May 6th, 2008 fmorgan
Due to the overall lack of capital in a developing economy like Costa Rica, the availability of heavy equipment of any type is not very good. To get a backhoe to do some work, you have to commit to no less than 3 days, and often 1 week of work to make it worth their while.
But you don’t always need a week’s worth of work, so a lot of the work is done by hand. This makes for very efficient ditch diggers. We had one worker who was incredible. Give him a shovel and tell him to make a hole and you better get back quickly to tell him to stop or he would be in China!
But, as we have grown, so have our needs. With more than 500 acres of plantions, road and bridge repair is a pretty much yearly cost - and a sizeable one. Also, the nursery needs dirt from somewhere. We have found it quickly uses the topsoil around it - so we have to haul it in.
So, we bought a backhoe. Now, that seems like just a simple thing and it is, but the emotional impact is significant to me. I don’t know why, but I never imagined having a backhoe. A farm excavator, yes. Perhaps even a small bulldozer - sure. Of course we have a tractor. But for some reason, I am particularly proud of owning a backhoe. Maybe it´s because of the variety of things it can do.
A backhoe has been called the Swiss Army knife of construction projects, and they really are. You have the huge shovel in the front and the bucket in the back and a lot of power in between. We bought a used one, a 2003, with lots of life still in it.
One of its first jobs was take apart a bridge. This bridge was made of Corteza and Tamarindo - both of these woods are very hard, so much so they survive just fine buried in mud over streams and rivers to make bridges. Pretty incredible really. One of our bridges was damaged by a storm and needed serious repair. The problem is, the wood from these trees has gotten very expensive. So, getting a log to fix a bridge could be in the thousands of dollars - whereas five years ago it was only 300 dollars - which gives you an idea of the rise in price of this wood.
So, we got a quote from someone to make two bridges from steel and concrete (one is the replacement, the other was needed too, so might as well) and it came to 6 million colones - or about 12,000 dollars. The amount of wood that we could salvage from the old bridge was 16,000 dollars. So, by using the wood in the bridge for other things, we actually manage to make a little and have new bridges, too! Without a backhoe, it would be impossible to get out the logs, so the backhoe already is paying for itself.
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May 6th, 2008 fmorgan
What is it about men and their toys? Because we are still searching for a backhoe operator, Nelson, Coco and myself decided to take on the removal of the logs from the old bridge.
Nelson had used the shovel on a tractor more than a few times and so had Coco, but neither had used the bucket on a backhoe. I had used the bucket on a backhoe briefly (like a day or so) back about 30 years ago.
So I located an instruction manual on the Internet (how to teach yourself backhoe operation) which was actually very good. I spent the previous evening reading it, and then off we went.
Amazingly, backhoes are very simple to use. The bucket/boom works very much like your arm. All you have to do is take your time and work smoothly. The biggest issue was that to remove the logs, we had to make a trench so that the logs could be slid up the riverbank. These logs are huge and weigh tons.
I spent a little time getting used to the controls and making sure I knew what I was doing. Once I was doing well, I had Nelson take over, and to show him I placed my hands on his and manipulated the controls - in 5 minutes he had it.
Then Coco had his go at it for a while. Since by Costa Rican law I am not allowed to take work away from our employees, I had to sit by the side while they had all the fun. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t the boss…however, I figure on Sundays, it is all mine.
None of us yet have our license for running the backhoe, but you have to practice first. We have checked with MOPT (like the Department of Motor Vehicles in the USA) and they said that to get a backhoe operators license, you have to go to a lawyer and declare that you know how to operate a backhoe. 
We are going to go for a quantity discount. 
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March 29th, 2008 fmorgan
We had a visit from a tree owner and spent a full day with them. They have been with us for a while and we have had numerous conversations with them. I always appreciate their visits because we have so much in common.
The good news is that after reviewing their trees they told us that there wasn’t anything they felt was wrong at all with them and they were thrilled at the size and quality. This of course was wonderful to hear. We do try very hard to do a great job and be diligent in following through with people, but as with all things that are part of nature, there are imperfections. I worry about imperfections. It is probably true that I don’t see the forest for the trees at times. If I see 5% of the trees not doing well it bothers me (and we replace them), and I can forget that means we have 95% growing very well. Our tree owners are always less critical than I am.
I think one of the reasons they gave us such high marks was that they visited trees that they own with someone else (people they bought with before they knew about us) and were much less pleased. In fact, nearly 50% of their trees were replanted after 2 1/2 years and it was obvious that the care just wasn’t being done. It appeared that their trees were planted and then ignored. Also, some trees were planted in areas that were not appropriate for those trees.
Worse yet, when they arrived, it was obvious that the area had just been brushed out, i.e. all the undergrowth removed, and all nearby trees owned by other people had brush about six feet tall, which will choke out the trees. An example is their acacia. Their acacia with the other people after 2 1/2 years is the same size as ours after 6 months! If there was ever a good example of the difference between growing trees correctly or not, this is one.
The bad news for them, of course, is that they have to deal with this, but also it is sad because we in Costa Rica need every bit of lumber we can get. To plant and not try your best to produce the best trees you can just seems to me to be so short-sighted. After all, it isn’t like there isn’t a good market — no, correct that, a great market — for the wood after it is grown.
On top of that, it is hard enough for people to have the confidence to have people in a foreign land grow trees for them, and to not do the job hurts everyone, not just your own business. Thankfully, we have many people who have visited us (and some visit yearly) and so have seen the plantations for themselves and can attest to our quality.
After all, it really is about quality. The price of wood is shooting up as the supply dwindles. For us, to achieve our goal of reforesting a significant amount of land, we have to make sure to meet the obligations we have to those who have trusted us to grow trees for them.
I am happy to be able to say it appears that we are acheiving more than they expected.
Posted in acacia, business in Costa Rica, conservation, finca, forest, forestry, investing, tree owners, trees, wood | No Comments »
March 28th, 2008 fmorgan
First of all, let me say I think snakes are cool. I like to see them when traveling in the fincas, even the poisonous ones, as long as they are far enough away. I tend to also have a live-and-let-live policy with snakes — if they don’t bother me, I don’t bother them.
Costa Rica is home to 17 different kinds of poisonous snakes. Some of them are rather infamous, like the fer-de-lance, one of the most dangerous snakes in Latin America and ranked number 25 in the world.
But though the fer-de-lance is very common here, we have never had a problem with them in the fincas — the fangs of a snake are no match for a worker with a machete in one hand and a forked stick in the other.
We even have the coral snake here, which is very poisonous but really is of little risk since its mouth is so small. There is a poem about how to identify it, but I can never remember it and I am sure I wouldn’t remember it if I discovered one under my feet!
I have my own poem when it comes to snakes, poisonous or otherwise.
Snake that flees is friend of me.
Snake that attacks is dead, Jack!
But, though I am pretty much live and let live regarding snakes, they had better not cross the line and invade my living space. Twice in 6 months a snake showed up in the house. There is really nothing like being notified out of a sound sleep that there is a snake in the house. Once it was on the floor at the foot of our bed, and the other time in the room where we watch TV. The first time, we trapped it underneath a basket and moved it outside, and it was most certainly a fer-de-lance. The second time, we think it was a young boa, but we didn’t find it. We have been hearing a ruckus lately among the bats in our roof and have been wondering if there is a boa up there. This could be an offspring.
I was in no hurry to look for it, but Xenia, who works in our office, was on a seek-and-destroy mission, and she was definitely more fearless than I was. But, after moving everything in the room, there was no snake to be found. This means of course there is no more walking barefoot through the house for a while.
This is probably just as well. The locals are often convinced that if you walk around barefoot on ceramic tile, you will surely die from catching a cold or something. You have to understand they are saying this to a person who has gone outside barefoot in the snow!
It has been about 4 days since the last snake has appeared in our house, but I am still on the lookout. I love wildlife, even snakes. But they need to stay in their own place. After all, we don’t even let our dog come inside. If we started letting snakes in, Silky would think for sure he should come in too, and he would surely be much more of a problem.
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March 20th, 2008 fmorgan
We have entered an agreement with Tropical Latitudes to be our importer of wood products into the USA. We were approached by Craig, who originally wanted us to plant trees for them from their profits and then found out that we also had products to sell.
To get to know them better, I flew up to Orlando to participate with them at a Home and Garden show. I was very happy at what I saw, and they survived having me as a guest for most of a week, which shows that truly they are cut out to survive in business.
What I most appreciate about Tropical Latitudes is their commitment to having everyone win. They will not deal with any company that does not treat their employees fairly nor do they work through brokers. In this way they can offer unique products to their customers at a very good price, and the makers of the products do well also.
It was very interesting at the show when a broker who wanted to be a supplier for Tropical Latitudes looked at a solid hardwood frog that our woodcarver had made that Craig was selling for 65 dollars. The broker said that the best he could sell it to Craig for was 60 dollars. This illustrates very well why it is so much better not to have several middlemen. However, because of the difficulty of getting things from the tropics to the USA, you are generally dealing with middlemen, and each one tends to want to double the price.
A positive thing for all those who have wanted to buy furniture from us is that now Tropical Latitudes can take the orders and arrange for the furniture to come up in the next shipment with everything else. This should make it possible to have furniture from us at a very reasonable price.
It is good news for our tree owners that not only are we doing great at producing products for the local market, but now we are selling into the USA as well.
Posted in business in Costa Rica, furniture, importing, investing, tree owners, wood | No Comments »
March 20th, 2008 fmorgan
I just spent 6 days with an importer of our wood products in Florida. They were displaying at the Home and Garden show in Orlando so I combined a trip to visit their opperation and a chance to support them in a show.
We don’t go that often to the USA so the shock is a bit strong each time. I probably look like a person who has never seen things before — “Gee, would you look at that!” Even though it is once a year, so much changes. I nearly put my foot through the floor on the passenger side as we went through the toll booths without slowing down much!
Being an engineer, of course I want to stop and take apart the sensor to see how it works — but I assume that would be frowned upon.
Living where we do, we don’t see much of anything new. This is fine, and we love our simple life, but it is nice to look. The volume of new things is overwhelming.
One of the highlights is food. I don’t miss the food when we are here, since we have so many tropical fruits and healthy stuff, but it doesn’t mean that I am not a sampling fool when I am back in the land of food choices. However, I would have terminal indigestion if I stayed too long — all good eating habits go out the window when I am in the states.
There are many things I start to miss about Costa Rica after just a few days. One is a good cup of coffee. Since quality coffee is very important to me, this is a bit of a trial. I don’t want a lot of coffee, but I do want it perfect. Another thing that is very hard to get used to is the temperature changes. On this trip, I looked at the weather report for ten days and it said upper 70s. Great, no problem, I thought. I don’t know if a weather front moved in or what, but I was shivering from the cold. Of course I look silly with a sweatshirt when everyone else is in shorts.
One thing that always gets me is the clerks in the stores. When I walk into a store here in Costa Rica, I can be sure I will be swarmed by clerks eager to help. Even when they have to deal with my searching for the right term for some obscure part, they are patient (chunche, which means “thingy” is a favorite of mine). It seems to me that whatever clerk I get first in the USA is having a bad day and just can’t seem to bother with me. Also, as I am trying to remember how to do common things (like swipe an ATM card), they wonder if I am senile or something…
Worse yet, aside from Amy, I don’t speak English with that many people. If you ask me a question, there might be a bit of a pause while I try to start talking in English. Since after I jumpstart my brain I speak as the native I am, the obvious conclusion I suppose is that I was trying to think.
This points to another obvious conclusion — I am going native. Surely in the future this is only going to get worse. That’s okay, we really love living here in Costa Rica.
Posted in Spanish, business in Costa Rica, communications, cultural adaptation, culture, language learning | No Comments »
March 2nd, 2008 fmorgan
It occurred to me some time ago just how wasteful specialization is in the lumber business. In the traditional manner, a logger will find a group of trees to cut. He will not want to work with a single tree because he has to haul his equipment and get set up, is not something he makes money on. Loggers make money in the amount of wood they can process per day and the quality of that wood. Loggers who handle large volumes end up with a very large capital investment and speed is everything.
A logger will generally only take up to the first limbs. Furniture makers love figured wood, but sawmills hate wood with knots. They want clear trunks, because figured wood is hard to work with for the sawmills and dangerous, too. A large knot, for example where a limb connects, can catch in the saw and send the log flying. The other waste is that sawmills only want certain lengths, 8, 10, 12, 16, etc. The widths tend to be in standard sizes as well, based on even sizes.
Because of this efficiency, a tremendous amount of each tree goes to waste. Any pieces smaller around than 8 inches are considered scrap and so are segments of wood less than 8 feet long (really 99 inches to allow for checking on the ends of the wood).
Since we have our own furniture factory, we can use a lot more of the tree. Cabinet doors, a very good market for us, use many small pieces of wood. We also make spindles for chairs and banisters with a lathe. This uses limbs and other short pieces of wood. For even smaller pieces, we also have a market for wood crafts, bowls, coffee coasters, etc.
When we harvest a tree, we don’t leave much scrap out in the field. What little is left is used as mulch around the remaining trees. Because of this conservation of the resource, we can get up to 40% more out of every tree.
Because of our size, we can grow trees efficiently, and because of the wood factory, use more of the tree. This means every tree is used to its maximum potential, helping to ensure the plantation wood supply that takes pressure off the rainforest.
Posted in business in Costa Rica, conservation, forestry, furniture, resources, wood | No Comments »
February 19th, 2008 fmorgan
All of our key people have cell phones here. It is pretty much a requirement for communication. They need to talk to suppliers, to workers deep in the fincas, to each other, and to the office to keep everything going.
The one person who is hard to find is me. I like it this way. Everyone has a cell phone except me. Even those rare times everyone has conspired for me to have a cell phone, we expand and my cell phone is needed by a new person. Often we have to wait to get a cell phone line, so I can then avoid a cell phone for a while again.
I find this great for Finca Leola. The temptation is always there if you can contact the president, to do so. It is a way of dumping your responsibilities on him. This is bad for development of department heads, and it is particularly bad for me, since I might not get the subtle hints of which way they think we should go.
But, if they are in a situation and can’t reach me, they will make the decision and inform me later. Very rarely is it a bad decision, and everyone knows how far to go on decisions without talking with us.
By staying out of touch, it allows me to focus on research and future plans — and of course, writing this blog. I really get very few interruptions during the day. I do make time most mornings to talk with all our key people so they can bounce ideas off me and discuss various things, but the thousands of mundane decisions are in their hands — with guidelines.
I like to base guidelines on a concept called a Pareto, or the 80/20 rule. Applied to management, this means that anyone doing their job should be able to handle 80 percent or more of whatever comes up and should seek outside help with between 10 to 20 percent. This percentage is usually when there is interaction with other departments or when there is a decision that only the owners are authorized to make. Handling these overlapping decisions is where I spend most of my time, because they usually require research.
When someone does something that isn’t exactly what we wanted, this is the opportunity to train. I find that if people aren’t making any mistakes at all, it means they have not yet learned that we value their input. They key is to teach concepts so that mistakes are few and do not put at risk the overall goals, then review the work frequently enough so that guidelines can be adjusted to deal with what we have all learned. It works best to explain the purpose of what is to be done rather than give someone a 3-inch-thick manual for their job!
Posted in Spanish, campo, cell phone, communications, finca, language learning | 3 Comments »
February 10th, 2008 fmorgan
Since I have been in Costa Rica, my inspiration for riding my bike is seeing so many people riding bikes of all ages — all ages of people, too. The skill level is incredible. Not for chicken hopping, of which I am the local king (they don’t have clipless pedals) but for the ability to ride a bike in the weirdest of possible combinations. Imagine the following: A woman 35 or so riding down the road and between her and the handle bar is a 3-year old sitting on a plank cut to fit snugly on the top tube. It is raining, so she is holding an umbrella with one hand and steering with the other. There is a bulky package dangling from one side of the handle bar. She isn’t riding on pavement, but on a challenging road made of river rock dumped on it and hammered into the sand and mud by traffic. For her, this is no big deal. The ones she considers skilled are the guys who commute to work with their wives. She sits on the plank in front of him. On the way, they are going to drop off the baby she holds in her arms at the sitter, and they will swing by the elementary school to drop off the kid standing behind Dad on the posts that stick out from the wheel hubs. No need for diamond lanes — cars give these bikepoolers a wide berth.
Most people here are small, but I have seen two ladies, each about 50 and each weighing more than 300 pounds, riding on a BMX — yeah, both of them on the same bike. One was pedaling, the other was standing on the posts. They were chatting and laughing the whole time.
Then there is the crazy old geezer around here who rips through town at 30+ kph (19+ mph) on a well-used Cannondale F900 hardtail. Today he caught up and passed two policemen on a motor scooter who waved and smiled at him as he passed. He is quite the sight, I am told, with his white hair whipping behind him and his legs spinning like crazy. I have never seen him myself, since I don’t look at my reflection in store windows as I pass…but I have heard the stories.
Posted in cultural adaptation, cycling | 1 Comment »
February 8th, 2008 fmorgan
Now that our new furniture factory/millworks is taking off, a very important project is making kilns for drying lumber. Our part of Costa Rica is pretty humid most of the time, but in the USA homes are much drier, and so are homes in Guanacaste. To sell to these markets, we need to have kiln-dried wood. The nearest kiln is 2 hours away.
One thing that you tend to get any time you buy a farm is a corral, which is the name for an open-air barn. It might have a concrete floor if you are lucky. If so, by replacing the roof with clear plastic panels and enclosing with scrap wood and installing a few fans, you make a solar kiln. If you need more than that, you can supplement the heat with a wood fire or dry the air using a dehumidifier.
The great thing is that the basic construction is already done, and the location is usually very good as well, near to the road and house.
This is how it goes with many things — we might not make things totally pretty (except our furniture), but we get it done. One thing that you notice after a while here is that there is nothing left by the side of the road like up in the states. If you don’t use it, someone else will for sure, even after it is way past looking nice. And the remains can always be used for something else.
Posted in drying wood, kiln, off the grid, wood | No Comments »