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 18th, 2008 fmorgan
After living in Costa Rica for nearly 4 years, I am finding that I am turning bilingual. Not like Amy who can speak English and Spanish very well - I have enough problems with English. This is not to say that I can’t communicate well in Spanish, I do, it is just I mangle it at times.
When I say I am turning bilingual, I mean that there are words that between English and Spanish, I select the one from one language or the other, depending on the concept I am trying to express, even though they both, in theory, mean the same.
A good example is months of the year. July means hot, dusty, Fourth of July - grass dying, daylight until 9 pm, etc. Julio (Spanish for July) means planting seasons, mud, everything super green, well into the rainy season with no sign of dry for the next 6 months. If I say that it is July now, my brain gets seriously confused. Darkness here is at 6 pm and we have roughly 12 hours of daylight. That should be March, but no, it is too warm. Much easier for me to think, it is julio now.
Another word is nursery, as in our tree nursery. My family had nurseries in the USA, and a nursery is something with a plastic over it and a source of heat so you can start plants early while there is still threat of frost. Excuse me? Costa Rica doesn’t even use the word for frost, unless maybe it is referring to what builds up inside the freezer. What we have here is a vivero, where you put up shading material so that the new seedlings aren’t cooked by the sun, even during the rainy season. Also, since we tend to start the seedlings during the dry season, a water supply is important - and there is no need to worry about heat, except perhaps heat stroke!
One last example is when we are talking about measurements of wood. The standard measurement here is a pulgada cubica (cubic inch) which doesn’t mean a square inch like in English. It is 132 square inches. Usually, in the USA we are used to using board foot (BF), which is 144 square inches. The reason is that a pulgada cubica (usually just said pulgada) is 1 inch by 1 inch by 4 varas. What is a vara you say? It is 33 inches. So, 4 x 33 = 132. A curiosity is that they used to use varas for measuring land in Texas. So, I think readily in pulgadas now - which is a good thing because it is how you buy wood here. You can imagine the confusion when people first start dealing with wood here and someone says that it is 1 dollar per cubic inch!
Before we moved to Costa Rica, I was talking to a little girl whose parents were North American and Costa Rican. She had two sets of grandparents, one who was English speaking, the other who spoke Spanish. She was completely bilingual. Once while making conversation in Spanish, I asked her about her abuelos (grandparents) in California. She told me she had no abuelos in California, only grandparents. In her mind, the parents of her tico father were the only abuelos she had, the others where grandparents. At the time I was amazed, but now I am starting to understand.
Posted in Spanish, business in Costa Rica, communications, cultural adaptation, language learning, nursery, 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 »
June 20th, 2008 fmorgan
Due to our plantations, we are on a first name basis with MINAE, the ministry of environment. This can be an adventure in and of itself. MINAE has the responsibility to safeguard the forest and environment of Costa Rica. Like many government organizations, they are understaffed for the size of the job.
We truly try to follow all the rules of Costa Rica. This can be a real trial at times. Not because of the rules, but because of timetables.
Just to give an example, we recently hauled all of those great logs out of the river from the old bridge. Come to find out, before we could cut them, we had to have MINAE visit to verify - even though we sent them pictures. But we had to wait. We were already waiting for 13+ weeks for other permits! I thought we wouldn’t need permits for the bridge logs until it was time to transport the wood, but nope, before we cut it up too (Strange, the trees have been dead for years and years…).
Finally, MINAE notified us that they were ready to come and would meet us at the gas station in Monterrey. Our forestry engineer, Angie, and one of our wood experts went to meet with them and all went great. Angie asked, “What was the holdup?”
The answer, believe it or not, was that they didn’t have enough money for gas to come out and visit! Angie actually gave them some money for gas so they could return to their office, knowing that we would reimburse her.
I wish I had known so that we could have offered to pay expenses. MINAE has taken us up before on our offer to provide horses for them to inspect our properties, so why should this be any different?
Posted in MINAE, business in Costa Rica, forestry, resources, wood | No Comments »
June 16th, 2008 fmorgan
We live above San Rafael de Guatuso, or perhaps I should say after nearly four years in Costa Rica, we are about to live there. We have lived in Costa Rica since July 20. 2004, and to this time, we have yet to have our own home. This is about to change; our home is nearly finished and we are very excited.
There is no phone service available there. Phone we can handle with wireless easily enough, but Internet service is a must for the business.
Having a background in telecommunications, I noticed a wireless bridge on a tower of El Colono, a building supply company with about 70 locations in Costa Rica. We are VERY good customers there, averaging in the thousands every month.
So we asked nicely if we could use their tower. The owner agreed and in fact connected us to their provider who came out, talked with us, did a site survey and installed a 6-meter post on the roof of our new home and the Internet bridge. We now have 256/256. I know that might not sound like much, but for us, it is twice what we have had. Then they came out again and did the wiring between our home and the office, including a wireless Internet bridge that we owned to connect the two buildings.
I feel so high tech! Here we are in the middle of the frontier of Costa Rica where there is no phone service having a line of sight wireless Internet bridge system! A funny story–ICE, the phone monopoly, had a rep out and our office administrator said, ¨Oh, we´ll just pay that bill right now on the Internet.¨ The rep said, ¨Internet?! What do you MEAN you have Internet here?¨ as he craned his neck searching all around for the wire.
I tried to do the outside wiring myself, but never could find the cable (special type for outside). Come to find out, you can only by it by the 1,000 meter roll and have to import it from the USA, or so I was told.
Anyway, tomorrow we pack up the office and move it to the Monte Cristo house and start staging our move.
Quick note: I originally wrote this back on May 15th, and now it is June 16th. Yes, we got moved - but this post sort of fell by the wayside. One thing as well, in the morning and the evening, our Internet works very well - but during the day, when it is sunny, not so well. The reason is interesting. It seems that there are some trees in the way, and in the morning, usually the limbs are lower due to rain and moisture, but during the day, they reach for the sun, and interfere with our connection… only in the tropics.
The solution is a 21 meter tower complete with aircraft warning light, scheduled within three weeks to be finished.
Posted in business in Costa Rica, cell phone, communications, forest, off the grid | No Comments »
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.
Posted in business in Costa Rica, wood | 2 Comments »
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. 
Update, one year later: We have a good, licensed operator and have volunteered our backhoe to improve public roadways and bridges.
Posted in Uncategorized | 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 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.
Posted in snakes | 2 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 »