Happy Monday! Here’s some sunny news from beautiful Guatemala. This recap was intended to go live earlier, right before the storm hit, but now things are almost back to normal. As you read this, I’m on a plane to France. Enjoy!
After a hectic Easter, things have settled down, and we’re wrapping up small projects around the house. We’ve kept just two employees—a dedicated handyman and a carpenter for woodwork. The deck was thoroughly polished and then painted with a waterproof coat. We also leveled it, as one of the support pillars was rotting in the water.
With the half dozen workers gone, we can finally start planting in the garden without worrying about anyone accidentally ruining the plants. We moved a few palm trees from a larger plot of land and added some plants to the stone walls of the bedroom, hoping they will root. The weather has been extremely hot, which hasn’t helped, especially after the storm.
To keep the hens out of the garden patch, we fenced it off. The hens love cooling down by digging holes and burying themselves in the cool, freshly watered soil, which has been necessary with the recent heatwave.
The hens are mostly doing well, though we’ve had a few scares. When a hen becomes a mother, she tends to fight with other hens and even chicks that aren’t hers. There’s a local saying, “she thinks she is the mother of the chicks,” meaning someone who is arrogant and thinks they’re above everyone else. One mother hen killed a chick that wasn’t hers, and another terrorized five chicks so much that they wouldn’t sleep in their cage, and we had to give up and let them sleep outside.
To address this, we upgraded the chicken cage from 4 nests to 12. While some hens still lay outside due to habit, others seem content. Two hens are currently hatching eggs, expecting chicks in the next week or two. Although one recent batch was a disaster, with 2 of 5 chicks lost, the latest batch produced 11 healthy chicks—a whole soccer team in one go!
Most of our progress has been on the 90-acre land development. Our neighbor had a caterpillar tractor on hand and offered it to us for $80 per hour, including a skilled driver and fuel. This saved us the cost of transporting the machine, which was a relief compared to our usual $200/month labor costs. We closely monitor the work to ensure the driver is making good use of his billable hours. Despite some stubbornness on his part, the results have been impressive. He did make a mistake on one road while we were away for a couple of hours, but overall, his work in one week has been outstanding.
Next week, the architect will come to GPS the plots, and then we’ll take the plans to the land registry to divide the big land into about 200 plots.
Meanwhile, our neighbor has been clearing his land and uncovered a significant Mayan ruin about 100 yards from our property line. It seems there was once an important Mayan settlement here, as we’ve found many clay artifacts on our land, though some were unfortunately broken by the caterpillar. Despite years of cattle grazing on the land, these artifacts remained hidden until now.
The village has been making the most of the land, as it borders the village limits. Locals have been collecting wood, and leaving their horses and cows there for free. This has been handy, as it saved us the cost of clearing the land ourselves!
Lots of curious villagers have been checking out the new roads, even driving their cars on them. We’ll need to close access during the rainy season to prevent damage if the roads aren’t paved by then.
Our goal is to have all the plots marked out by the end of the week so I can head to Europe and relax while the registry processes the property titles. I haven’t booked my ticket yet, but it looks like I might be flying out this weekend!
How did your week go? Any exciting news to share?