Who needs the grocery store?

Each day this week I got up around 6 AM in order to feed the various animals and milk our goat Chuti. My milking skills have progressed from hopeless to competent and at the end of the week I had enough milk to give cheese a shot.

I've read way too much about goats, goat cheese, cheese-making, and cheese eating in the last few weeks but my obsession was finally fulfilled this morning, when I tried the first bite of the stuff on a homemade bagel. Tangy, garlicky, goat's cheese flooded my taste buds and resulted in a big hunk of the round missing by the end of the bagel.

I still go to the grocery store, of course, but here's one less thing I'll need to get. And it's pretty fantastic to be a part of a food process this close to home.

Chuti

It's funny that when you're looking for something, you never seem to be able to find it. In our case, we had been looking for goats for literally months. We spent countless hours listening to various people tell us they have them for somewhere between 80 and 200 dollars, if they cared to name a price at all, and could bring them to our house....sometime, you know? We finally ran into a gentleman who was looking to trade a pregnant, milking goat for a young pig. A nice trade, if one person's goal is to eat about 70 kilos of pork in 6 months and the other's is to have goat milk now.

As it was, we didn't have the pig; however, our neighbor did and was originally approached with the "deal." He had no use for a goat but knew that we were looking. An "animal" love triangle in the making.

So, meet Chuti! Who knows how old she is but she's already the "alpha" of the dogs and behaves a lot like a dog with me and Matt. She licks you, likes to have her neck scratched, and leans against you when she's looking for backup against a scary noise. It's also worth mentioning that she's pregnant and already giving milk. Soon we'll have a kid, and then, by definition, a herd, and perhaps...hopefully...some cheese.

The chickens are impressed.

Building Stuff

When I was a kid, I liked to build stuff. I had an erector set, put together N-gauge (synonymous with tiny) model train buildings, and I even helped put together our childhood playhouse.

I also like to reuse materials whenever possible. So when our landlord took down the tool shed at our house, and left most of the materials laying around the front yard as if a bomb had hit the little building, I was able to get back in touch with this old hobby while helping out the environment.

Our landlord told us to burn the remaining materials: a bunch of wooden posts and boards of varying sizes as well as sheets of zinc - think tin, and all the garbage left by the workers while building the house. Seeing as how that's not exactly in our MO, we decided to put the leftovers to use. Some of you have heard about our neighbor's rooster causing us (and Guapo) some grief. Maybe a good future blog post but for this reason, we decided to make a large enclosure for our chickens; it would keep them nearby the house for laying eggs and also ensure that the only rooster having his way with the hens is Guapo. (Don't worry - they've got tons of space and are really happy.) Similarly, we realized that our future goats are going to need a little hut for shade, nighttime, and the rainy season. We were able to use a lot of the pile.

The explosion in the yard AFTER we used a ton of the materials and piled a bunch of the wood. Thanks, Juan!

Turns out that to put up a good fence or structure, it needs to be anchored into the ground a bit. Actually, a lot. And digging post holes is hard work! Matt dug the majority of the holes and we got our posts up for the chicken enclosure and goat hut on the first day. The following day was spent putting up the chicken fencing, building and installing the enclosure door, and nailing siding to three sides of the goat hut.

One of the chicken fence corners.

The door - with hinges!

The goat hut. Heck yeah.

The last day of work involved putting the roof on the goat house and the strangest thing happened. We brought the sheets of metal over from the explosion site and low and behold, they didn't quite cover the full length of the hut.

Matt - Did you measure this?
Me - I don't know. I thought so.

It's not bad, really. Just a few inches short on the front...

One of the sheets fits...

I still have plans to paint the shack and you know, put some goats in there, but for now our muscles are recovering from all the work!

The Calm After the Storm

I was very disappointed that on Thursday the winds were bad enough to pick up and move chairs on our terrace, break huge branches off of trees and make the ocean a chopped up mess that even Captain Nemo would have avoided. We had plans to go skin diving and had to forego them due to these, at times, scary conditions. It was probably for the best; a piece of metal roofing from our chicken coop was picked up and tossed about 20 feet away, a bird mid-flight was thrown against our house and the howlers were unusually vocal for the daytime.

Thankfully, the tide only moves about an hour later each day so we had another good opportunity to go to the beach yesterday, when the tide would be working in our favor. I was really excited to go because the wind was so calm I couldn't see even the slightest movement of the trees. We got down to Playa Blanca while the ocean was glassy with calm, rolling waves lapping onto the shore. 

In no time we were suited up in masks and flippers and waddling awkwardly toward the blue. The cold water  this time of year was refreshing in the hot, summertime sun. We swam around for about an hour and got a few photos of the activity below. Thankfully, everything we saw was a lot smaller than us!

By popular demand...

This is my first blog post "by request."

Our address (for letters, cards, etc but nothing valuable) is:

De la plaza deportiva de Paraíso,

200 metros al norte, casa de dos pisos,

mano derecha, porton de palma,

Paraíso de Santa Cruz,

Guanacaste, Costa Rica

Go ahead and put that one in your online translator.

Holidise

As it turns out, spending a holiday in paradise isn't a whole lot different than spending a regular day in paradise. You wake up, enjoy fresh eggs, a beautiful, near-cloudless day at a comfortably warm 85 degrees, do some work on the terrace, sip on a few Imperiales in the evening and think, "Oh yeah, today is my birthday."

Matt and I spent the holidays in Costa Rica, starting with my birthday, then Christmas, then New Year's and finally a small Peace Corps reunion with a few of Matt's friends. The good times were plentiful though the "holiday spirit" was somewhat lacking. The days came and went like normal days here. We have lots of work now that it's high season and the tourists (and part-timers) are here.

I won't say that we didn't feel some twinges of loneliness on those typically family-oriented days. But we had each other, the dogs, the chickens and Guapo. Oh and FaceTime with everyone we could reach.

The dust has settled, somewhat, and we're back to a normal schedule. Next on the list: catching up the blog!

Happy New Year!

New Year's at Hotel Playa Negra

New Year's with friends from Junquillal - Dana, Joan, Kim & John

Peace Corps Raging! with Kelsey, Sarah and Lucas

Rage! Heath & Jessica

Lots of raging and sun!

El Guapo

"Would you say that I have a plethora of piñatas?"


A very special package arrived at our house yesterday. A friend at the University of Costa Rica in Santa Cruz delivered our first gallo (rooster) in a cardboard box that rattled every few minutes as if there was a little monster inside. He's a beautiful Rhode Island Red with rusty-colored feathers down to a few black plumes on his tail. We named him "El Guapo."

El Guapo was introduced to his hens after we gave him about 30 minutes to calm down from the car ride over. We put his box in the coop, opened it up and promptly moved a safe distance away.

Watching the following social interactions was priceless. All the hens just stared at him at first...

Finally, El Guapo out of the box, he was free to show them his fine wingspan, plumage, and dancing. And the ladies were impressed.

We checked on them again after the sun set to be sure everyone was getting along and there was El Guapo, right up on the perch with the gang. The hens now have a constant protector from snakes, foxes, hawks or anything else that might want to hurt them. And what kind of hobby farm would this be if we didn't have little chicks running around? All in good time...