Work, Food, Water and Lawnmower

Workaway Update
We have 2 new "volunteers" that are here on the Workaway program. They are from the U.K. and they are both very creative. Each group has had different skills and we have enjoyed each group more than we anticipated.

Maddie and James are on their 2nd week with us and have done incredible things around the farm. Maddie has actually resurrected the instagram account and is very good at remembering to update it each day. I guess I am going to have to continue her great work after she leaves. I will miss her for many reasons when she leaves, this is just one of them. 

James and Maddie both contributed to the new Coffee Can sign on the wall. I think they both might still have a little paint on their hands. :)

Both James and Maddie are amazing in the kitchen. However, James gets stuck with more of the meal preparation. I should have been taking pictures of the incredible food we have been eating for months now, but below is James in the outdoor kitchen and a couple of the lunches we have had.

Other projects that have been completed in the 10 days:

• Drainpipe on the side of the solar house was buried
• Coffee beetle traps made with recycled plastic and vodka were made and hung
• Coffee trees were trimmed or signs adjusted
• Kitchen sink was modified to now actually slope the right direction
• ​Online updates and online research for our projects​...

This week we are working on an outdoor fireplace for the Coffee Can. We were lucky to have 2 guys from Canada come and help for a day too. Hopefully, I will have a pictures of it completed by the next time I update this page.

Maddie and James spent the evening with me at our large batch coffee roaster's house. Below, Maddie is frantically trying to sweep out the roasted coffee beans before the next batch drops down. I think they had some fun.

They have been doing small batch roasting on the farm and experimenting with different roasts and different ways to brew the coffee. They have been drinking iced coffee, cold brewed, espressos, auto-drip....

Guanabana
I had never seen a a guanabana bloom before. It is my understanding that it only blooms in the morning, but we finally saw this one in our backyard. We are hoping to have a few good guanabanas this year.

Water
We tested our water with some petrifilm. On the right is the water that comes into our water tanks from the supplier. Pink dots are not really good. It shows how many coliforms, or possible contamination colonies that are present. Blue dots would show E.coli that was present. Thankfully, we only have lots of coliforms coming in.  Our system then has water filters and even a U.V. filter before it reaches the house. As you can see in the 2nd test, the filters are doing their job!!! The water is 100% clean according to the this week's test. I had never heard of petrifilm until this year, it is kinda neat. Little petri dishes built in slides. 

Bug of the week
I have shown caterpillars before, but unfortunately this kind of caterpillar attached himself to Maddie's leg while she was working in the coffee field. Her leg started getting hot with a large blister looking rash. The rash was in the shape of Panama, which was interesting, but I do not think Maddie thought it was cool at the time. After a shot from the doc and some strong antihistamines she is back to herself, but we are all a little more cautious right now when we go through the coffee trees.

Lawnmower
Last but not least, after living here for almost 2 years, we finally bought our own lawnmower. It is not as fancy as Hector's riding lawn mower, but we did splurge on the self-propelled and push-button start. Rick actually can mow the lawn in the about the same amount of time and he can get into the smaller areas now. The downsides:s not as cool as the riding lawn mower, you can drink a beer while mowing the lawn and it takes more energy now.