn more about the places they are visiting other than the typical tourist visit. It is a cultural exchange program where travelers work or help out with projects for a few hours a day in exchange for room and board. The idea is that the sponsors and the travelers learn from each other.

We have had some great experiences and have made life long friends with many people through this program. Each person has left a mark on this farm. Each time we look at the compost bin or the fireplace, we are reminded of James and Maddie. When we are making coffee soap or driving on the road up to our house we are reminded of Dale and Shane. When we look at the herb garden we think of Alex and Ashley. Evening fires and banana bread reminds us of Lucy....I could go on and on, but this post is about Mona Lisa and Lea.

​Two physiotherapists from Germany contacted us through Workaway. What great timing! I need to recovery from my Achilles tendon surgery and they were here traveling through Panama. 

They were tough on my physical therapy and I will always remember them as I gain my independence back. (They even helped Rick with his knee and back.) Hopefully the nightmares of them yelling to keep my head up, hips rotated, feet pointed a certain way, bend my knee, 5 more times and all of the other things that I was doing wrong will fade. :)  Military drill instructors should look at recruiting these 2!

They hiked the volcano here, practiced their acrobatic yoga, went the beach, learned all about coffee, taught the expats here how to do a proper Oktoberfest cheer and have now moved on to have more adventures. We wish them luck and hope they know how much we appreciated their time here.

Recovery
I can now hobble around more and even walk fairly normal for limited amount of time. I am only a few degrees away from getting my flexibility in my ankle back. I have no muscle tone in my leg yet and my balance is not back yet, but I am getting better each week. People with access to the live-feed cameras might actually see me slowly walking around once in a while. :)

The outdoor spa in the mornings is my favorite time. It helps loosen everything up in the mornings and I might enjoy it in the evenings if would stop storming at night.

Project
​Just when we think we are catching up, something has to go wrong. After hours of checking wires and problem solving why one of the camera systems is down, Rick has determined the system works great EXCEPT for the internet connection. Which means that it is worthless to us if we cannot fix it. This is the project of the day. Hopefully the company will have a fix for us. 

We are still working on the roasting house, but getting much closer!

Achilles Tendon
No cast, scar is healing and now onto the kinesiology tape and lots of therapy. Some days it is 2-colors of tape and some days it is either pink or black. That is my excitement for the day, always a surprise.

Each time the pain recedes, it is time to do more exercises, stretching or practice putting weight back on my ankle. The pain comes back, then I ice it again......this has been a very long and painful process. I will be very excited when this is over and I can walk again. 

I do have to say thank you to our insurance company. Their website to upload receipts is a little archaic, but they have been very good and this is the first time that we had to use them. Expats that need insurance should contact them. :) https://www.pagroupco.com/ 

Roasting House
Rick and Melvin have slowly been working on the roasting house. The weather and other chores keep slowing them down, but each week there is a little more progress. The roof is close to being done and the stucco is maybe 20 percent done.

We still have 2 doors, a window, painting and tile to do after the stucco is finished. I slowly made my way out there the other day to see it for the first time in 6 weeks. It will be nice when it is all done.

Bug Pictures
I do not get outside much these days, so just a couple of pictures this time.

Unstable Services
We are averaging 1 power outage a day right now. Since August 1st, we have had 37 power outages. Most are only 10-15 minutes, but the longest one was over 20 hours. We never know how long we will have to wait for it to return. The power going on and off is really bad for all of the appliances. We had to invest in power supplies, surge protectors and battery back-ups. Not everything is protected, but most things are now.

Then we had a week of internet problems. Those only lasted 2-3 hours each day.

This is one of the things you deal with when living in a developing country. Most days we would not have noticed the outages. However, while I am recovering, I am inside the house all day and having no internet or power is a bigger deal to me. 

We are not sure what has made the outages worse, but it has been said that there was never a budget for expansion or upgrades. With the city being more populated now than when power was installed, they just can't keep in this area. 

Road Work
After the last big rain storm, 3 or 4 families on the hill got together to repair the drainage ditches on the sides of the road. Dante, the dog, was the supervisor. :)

Coffee Sentry
The dogs have many hiding spots among the coffee trees where they can sleep or guard the property. Here is Karma not being happy that she was found, she thought she was invisible....haha