May 2nd, 2009 fmorgan
One of the areas I think that baffles foreigners most when living in Costa Rica is what things cost. First of all, you have to deal with a new currency, the colon. On top of that, some things are much cheaper here (for example, we just bought a pineapple for less than 50 cents), and other things, much more expensive (imported goods mainly–an apple is about $1.50).
So, getting prices straight can be challenging, especially when you start talking in millions of colones. We just sold a used ATV for 2 million (about 3600 dollars).
We all want to know ahead of time what it will cost to build something, but the price always ends up being more than quoted. I finally figured out that contractors here give a bid for the best case scenario. Basically, if everything goes perfectly, it will be that price. In a country where even plans for meetings are preceded by “Si Dios quiere…” (If God wills), you can guess how often everything goes perfectly. You would think that the estimates would reflect the normal course of events, but it doesn’t work that way. Since everyone bids for the impossible ideal situation, anyone who gives an accurate estimate will not get the job. Cost overruns are therefore the norm, and you are responsible for adding your own buffer instead of the contractor tacking it on. The odds of you coming out at the original bid and getting to keep that buffer are worse than the lottery, but I guess it’s fun to try. We have seen that if you work the price down to below usual, what you pay in the end will be the same as if you accepted a quote for around the going price, what with one thing and another. It is very possible the lower bid will end up being the most expensive when you redo the rushed job.
Bargaining is practically a national pastime in Costa Rica, if not an art form. Where you live, are you accustomed to hearing an exchange like this in a retail furniture store? “I appeal to your conscience on the price you are asking me to pay.” “My conscience is perfectly clear, thank you, I know our prices are some of the best around.” That last said with a big smile.
It seems everything can be dickered over, and everything is considered for sale. People frequently walk up to our door and ask to buy equipment that we are using in our business. The above-mentioned ATV was in daily use, but somebody asked if we would part with it. It is always good when you are not the one trying to sell, but the other party is trying to buy.
If you come up to a farmer and say, “I like your farm, how much?” expect to be shocked at the price. The custom is to offer it at 3 times a reasonable amount, which is to say, “I don’t really want to sell, but if you really want it…” More than a few farmers have been shocked when the crazy foreigner paid what they asked, and more than a few foreigners have been very upset to discover they paid three times market value.
The best way to buy land is to locate yourself in the area for a while and give yourself a few months to learn what a good price is. Then let it be known that you will buy land for that price. Resist the pressure to go look at properties that are more than your asking price per hectare or square meter. Eventually someone will show up with a property in your price range, because that is what the locals are paying.
After seven years of doing business in Costa Rica, I can see us now on our next visit to the United States trying to appeal to the conscience of some baffled clerk in Home Depot.
Posted in bargaining, business in Costa Rica, buying land, campo, construction, culture, finca, investing | No Comments »
March 16th, 2009 fmorgan
One of the many big surprises to me when we moved down to Costa Rica was how primitive the wood business was. Here you have a country with hardware stores, tools, etc. but if you want wood, you go to the sawmill and buy green! There are also depositos de madera, or lumberyards, but they usually sell green wood, too. Of course, you can’t install it green, so you have to dry it yourself.
Many people who are building their own home in Costa Rica are surprised to find that you can’t just go down to something like Home Depot and buy a 2×4; nope, you have to find it. Then, after you find it, make sure to get more than you need, because some of them are going to warp, especially if you don’t know how to dry it properly.
The Ticos are an interesting mix of planning and not planning. If they are building your home, it is hard to find someone who understands buying supplies ahead. I think I have finally figured out why. Most Ticos accumulate material and build in stages. Unlike we do in the USA, they don’t generally get a loan, but they store up money for labor and materials until they have enough to start. This means the wood they need for beams, etc. has probably been in the barn for a few years.
We, on the other hand, land here and want to build our home now, the sooner the better. Often the wood is not available except in a tree somewhere, which will require permits that take weeks to get. The wood will be rough cut, often by a chainsaw, then you will wait perhaps 3 months or more for it to dry (sort of). Since most construction people have nothing more than a power hand planer, the cost of planing and sanding can cost as much as the wood itself.
We paid our dues on this for sure. The first house we built was from trees to house using chainsaws with guides and a 15″ planer. It felt like the timeline for the construction was stretching out forever (we know those of you who live here can relate).
As we grew, so did our milling operation, and we got faster and faster — and more predictable. Now if we need a beam, it comes out of the factory dry, at the right dimensions, planed and sanded and ready to install. The cost of planing and sanding isn’t much when you have the equipment. It is a lot less than paying a construction person to do it by hand. In fact, the costs saved in having the wood ready almost pays for the wood itself when you deduct the labor cost of working with rough cut wood. And of course, the quality is better. We use specialty equipment that allows us to work with beautifully grained wood that would otherwise have a lot of tearouts. With our equipment, we are able to make gorgeous teak products that cost about the same as cedar.
Now we are in the process of educating the construction bosses from Guanacaste to the central valley that they can buy wood ready to install, which helps keep their clients happy. We not only sell the dimensional lumber, but also the tongue-end-groove wood for ceilings and walls (called tablilla here) and floors. In fact, just about anything that is wood in a house, from furniture to cabinets, to floors and doors, we make and sell. And that uses a lot of wood, which is good for our tree owners.
Posted in business in Costa Rica, cabinets, campo, construction, cultural adaptation, doors, drying wood, forestry, furniture, kiln, tablilla, teak, trees, wood | 1 Comment »
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 »
July 3rd, 2008 fmorgan
We use motorized brush cutters (weedwhackers) a lot in the farms. Pretty much all day long you hear them running. Here in Costa Rica, they are called motoguadañas, or motorized scythes. They even cut the grass on the lawns with them rather than using lawnmowers, because the lawns are not rolled smooth.
A motoguadaña here costs about 250,000 colones, or in 2008, 500 dollars. When they are used about 7 hours a day, you can expect them to survive about 2 years before they start to become more trouble than they are worth. Generally speaking, you have to clean the motoguadañas once a week (grease, clean, etc.) or they will deteriorate much more rapidly. The consumption of fuel for a day is about one gallon. That doesn’t sound like much, except down here that costs about 6 dollars now. The mixing oil is a bit more. A good operator can cut about 3,000 square meters a day, or a bit less than an acre.
All of this adds up when you have 750 acres or so. We cut the grass on every bit of the land around our trees once every two months for the first two years. After that, it is about every 6 months. The trees grow really fast in our part of Costa Rica, but so does everything else. You have to keep up with it or it will effect the final shape of the tree and their growth.
Before there were motoguadañas, there were guadañas, or scythes. After a lot of research, we decided that scythes might just make a good replacement for the motoguadañas. It is a bit hard to believe, but in the hand of a person who knows what they are doing, a scythe is actually faster and less work than a motoguadaña.
At least, that is the theory.
Yesterday, the scythes arrived. Since it isn’t the easiest thing in the world to get shipments here, I went ahead and ordered 13 of them. Since we can make our own snaths (the handles), I ordered 5 of them in different styles so we would have something to go by. We also got all the stuff to sharpen the blades.
To prepare people for the coming of the new and improved motoguadaña, I showed them a video of a young girl beating an operator of a motoguadaña in a contest. They were impressed, and of course, since it was a little girl (about 11 years old I believe), I am sure they are convinced they can do at least as well as she!
It appears to be true. Yesterday, I showed Ignacio, our gardener, the scythe. After I explained how it worked, he was off and running. He is convinced that with just a little time, it will be faster than a motoguadaña.
One really big advantage is that the women can use the scythes, whereas a motoguadaña (commercial size) is a bit much for the average sized Tica. Many of the women in the area would love to work clearing the grass but could not before. There isn’t a lot of work for the women in the area, so this opens up possibilities. One other benefit that I really didn’t expect is safety. You wouldn’t think a knife that is nearly a meter long would be safer - but motoguadañas throw a lot of debris and those who operate them often don’t consider this. The other safety issue is your hearing. The steady noise of a motoguadaña can’t be good for your long term hearing and it masks the sound of a snake as well.
So far, the scythe experiment is going very well, although there was a pretty startled look on the faces of the people working nearby when I walked out of my office holding a scythe for the first time, looking like the Grim Reaper…
Posted in campo, conservation, cultural adaptation, culture, importing, scythe, trees, 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 »
January 29th, 2008 fmorgan
A book I enjoyed growing up was A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. The story was about an engineer who finds himself back at the time of King Arthur and of course ends up looking like a magician to everyone. Sometimes I can relate.
It isn’t that people in Costa Rica are ignorant — far from it. But most people have no access to either libraries or the Internet for information. Aside from the schools and newspapers, everything is pretty much passed by word of mouth. The impact of this is hard to imagine.
For example, if I want to know what a venturi valve is, I can search on Google and find not only exactly how it works, but how to make one, with drawings and everything. Even though you may never have heard of a venturi valve before you read about it here, in a few minutes you can know all about it too.
Because of this ability to research (and the amount of data stuffed into my head from digging around the Internet), there is a “magical” quality that can get me in trouble at times. No, no one is going to burn me at the stake, but sometimes people don’t know when I am clueless.
There is a big difference between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. It takes a bit for people to realize that though I know very well the characteristics of wood and how it reacts to various forces, please don’t expect me to make a piece of furniture. My mind may be well educated, but my hands are as dumb as clubs.
This is very contrary to the culture here. If you understand the science behind something, you almost certainly must be incredibly practiced at doing it. Not so in a society as specialized as the USA. In the USA, you may well know how to design something without the ability to actually use the tools to build it. Among those who know me well, when I head for a shovel, somebody runs in front of me to do the job for me. I think they are a little worried about me.
The other day, I sat at lunch with some of our workers and explained the principles behind the aguaponics system that they are setting up for me (combining fish farming with hydroponics). They were fascinated and can’t wait to see it up and running. If I know Costa Ricans, if they see that it works well, there will be imitators and we will also see it evolve into something more appropriate to the resources and climate here.
Posted in aguaponics, campo, cultural adaptation, engineering, fish farming, hydroponics | 1 Comment »
January 22nd, 2008 fmorgan
I figure I have to visit/explore between 5 to 10 fincas before I buy one. This latest finca is a good example of why. On the surface, all is good — the land is suitable and reasonably close to one of our other plantations.
But there is a serious problem — it seems that the previous owner is in deep trouble with MINAE according to my sources. If so, we won’t touch this finca with a ten foot pole. MINAE is in charge of plantations and so we work very closely with them. They also are in charge of protecting the environment.
We will have a meeting with MINAE to discuss this finca. It may be that they will wish us to purchase it as a way to prevent further problems, but there is no telling at this point.
The farther you get away from more populated areas here in Costa Rica, the more lawless people are. I don’t mean as in shoot you for your money, but as far as not following the regulations and honestly, not caring about them.
When they lose out on selling land because of the denunciations against their land by MINAE, they start to care a little more.
Posted in MINAE, campo, finca, forest | No Comments »
January 17th, 2008 fmorgan
I have always enjoyed dressing casual, and I am sure some would say too casual. Here in Costa Rica on the farms, I can go about as ragged as I dare without notice or comment. Inside my closet, there are two sections, clothes for the fincas and clothes fit to be seen in town. The ones for the fincas show how often I traverse barbed wire fences. Since the average Costa Rican is much smaller than I am, the spacing between the fence wires usually manages to snag the back of my T-shirt me as I try to pass through.
But I have nothing on the average campesino (country dweller). If you meet him inside his own farm, it will often appear that he has a few shirt fragments strategically placed around his upper body. Highly likely, many buttons are missing if the shirt ever had any, and the shirt tails are sort of tied around his waist to keep from flapping around and catching on things as he works (must be an OSHA standard). Many times, the pants are not jeans, but dress pants that have seen MUCH better days. Because campesinos work hard, the majority of them don’t have an ounce of extra weight on them. These means that they don’t expand out of their clothes. Once they achieve full growth, there is nothing to stop them from wearing a particular outfit until it falls off or rots from the climate.
If a belt exists, it is rope or something similar. Usually this isn’t used so much to hold up the pants as to attach the machete. When wearing a machete, you should attach it to the side opposite your dominate hand so you can quick draw it like a person would a sword (you never know when a fer-de-lance will need to be dealt with). To do otherwise marks you as a newbie. Yes, I wore one wrong for a couple of years — probably explains why they kept hiding it on me…a newbie with a machete is a thing to be feared.
Shorts are not uncommon, especially for construction people. Those who work in the field tend to go with long pants for protection, but not all the time. I have seen more owners wear shorts. Maybe it’s a status symbol to show that they aren’t hacking down brush alongside their workers. This is nice, because if I show up to the fincas on my mountain bike, I don’t look so out of place.
The favorite Costa Rican hat is the type worn by Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island. Usually the hats are in terrible condition, all frayed around the edges and pretty much as holey as the shirts.
The one item usually in good condition is the footwear, a pair of tall rubber boots. They are cheap and your feet are important. For 8 months of the year in our zone, you can expect to be in mud, so keeping your feet dry is critical. I would wear them too, but they don’t stock them in size 12 (46) — the largest size they sell is about a 10 1/2. To walk around in these boots all day, you have to have feet of steel or thick socks. I get blisters just looking at them.
New clothes are expensive here, but there are plenty of cheap used ones in the “American clothing” stores. These stores buy by the bale clothes from places like Goodwill in the USA. They sort out the clothes and sell them for about what you’d pay at Goodwill. It seems that a lot of shirts with sayings on them end up among these US castoffs, perhaps because they are too rude. Almost no one in the campo speaks or reads English — think of some of the things you have seen printed on T-shirts and imagine a person walking around in one of them without a clue what message he’s sending out to any unsuspecting English speaker he passes. My wife likes to offer to translate people’s shirts for them if they say something amusing, but she won’t say a word about some of them. Like when we went into a store where everyone is friendly and helpful all time, especially the owner, and were greeted with a T-shirt worn by the owner saying, “Ask someone who cares.” Or this one: One of our workers came up to greet us very respectfully in a T-shirt that says, “Your parents must have been siblings.” Sometimes it’s so hard to keep a straight face.
When I come off the farms caked with mud, immediately my jeans, shirt, and boots are grabbed and sent over to be cleaned. When they reappear, you wouldn’t know what they have been through except for a few new holes from the fences and some wear from the scrub brush and harsh bluing soap. Although to be filthy at the end of the day is considered normal, if I were to start the day that way it would shame the person who does the laundry.
Posted in campo, clothes, finca, style | No Comments »
January 16th, 2008 fmorgan
Today I went to visit a new finca (farm) that we are looking at buying. We already have one finca for planting this year called Quebradon, but it only has enough space for 35,000 trees, which might not be enough this year. There is another, much larger, finca connected to it that we visited today.
By we, I mean myself and Nelson, our general manager. We didn’t drive to it, we took the ATV. When going back into the campo, it really makes sense to use an ATV instead of a car — after all, if the ATV gets stuck, you can just lift it out.
As time passes we have to find larger farms, and that generally means more remote. Also, this helps us keep the price down on trees. It does raise the cost a little while planting, but not that much. It is a blance between accessibility and price. More remote generally means better land, since it has not been farmed for too long. There is always much more wildlife as well.
Visiting a finca is usually done from horseback, especially the larger fincas. This finca is 183 manzanas, or about 311 acres, or 128 hectares. It has about 30 hectares of forest and the rest is pasture. Remember that 100 hectares is a square kilometer, to give you a perspective on the size.
As usual, the owner figured since I am growing trees what I want to see is trees! Not really, what I want to see is pasture, because that is where we grow trees. But what happens is that I first got a guided tour of the forested areas. This of course is the roughest section of the finca to travel in. Think the downhill ride/slide in the movie Man from Snowy River! I can’t believe the kind of terrain I ride on regularly. Today one spot was really bad and we actually had to dismount to help the horses go up it. It was worth the pain though — at the bottom of the hill was the largest Spanish cedar I have ever seen. We also had a snack of heart of palm — very nice. You haven’t had heart of palm until you have had it fresh.
You know that you are in trouble when visiting a finca and the owner asks twice if you know how to ride horses before you start. He really wants to make sure you can handle what you’re about to go through. Thankfully he gave me the best horse and the best saddle. His saddle was just a piece of leather with stririps tied on with rope, and he still rode better than me, but that’s no surprise. I swear some of the Tico cowboys defy gravity when riding. Perhaps they superglue themselves to the seat.
This finca is off the grid, that is, there are no electrical lines or phone. However, it does have power. First of all, the electrical monopoly here has a program of renting out solar panels that will give you enough power for three lights and a TV for 2 dollars a month. Also, within this finca is an mini-hydroelectric system that used to work. It can be repaired and will be.
The finca looks like a winner for sure. It is a good price and well suited for our planting. With this finca and our other that it is connected to, it will mean about 265 manzanas connected together, or 450 acres. One side connects to the reserve that extends from there to Arenal to Tilaran to Bagaces — I think that would be about 60 kilometers. Just a little bit inside the reserve I am told is a 100-foot waterfall. It should be fun to visit.
The next step is to have a forestry engineer review the titles to the property for any issues (such as it can’t be sold because it was a government gift house) as well as determine which areas can be planted with what species. After that, we make the deal.
Posted in buying land, campo, finca, forest, horses, off the grid, trees | 3 Comments »
January 13th, 2008 fmorgan
1-year-old acacia and teak on one of our plantations
For those who don’t know, campo means countryside and that is where we live, the countryside of Costa Rica. What are we doing here? Well, as many of our tree owners know, we are growing tropical hardwood trees. For them, we are growing trees as an investment; for the people here, we are creating jobs and a source of wood, which is in icreasingly short supply in Costa Rica. And for the environment (which would be all of us) we are creating a permanent rainforest using the plantation trees as a nursery for the slower growing trees of the rainforest.
We decided to start this blog as a way to communicate with our many tree owners as well as family and friends to keep them up to date on our activities. Also, expect lots and lots of pictures of not only our life here, but the trees, plantations, new projects and of course, wildlife.
We hope you all enjoy it.
Fred
President, Finca Leola S.A.
Posted in acacia, campo, teak | No Comments »