The days of darkness

Add caption

Our internet has been out these past two days. It seems like a tropical storm has hit Jamaica, maybe cuba. Since Monday afternoon, after returning from The Caves, we have been under water.

Jamaicas current situation

Farm work under water loses its efficiency. Tuesday was a day of 24 hour rain, while Wednesday decided to add wind to the rain. In front of our house we lost one tree and a large branch. The winds where so strong working outside could have been dangerous. This morning was the first calm day of the week, allowing many workers who where previously unable to reach the farm to come in. There are several areas flooded, the fact that ONE TIC can´t be crosses safely to reach the farm also unables us to reach Bunker´s Hill. Today we where planning on working the afternoon at the school but One Tic was unpassable and our ground transportation is out of order. We have got a pretty nice work group set up for Saturday, which we will postpone if the weather keeps down, or if we go to Kingston. Neither of which we are positive about. Many main roads seem to be shut down and drivers are advised to move very cautiosly.

Yesterday, in a moment of slight storm decrease, Luis was sent out riding to bring in a herd of cattle, 10 calfs of which had to be branded and tatoo´ed in order to have them in the records on time. The whole group in charge of bringing in the herd did it all galloping and as fast as possible, in order to minimize active storm exposure. Work in the vegetable section was delayed these days, as the wind brought down parts of the wind tunnels and the rain has been too much to clear new land for outdoor planting. This morning, as the winds subsided, we repaired the wind tunnel and started planting peppers, two varieties of tomatoes so far (Big Beef and Golden Cherry), Italian Basil, Pack Choi, and a lettuce mix. These will be ready for transplant over the next weeks, tomatoes and peppers taking the longest. Once transplanted, the first tomatoes-peppers will be available in 55 days, while lettuce should have a continuos harvest in 2-3 weeks time. Pack Choi will be picked as "baby" and as mature. Baby Pack Choi is more tender and has a more concentrated taste.

At the seeding we encountered quantity problems. I am trying to save seed and trying to get sequence planting in order to have continuos small scale harvests, something necessary for Pantrepants limited market, 1.5 medium sized hotels. The farms goal, so far, seems to be to try to plant as much as possible and not worry if it gets sold, but this is creating too much work, waste of seed and produce. The point here is trying to plant every two-three weeks a small quantity but large variety of different crops, in order to offer the hotel kitchen the largest ammount of produce. This, for some reason, is harder than it sounds.

We just finished dinner. We are getting better, mastering the mulitple pan multi sidedish meal. Our nutrition levels have been improving, minimizing the need to drink Vanilla LASCO after meals to fill up.

Enjoy