• Costa Rica Ramblings

    Goat DIY

    Above image: when you take the goat for a walk (as one does) and the hens decide to follow you up the road. While we have had chickens for a few months now, there is something different about having a goat (second one is on the way). As my daughter said, ‘We’re really farmers now!’ It’s like, yes, chickens are farm animals too, but they’re birds. They’re small and more easily managed and don’t head-butt you at every opportunity. In preparation for our goats, we built a small barn with a tiny corral in front of our cabins. We used instructions that I found here at gottagoat.com to build dispensers…

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  • Costa Rica Ramblings

    The craziness of DIY in the jungle

    I would give anything for a Home Depot and a Michael’s right now. Let me explain. We are DIY kind of people. I blame my parents for it really – when I was growing up, our house was always in a state of renovation and my folks are the kind of people that would go through open houses “to get ideas” on the weekends, dragging their beleaguered children in tow. When I was 15 my mom bought a little fixer-upper in Prince George and we redid it ourselves; ripping out the shag carpets, refinishing the hardwood floors, setting tile, painting murals etc. The year before that, in another part of…

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  • Costa Rica Ramblings,  Fabulous Food

    My clueless attempts at permaculture.

    OK, so some of you may have been reading about our renovation process and how we are going about rehabilitating the cabinas we have purchased in the jungle. Part of this whole process however is the idea that we are going to live as self-sufficiently as possible and that means growing as much of our own food as we can. Our property is only about one acre: some of that is primary rain forest, some hillside, a large amount of driveway and some inhospitable cliff. We are trying to purchase a nearby property that would give us some actual farming space, but, like oh-so-many things in Costa Rica, it is…

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