My ATV is in the field eating grass.

One of the things I learned along the way is the difference between an asset and a liability: Assets make money, liabilities eat money. My family used to tease me that even my hobbies were profitable (or at least broke even). If I went fishing, you could pretty much count on me bringing home a nice mess of perch or panfish for eating.

Recently I was asked if I was interested in selling our old ATV. It was being used almost every day, but it got me thinking, “Why do I have this since I have other modes of transportation?” Back when we bought it used, it was important for hauling seedlings into the farms, but since then we have grown to the point of using a tractor so we can haul up to three thousand seedlings at a time. I was using the ATV to get back and forth between the office and the farms, but I also have a motorcycle that is better and cheaper for that purpose.

So I bargained to swap the ATV for five milk cows with their calves. Our caretaker wants to milk the cows and can cut the grass for them inside our farm with a scythe. I get the manure for the nursery and our garden, and he pays off the cows with his income from making the milk into cheese.

So, the ATV has gone from being a liability that needs repairs to an asset that makes cheese. Just as long as I am not the person who has to milk it in the mornings, I am happy!

Posted in bargaining, business in Costa Rica, nursery, scythe | No Comments »

The New and Improved Motoguadaña

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 »