Happy Monday! Here’s some uplifting news from sunny Guatemala. This recap was delayed due to the storm, but now things are almost back to normal. I’m on a plane to France as you read this, so enjoy the update!
After a bustling Easter, life is returning to its usual pace, and we’re wrapping up the small projects around the house. We’ve kept only two employees, our loyal handyman and a carpenter for woodwork. The deck needed some intense polishing (imagine lots of noise and dust), was then painted with a waterproof coat, and leveled because one of the pillars was rotting.
With the half dozen workers gone, we’re excited to start planting in the garden without worrying about anyone trampling it. We brought in a few palm trees from our larger property and added some plants on the bedroom walls between the stones, hoping they’ll root. It’s been extremely hot recently, which doesn’t help, especially after the storm.
We fenced off the garden patch to keep the hens from using it as their napping spot. The soil stays cooler there since we water it more, and they love to dig and bury themselves in it on hot days, which has been every day for the past two weeks.
The hens are generally okay, though we’ve had a few tense moments. When a hen becomes a mother, she can become quite aggressive towards the other hens and even chicks that aren’t hers. There’s a local saying, “se cree la mama de los pollitos,” meaning someone is acting overly self-important. One mother hen killed a chick that got too close, and another scared five chicks so much that they refused to sleep in the cage anymore. We used to chase them every night but eventually gave up and let them sleep outside.
We thought the issue was the lack of nests, so we upgraded the cage from 4 nests to 12. Despite this, some hens still lay outside. Old habits die hard, but some seem happy with the change. Currently, two hens are hatching eggs, expecting chicks soon. Recently, we lost 2 out of 5 chicks, but another batch gave us 11 chicks—an entire football team in one go!
We’ve made significant progress on our 90-acre land development. Our neighbor conveniently had a bulldozer on hand and offered to help for $80/hour, including a skilled driver and fuel. This rate is standard, but we saved money by not needing to transport the machine. Since we’re used to paying workers $200/month, this felt like a big expense, so we kept a close eye on the work.
Most days, we visited the land 3-4 times to ensure the operator was working efficiently. He’s very skilled but quite stubborn, so we had to let him do things his way. Overall, we’re pleased with the results, even though he did mess up one road while we were away for a couple of hours.
Next week, the architect will come to map the plots using GPS. The next step is to register the parcels and divide the land into approximately 200 plots.
While we were occupied, our neighbor cleared his land, revealing a massive Mayan ruin about 100 yards from our boundary. We suspect there was a significant Mayan settlement here because we found many clay artifacts on our land, although some were unfortunately broken by the bulldozer. It’s a pity, although many were already damaged before, possibly from old cuts.
The village is making the most of the land use while they can. Our land borders the village, so residents have been using it for firewood and grazing their animals for years. It’s been handy that they gathered all the dead wood, saving us the cost of hiring someone to clean the land.
We’ve had many curious visitors, some even driving on our new road. We’ll need to block car access during the rainy season to prevent damage if the road isn’t paved yet.
We aim to have all the plots marked by the end of the week. Then I can head to Europe and relax while the titles are processed. I haven’t booked my ticket yet, but I might be flying out this weekend!
How was your week? Anything exciting happening in your world?
