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 24th, 2008 fmorgan
…everything looks like a nail. This is a phrase I think about a lot because it says that if our tool collection is small, we often “fix” things in a manner that doesn’t make sense.
After all these years, I am now seeing how often forestry practices are, quite frankly, very primative. It is almost as though forestry engineers are being brought kicking and screaming into the idea of maintaining existing ecosystems instead of just having a job identifying trees and marking them for harvest.
As an example, CATIE has been researching for 10 years here in Costa Rica how to grow mahogany without attracting a certain moth that lays its eggs in the tips of the young trees so that when they hatch, the larvae bore into the tip. CATIE now has results that look good, and we are using the methods they have researched. Since the damage to the tree occurs on the tip and only occurs twice a year, it works fine to prune after the damage. Also, planting inside brush helps a lot too, since the moth overflies the trees. After the mahogany tree is 6 meters tall, there is no more problem.
Various trials were done, but I was truly surprised that they didn’t try two that seem to be pretty safe bets. One would be to use a dormant spray to smother the eggs when first laid. You can predict almost to the week when the moths will lay their eggs, so a dormant spray could be very effective. Dormant spray is used in the North a lot for fruit trees. The other idea is to use bat houses to concentrate predators in the area. The photo below shows the type of bat houses we’re making. They will be mounted on rough posts that go all the way inside that the bats can climb up on.
I don’t know yet if these two approaches will work, but I really shouldn’t have been surprised that they weren’t tried. Forestry often resembles a horse with blinders, in that there is very little interaction with other fields, like growing fruit trees and organic farming. I do believe this is because forestry, up until recently, has been focused almost entirely on harvesting and managing existing forests, not in rebuilding forests.
It is so interesting to me that there are so many possibilities for learning inside our plantations and forest. A common question I get is how long do I think I will be interested in planting trees. The answer is probably forever, since there is so much to learn and so much to discover. You would think growing trees would be simple and in some ways it is, but there is so much room for improvement!
Posted in CATIE, bats, finca, forest, forestry, mahogany, pests | No Comments »
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 19th, 2008 fmorgan
Mixed species planting on one of our tree farms
One of our contract forestry engineers told us about a “plantation” that went astray. Many years ago in Guanacaste a person bought a lot of land, about 200 hectares or about 500 acres. He planted all sorts of different trees on it and then left it to grow, planning on coming back in several years to start realizing profit.
This is pretty much what you do up North, buy some land, plant some trees and go away for a long time because everything takes a long time to grow. Perhaps your kids will have a harvest. Here it isn’t that way as growth rates are up to 10 times faster.
Sadly, he never registered any of the land as a plantation, so MINAE doesn’t think it is. Now MINAE is rejecting his request to cut any trees because the “plantation” looks like secondary growth (it IS secondary growth because it wasn’t cared for) and he has no proof to the contrary. There are never permits issued to cut anything inside secondary growth.
This is so common down here. People assume that the laws of Costa Rica are the same as up North and go from the idea that if it is my land, I can do with it as I wish. This is not true at all here. In fact, Costa Rica now has a law in place that to start a business activity, you need to have it approved and how it will effect the waterways particularly. Even for us to build a modest workshop for building furniture and processing wood, we had to go through various steps.
Our plantations look like parks, all well cared for and no brush. I have had more than a few people wonder why, and this is why: If it doesn’t look like a plantation (i.e. rows of the same species), it is secondary forest unless you register with MINAE that you planted that way and it was the plan.
There are lots of abandoned plantations in Costa Rica. Around 1997 there were a lot of trees planted and not cared for. The plantations that are teak are pretty much a waste, and the few plantations that have natives, if they were left alone like this and not documented, are now part of the protected zone and untouchable. It is really sad, too, because there is not enough wood available in Costa Rica, in fact, only half of what is needed. If these investors had actually put in the kind of money and attention that is necessary to do it right, they would be retiring comfortably right now.
It isn’t like all of this information is not available. It is all documented in the forestry law, but a lot of investors just listen to their neighbors. You shouldn’t accept legal advice regarding plantations from anyone besides a registered forestry engineer, preferably two or three. Then read the law for yourself.
Posted in MINAE, buying land, finca, investing, trees, 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 »
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 16th, 2008 fmorgan
Although we start planting in July, for us the planting season starts in February. This is because we have our own nursery. We get most of our seeds from CATIE but also many come from our own forest. This year, almendro trees we planted 2 1/2 years ago are producing seeds. This is really remarkable when you think about it. These trees are a good 15 feet tall or more and the wood is harder than oak. Very resistant to termites too. Almendro is a very important wood ecologically because it is needed by the Great Green Maccaw.
The nursery currently has nearly 20,000 cebo in it and a few leftovers from last year of other species (probably 10 or more different types).
The nursery crew tends to be women mostly - there isn’t a lot of work in the campo (countryside) for women, and women really do much better than men caring for the seedlings. It works very well since they help in the nursery growing the seedlings and then they help planting. The men do the heavy work, the women do the delicate work. Often this allows families to work together.
Posted in Great Green Maccaw, almendro, cebo, nursery | 2 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 »