May 16th, 2009 fmorgan
You mean I gotta take another bath!?
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When I lived in the USA, I was always conscious of what month it was because each month in the northeast is for me strongly associated with a certain weather pattern.
In Costa Rica, although I am rarely sure what month it is, I do know which season it is. It’s so obvious. Costa Rica only has two seasons: mud and dust.
The mud season. For eight months of the year, I walk out the door and put on my rubber boots (after shaking them in case something crawled in there during the night). Unlike when we lived in the USA, I don’t check outside to see how many layers to wear. Temperature really doesn’t change that much year round, so what you wear is pretty much the same everyday, except for what you put on your feet.
When the rainy season starts, we generally have two weeks of sogginess. There is daily rain, sometimes very heavy and at times with lightening. We get the same thing when the rainy season ends. During the rest of the seven months, at the Monte Cristo plantation where we live, generally there is a big rain twice a day, at about 4:00 in the morning and again in the afternoon. Inside the La Garita plantation, the rain comes every other day. This would seem to make for better living conditions at La Garita, but it really doesn’t, because the sunny day heats the soil, and the previous day’s rain creates a sauna. For living, I prefer a daily rain, but the trees don’t care.
The dust season. Activities change drastically during the dry season. We have more visitors and it is easier to do changes to infrastructure, like road and bridge building, etc. Construction is much, much easier when you aren’t ankle deep, or more, in mud. You can nearly double your time in construction if you do it during the wet season compared to the dry.
One very nice thing about the dry season is it coincides with the coolest time of the year. So the increased sun is offset by the cool winds that come from the North.
When the temperature may vary no more than 10 degrees Farenheit for the entire year, even a change of 5 degrees seems like a lot. So we all act like we’re freezing any time we have to put on socks.
The dry season is great for swimming in our river, as the water is low and crystal clear. Not so good for fishing though. A rain makes the water a little more murky and so helps hide me from the fish. Most of the Ticos go fishing during the dry season because there are places that are accessible no other time of the year except by horse.
We do the heavy pruning of the trees in the dry season. Mainly because bark is slippery and when we are pruning large trees, it is important that nothing is moving around. We can prune for form all year round.
This is good because the grass isn’t growing as much, so workers who would have been working at keeping the grass cleared around the trees can switch to pruning.
For tree owners, the best time to visit is during the dry season, which is also peak tourist time. This is because getting into the plantations is much easier. During the dry season, we can almost drive up to the individual trees. Otherwise, it can require quite a walk to get to the trees.
For riding a mountain bike, I prefer the rainy season, but after things have dried just a little. Just enough to keep the dust down, but not so much that all the rock is loose. One really nice thing about the dry season is you can ride on the pure dirt roads, which are nearly impassible even with a bike for much of the year. They come through with a grader and clean them up during the beginning of the dry season, giving a great opportunity to ride on hard-packed dry clay.
The truth is, I like both seasons. And the end of each, I am eager for the next. When the dust is everywhere, a nice rain is very welcome, and when you can’t seem to find a dry place anywhere, three months of no rain cures that feeling very well indeed.
Posted in clothes, cycling, finca, forestry, mud, nursery, roads, tree owners, trees | No Comments »
September 19th, 2008 fmorgan
Here in Costa Rica, there are about 2,000 different kinds of trees, at least 150 of them are good for lumber. You would think seeds would be easy to get.
Nope, not at all. Generally when we try to order seeds, we find 4 or 5 different types readily available. These would be teak, gmelina, mahogany, cocobolo, and acacia. Everything else is fairly unpredictable.
I personally am not fond of monocrop plantations. They are not very interesting and for native species, not very good. Native trees grow better mixed — like in nature.
The majority of the rare trees we plant are from seeds that we collect within our plantations. This year, the only way we were able to find almendro was from our own trees. All of our cebo was from our own trees as well. A big bonus this year was finding balsamo, a very rare tree with wood as valuable (if not moreso) than cocobolo.
When we first arrived in Costa Rica, I thought to grow trees would be as easy as calling up a tree nursery, ordering the seedlings, and planting them when they arrived. I figured some day we would have a nursery, but just because of volume. The truth is, the only way that we could get the seedlings we needed was to have our own nursery. Nothing else worked reliably.
I am sure it is frustrating for some of our clients that in January they might order, say, 500 cristobal trees and I have to say, “It depends on if there are seeds.” This really emphasizes that what we are doing is working in an area that requires the cooperation of nature, and nature at times will decide that this is not a good year to produce certain seeds.
A good example is our mango trees on our property this year. I was starting to wonder if the mango trees we had actually did produce fruit, because for two years there was none. But this year they more than made up for it and there were mangos everywhere! The same thing is true for seeds we need in the plantations — we can’t just plant whatever we would like, because at times, Mother Nature doesn’t give us any seeds.
Another thing we often do is collect seedlings, or as they are called in the USA, wildlings. Currently in the plantation where we live, there are lots and lots of seedlings that have sprouted in the last month or so. We will go out and carefully extract them from the ground and put into bags, to plant inside the farms. Often, these are the best possible seedlings because they have already shown their vigour in surviving.
Aside from the very popular plantation trees, we never know exactly what we are doing to have to plant, but, that keeps it interesting.
Posted in acacia, campo, cebo, finca, forest, forestry, mahogany, nursery, seedlings, teak, tree owners, trees, wood | No Comments »
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 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 »
January 19th, 2008 fmorgan
Yesterday wasn’t particularly exceptional and that is the scary thing. Because I don’t punch a clock, I often don’t think about how many hours I work. As I was reviewing what to write today, it occured to me just how many things happened yesterday.
Usually I’m awake by 3:30 or 4:00, but yesterday the day started at 2:00 AM. I tend not to sleep very long — it runs in the family. So, when I wake up, I just get up and work. If I need a nap later in the day, I take one. Predawn is a good time to connect with people in other parts of the world. We have a distributor in England, so it is the best time to call. Usually around 4:00 or so Amy will wake up, and this is our time before the day starts in earnest. Our general manager has been known to show up as early as 4:30 to talk about the day, since he knows we are awake.
I also like to take the earliest part of the day to do research and learn things. If I learn something early in the morning, I tend to remember it much better than later in the day, although I never have much of a problem remembering things.
Back to yesterday. At 6:00 we needed to go up to our Monte Cristo plantation where our house and furniture factory are. Amy needed to meet with construction and woodworking. I needed to meet with tree nursery and wood harvesting. We returned to the office at 8:00. We are currently living at the office because our house is being finished. Between 8:00 and noon I worked on an order for decking and on learning Sketchup for doing drawings of projects.
At noon, I took visitors to one our first plantation. Some of our earliest tree owners came to visit us and see their trees. They were amazed at the size of the trees and how much they had grown in the last year. One of these visitors is a good test point for us, because they have their own trees on their own property and also have us growing some trees for them. They have told us that it is cheaper just paying us to grow the trees.
I got back to the house about 5:00 pm and caught up on emails and forums. About 6:00 pm one of our contract forestry engineers showed up to talk to Amy about the residency laws as they relate to forestry. We have a potential buyer who wished to use an investment in reforestation as a way to get residency. Unfortunately, everything is up in the air now so there is nothing concrete that can be said. I had several other things to discuss with him, including explaining our project of plantation to permanent rainforest. It took a while for him to get it. As he said, no one is doing this here, although he knew that it is done in other countries. I will meet with MINAE to explain our long term goals. It thrills me to know that my Spanish is now at the point that this will not be too difficult.
I finally finished the day at 7:00 pm and tried to stay awake. I fell asleep about 8:00 pm. This morning I slept in until 3:00.
Posted in finca, nursery, tree owners, trees, wood | No Comments »