Coffee planting...

These last couple of weeks have been fairly productive for us up at the plot of land mainly because we´ve had an extra coouple of hands on deck.  A couple of friends have been visiting and with a bit of bargaining, we managed to convince them to help us with some digging and planting.

Having been told about a place about half an hour from Popayan selling coffee plants at a very resonable 10p per seedling and having also been told that it´s perfect coffee planting season, we thought we´d start with that. Supposedly a healthy plant can provide 200g of coffee per year over two harvests so with 40 trees to start with, we think it´ll be enough to keep us going for the time being. With our glossy-leaved coffee loaded into the car, we bundled in our three helpers and spent the weekend preparing the terraces on the slope down to the forest using stacked guadua bamboo, a mallet and a lot of digging.

 The before

..the after

The weather was not on our side and we were rained out twice but finally this Saturday just past, we got all of the holes dug, all of the compost organised and the little plants are finally tucked into their spots on the hill. It looks a bit bald because the spacing is quite wide but in 8 months to a year, we should have healthy little coffee trees preparing beans for the following years harvest.

We also moved the hens this weekend into a new section of the garden so that we could plant corn in the old veggie patch. I´m not altogether sure why we are planting corn other than it´s the right time of year and supposed to be a quick and easy thing to grow. The hens love corn so worst case scenario and we cant figure out what to make with it all - at least the hens are happy. They also seem to be enjoying the company of a stray, white, miniature cockrel who has found his way into our garden and is living in a tree in the forest. We have named him Silvio after the news about Berlusconi stepping down this week and due to his evident love for all five of our feathered ladies.

 Silvio

The construction also seems to be moving forward somewhat this week and we now have the roof structure formed and I´m told the Onduline roofing sheets are going on today. We picked up the roofing sheets in Cali and they seem to be just the job: recommended for water harvesting, light weight and easy to install, 25 year guarantee. Hopefully they´ll get them on and that´ll be a big step forward in the construction.

 The house with the roof structure built

We´ve also been back in touch with the solar panel lot in Cali to finalise the costs and logistics for getting the panels and the system installed so the minute the roof is on, hopefully we´ll get that ball rolling too.