Happy Monday! Time for some sunny news from beautiful Guatemala. This is the recap that was to go live when the storm hit, and now almost everything is back in order. I am in the plane to France as you read this, enjoy!
After a busy Easter, life went back to normal and we are slowly finishing little details around the house. We only kept two employees, our devoted handyman and a carpenter for woodwork. The deck was polished (nice way to describe hours and hours of electric polishing noise and clouds of dust) then painted with a waterproof coat, and leveled since one of the pillars was rotting in the water.
Now that the half dozen workers are gone we can plant things in the garden without fearing they will step on it and prevent its growth. We brought a few palm trees from the big land, and also put some plants on the walls of the bedroom, between the stone, hoping they root. It has been very hot lately so that is not a given, unfortunately, and even less after the storm.
The garden patch was fenced to prevent the hens from going there for siesta. The earth is cooler since we water more and they love to dig a round hole and bury themselves on a hot day, which has been every day for the past two weeks.
The hens are doing well, although we have had some scares. Once a hen becomes a mum, she starts fighting with the other hens, and even the chicks that aren’t hers. There is a saying here that goes “se cree la mama de los pollitos”, “she thinks she is the mother of the chicks”, to say someone is full of himself and thinks he is entitled to anything and above the common law. One of the mothers killed a small chick who got too close to her and wasn’t hers. Another one terrorized the first 5 chicks so much they don’t want to sleep in the cage anymore, and every night we had to run after them to get them in, then gave up and let them sleep outside.
We thought the lack of nests was the problem, so we upgraded the cage with 12 nests instead of 4. Some still lay outside, which they did before when the nests were occupied, and it is hard to make them change their habits, other seem happy. Two are hatching at the moment, expecting chicks for next week and the week after that. A recent one was a disaster, we already lost 2 of 5 chicks, but the last one seems pretty good, we got 11 chicks, a whole football team in one go!
Most progress now has been made on the 90 acres land development. Our neighbor conveniently had a caterpillar standing there, and offered it to us for $80/hour, with a skilled driver and gas, to trace our roads. The price is the usual but we would have had to pay for the machine to get to us on a truck and we were able to save a bit on that. When you are used to $200/month workers and suddenly you have someone charging the price of a consultant, you stay on top of the work.
So most days we go to the land 3-4 times to make sure the guy is working his billable hours and is tracing the road well. We are very lucky because he knows what he does, so much so he is very stubborn and you can’t tell him to do things another way, but in the end we are very happy with the results. He just messed up on one road while we were away for a couple of hours, but that is nothing compared to the work he has done in one short week.
The architect will come next week to GPS the plots and the next step is to take them to the land registry and split the big land into 200 or so plots.
While we were busy doing all that, our neighbor cleaned his land and exposed a huge Mayan ruin about 100 yards from our land limit. That is the triangle shaped hill you see in the background.
We think there was quite an important Mayan settlement because in our land we found lots of clay artifacts, unfortunately broken by the caterpillar as it went. It would take years to carefully excavate with no proof that we would find something significant, but it is a pity to find those broken things. Many were already broken and you can see the cuts are old, but some of it was broken by the caterpillar. Which is strange since there has been cattle on that land for years and nothing happened.
The whole village is enjoying the last few weeks of land usage, since our land is at the village’s limit, everyone has been coming there for years to take wood for their fires, leave their horses or cows for free… It has been very convenient that they gathered all the dead wood and took it home, we were about to pay someone to clean the land!
Lots of curious people have inquired, some even inaugurated our road with their car, we will have to close the car access during the rainy season or they could damage the road if we haven’t paved it yet.
The idea is to have all the plots traced by the end of the week, so I can go to Europe and relax while the registry works on the property titles. I haven’t booked my ticket yet, can’t believe I may be flying this weekend!
How did your week go? Anything exciting to share?
this post was features on Money Bulldog, thanks!
I had no idea that chickens were that crazy and mean, but for some reason it doesn’t surprise me.
It’s also pretty cool to say that you have a Mayan ruin in your backyard. I would expect that there is some kind of rule that would force you to preserve it for future excavation rather than develop over it.
There are no strict rules because the whole country is full
of ruins and otherwise you couldn’t build a thing. If a ruin
is in good shape you have to preserve it and ask for
permission even to retore it. Otherwise if your ruin is just
a bunch of stones it is ok to build.
That is so crazy about the Mayan ruin, how exciting!
The only thing I know about my land is that it used to be a pineapple farm…
pineapple farm, interesting! from the picture I saw there
were no remaining trees when you built?
What are the rules when you find artifacts like that? Do they need to be reported and excavated properly?
There is a small ruin on our land that was excavated
illegally about 30 years ago. Inside a ruin it is normally
forbidden to touch a thing. Outside, all around the lake,
the land is filled with clay items so it would be impossible
to regulate that.
Actually, letting the hens into the garden is good. They will eat the bugs that would otherwise eat the leaves and their droppings are good fertilizer.
As you continue towards self-suficiency in your little corner of Guatemala, you might be interested in reading the homesteading blog Walden Effect (waldeneffect.org). Although I may have already told you that. 🙂
Yes I am reading it, really interesting stuff, thanks for the recommendation.
Wow, that’s crazy about the hens! Especially killing other chicks because they’re getting too close. That’s too bad to hear about the Mayan ruins. Like Mrs. Pop said, I wonder what the rules or expectations are in regards to reporting and handling those.
There are no rules because there are so many ruins and too
little money. Our neighbor has that big ruin, that is
obviously an important pyramid and when he started cutting
his trees a few weeks back guys from the archeological
supervision were investigating, although I doubt they make
him keep it as is or restore.
We think our land was the village around this big pyramid
but have just found a few stones so far that could have been
minor temples and are completely destroyed by years of
having cattle on the land.
Glad to know about the chickens, Pauline, as we are considering them ourselves. Thanks for the update on the house too – it’s always fun to hear. Have a wonderful time in France. 🙂
thanks Laurie!
I love your stories Pauline. That is crazy to hear about the Mayan ruins. I have always been fascinated by ancient ruins, so this would be cool to see. I hope your trip goes well.
thank you Grayson, so far so good!
That’s crazy finding all those Mayan artifacts and ruin. So much history. Hopefully your feisty hens will get along in your absence. Enjoy your trip!
thank you Shannon! trying to fight jet lag as we speak 🙂
I’m totally going to practice that spanish phrase and use it when someone is acting entitled. lol! wow the view from the land is AMAZING!
lol Spanish is so different from one country to the other, they probably say it completely differently in Mexico, but you should try!
Your development project looks like so much fun. Hope everything goes smoothly with getting it split into the 200 plots. I’m sure the villagers appreciate the development, it has to only be good news for them, right? Well for the most part I would expecte development to benefit them economically down the road.
It is good because they have been asking the mayor for a football field and will get one. Around the field they can put shop. We should donate another piece for a school and a third for a health center. And it we manage to have medium class people living there, they will hire builders, then maids, gardeners, handyman, providing work to the village. so far everyone seems happy.
What no more stories about your handyman? I am catching up on my reading and was hoping to find something about him sitting on the roof for several hours contemplating the seams so that water would not get in lol. It’s nice to see that you are making progress, but what a shame about the artifacts! I’d be interested in knowing what is in the Mayan ruin if it ever gets explored.
I should have left him a bucket to see if he can empty the lake in my absence, and avoid another storm… he has become such an expert at doing nothing we have decided we could either get bitter over it or just let him be, after all there isn’t much to do anymore, a bit of cleaning and gardening each day, so if he wants to do that in 8 hours instead of being done in 4 and going home, so be it.
Sounds like you’ve been a pretty busy gal. I hope that everything goes well with your trip and development.
I’ve had a pretty quiet week myself, which I suppose can be a good thing.
That’s the cutest hen house, I love it. And the view, stunning!
thank you KK! the hen house has a lake view too, those are some spoiled hens haha.
I knew there was a good reason why I am afraid of birds! I hope the workers do a good job while you’re gone. Maybe the handyman can keep them in line. He’s becoming a fun recurring character in your blog, and I look forward to hearing more his adventures.
we are having a contractor keep an eye on him 🙂 his outside room was not finished when we left so he is sleeping inside the house, who knows if there isn’t a party at my house right now. Should be a fun update when we go back haha, will have to add that to the cost of the holiday.
Wow, you have it all!!! What a wonderful opportunity you have! Love it!
thanks!
The roads are coming along well. That is quite the price hike to rent the CAT but like you said if you had to ship it to you it would have cost alot more. I can see why you want to make sure everything is going down as planned. I was under the impression you were leaving on Sunday past, I don’t know why. Have a great holiday mate!
I left last Sunday, I am in France now! struggling with jet lag 🙂
It is mind-blowing to be uncovering artifacts and ruins in 2013. Sometimes we simply not as far along or advanced as we imagine and these are good reminders of that. What a crazy interesting article, Pauline. Thanks for sharing all that!
As for us, our first book is in the formatters’/cover designers’ hands so we are anxious to see the results.
That is so exciting! I read your post about the book but thought it was an ebook. Best of luck with your project!
Thanks Pauline! It is an eBook. We’re simply not skilled enough to do the cover design and formatting ourselves;)
If you need other minor tasks you can check fiverr, pretty budget friendly 🙂
Thank you so much Pauline! Will have a peek right away!
I love to hear that the man doing the roads is so sure of his work. Gotta love a man or woman like that! And the poor little dead chick. Mommas can be fierce to those not their own. 😉
Hope you’re enjoying your trip thus far!
Wow, that is a pretty pricey hourly rate for the equipment, but it’s nice that he’s very good at it!
It must be fun to see the fast progress now on the land development.