Little Creatures Everywhere!

January has been a month of new life abounding... in fact, super-abounding, over-flowing, and clinging to the rafters! Luckily, we welcome it all as a opportunity to teach us about the cycles of sustainability.

So, along came Paloma´s little calf on the 15th, wobbly legged and brown! We´d been waiting for her since the end of December, and Paloma had been showing all the signs for a while... And alas, sometime after a gargantuan dinner of elephant grass and river water, she birthed Suki into the world. Just like that, easy and natural, alone in her milkshed under the twilight and jungle night noises. We woke up the next morning and there she was, Suki, already licked clean and nursing. It is a gorgeous and wonderous thing...

Paloma is a wonderful mama...

...and over-flowing with milk. She gives us about 5 liters per day, which we make into yoghurt, cheese, ricotta, butter, cream... and we are learning more recipes!

We have also added a kitten (called Amanita) and puppy (called Lulu) to our menagerie of creatures. They keep us on our toes, or rather, one of them is usually on our toes. They both just love to play and play and play. Sometimes even with each other.

And, as expected, Rambo-Rambeax is jealous and acting like the grumpy uncle, having taken over their sleeping box and claimed it as his own.

Aside from the husbandry of animals, we have been quite busy with lovely odd projects and constructions. Our Yoga Platform is on its way...

The Yoga space is in the forest, slightly raised off the ground to allow for air passage and breathability, and will be made mostly from the hardwood we harvested from fallen trees on our land. It should hold 12 to 16 people in full on sweaty asana practice.Other constructions: our volunteers built this beautiful earthen and stone staircase down to the dipping hole in the river. Now we can get in and out of the bath without muddying up our feet!

On the subject of water, December was a rather dry month for our neck of Misiones, and lots of wells went dry. Ours was still okay for our drinking and cooking consumption, but we were afraid that if the dry spell continued or occurs again int he future we would be out. So, we talked to some locals and found out about this ¨Water Diviner¨who could help us find the source of our water where we should dig a well. We did, and she came, and she felt for water all over our land with a branch of Guayabira tree and iron needle. The branch and needle pulled her arms toward the magical water spot beneath the earth. She found lots and lots!
So, we started digging. She said that at 4 meters we would hit a gorgeous spring of water and always have it fresh and abundant. The new spring is actually the mother-source of where we currently take water, being just slightly uphill. So far, we´ve made it about 3 meters, fairly easily, but now are taking our time with the last meter of solid rock!

Also, we are continuing to make Adobe bricks, which we figured out dry much better and stronger in the shade (the sunshine is super strong here and cracks them if dried directly in full sun.) We are planning to build a stone and adobe bathroom and shower house soon.

Bonus photo... Weird Bug on Adobe Bricks.

Happy Hippy Holidays!

Milkhouse and Giant Toads

We have been wrapping up several projects so that by the end of the year we will have a clean canvas to start all new creations. Of course, many works will continue... like the cabin. Oh, the cabin. Our first wooden construction--which we chose to use because we have so many usable fallen trees all around us therefore making it super-sustainable-- is definitely making us miss mud-hutting. We aren´t exactly carpenters, (although one of our neighbors is and he does most of the specialty work required) and building by hand--yes, that means no power tools-- is challenging. But here we have an almost finished cabin (lovely, I think)... still needs some windows, stairs, and other detail work, but at least we are out of the tent! Hallalujah!
Here´s the front in the early morning light.And speaking of getting under a roof, I am proud to say that Paloma (the cow) has a new milkhouse to call her own. And just before the calf comes! She´s due around the end of the month or into the new year maybe.
Look at that belly! And those teets! Whew-wee!


Roofing the world, we are. We just extended our community kitchen to have a sun-lit patio eating area. Soon, we hope to build some earthbag benches and reclining walls for post- and pre-meal lounging. It´s sort of a mess still, but it´s coming along.


And this is Burpee. He´s a giant toad (one of the ones we released from the Hungarian reality show.) He lives in the planters boxes now, apparently, and is not lacking food, as you can see. He´s a welcome pet, just as long as he keeps eating the plant pests and mosquitos.


More news from Mama Roja after the holidays...

Chickens, Bricks, and Scare-Parrots

Our chickens have a hip (mobile) home, and are being as bossy and squawky as chickens must. We have 6 hens and 2 roosters, all sharing a delux chicken tractor made from scrap wood, veggie crates, and tetra-pak cartons. They get along pretty well, except the one freaky micro-managing hen who steals all the crickets out of the roosters mouths and makes the other hens cower under her beak power. Marcelo says she´s the next to eat, but I kind of like her...

This is an inside view of the fancy two-story, alpine-roofed, tetra-paked hen dorm, the top being the nests and the bottom the roosts.

Our first egg!! They don´t give many so far, since they are pretty young chicks, but we´ve had a few little beauties...

Adobe bricks! Indeed, we´ve started to take advantage of the "dry" season, and make some bricks. These were first ones and we were mostly experimenting with the soil. We tried different mixes (sawdust, sand, straw...) to see what would be the strongest. The best batch was the simplest-- only cut straw and water added to our super clay-ey soil which, if they had been dried in the shade, I think, would be perfect (they cracked quite a bit sunny-side up.) More bricks soon to come!!

Mud-stomping in the jungle... ¡que divertido!

Our gardens are still lovely and generous, especially with cucumbers (which I have been eating, pickling, and giving away.) Since it´s been so dry lately, our little babbling brook stopped flowing, and many people in the area have dry wells. We are lucky, though, to have the river nearby for watering, and our spring still full. And this week the heat was broken up by some rainshowers and welcome clouds. More rain on its way, they say, so our veggies will no doubt be rejoicing soon...

The Scare-Parrot... our version of the famed scare-crow. In fact, our garden of corn is doing so well, we´ve had a few parrot visitors doing fly-bys a little too often. So, we installed this very high-tech anti-parrot remedy...

Can you tell which one he is??? (Hint: not the dramatic one on the left.) The only problem so far is that Rambo keeps forgetting and scaring himself into barking fits. He´s not the brightest dog, as Marcelo likes to remind us, but we love him just the same...

Bonus Photos:

Weird bug invasion! This is a bug... for real!

And this is an attempt to capture the full moon rising in the Mama Roja tree... She was magnificent!

Creatures Galore

The temperature is rising, and summer is on her hot path in. We are getting up earlier and taking afternoons off, cooling ourselves in the river and under the trees. We still have lots of projects going on, some more spontaneous than others...

Recently, the film crew of a Hungarian reality show (who are making something like Fear Factor here in Misiones) gave us some of their "discarded" local creatures. We brought them out to Mama Roja, and then released them into the jungle. The giant iguanas ("Golden Tegu Lizards") scurried away happily, with a little glance back over their scaly shoulders and a wink, and the fat toads ("Cururus") plopped their bellies into the river. The lizards have made several appearances around the farm, and one of the toads hangs out in the garden slurping up all the grasshoppers. They fit in just fine at Mama Roja.

Oh, and under the three fat toads in the bottom of the bucket was this little fella, who has been heard croaking by the tents in the evenings.

We are also visited by a myriad other creatures, curious as to what the bipeds in the jungle are up to now. The mantises are particularly entertaining and lovely, and give us little dance recitals in the kitchen.

All those wormy fat hairy caterpillars that we have been trying not to brush our skin against are morphing into gorgeous butterflies. We are working on matching up the caterpillars with their winged state.



The baby birds in our shed have hatched and chirp chirp chirp all the time now. The mama and papa bird had squeezed their nest right between some books and the shed wall (we had already kicked them out of nesting in the seed box and a backpack...) So, we temporarily closed a section of the library and donated it to our feathered guests. They don´t seem to mind us one bit. In fact, one can usually watch feeding time while sitting on our comfortable Mingo (our toilet, which is still in the shed for the time being...)

In between creature watching, we work on other projects in progress. Like the Cabin, which is still inching along, and considering that it is being built without the luxury of power tools (all by hand), I´d say it´s progressing quite nicely. This past week, we´ve been working on the odd-angle cuts in the Eucalyptus logs and putting in the interior walls and ceiling. It is becoming really homey in there (yes, we are still in our tent in the house...) or maybe I am just getting used to the sawdust and partial walls??

The garden too is receiving lots of love. This past week, we made tomato supports and cucumber trellises out of the bamboo we harvested. And we have started to eat some of the beans, the cukes, and lots of herbs... and they are delicious!

Next week, we start working on the earthen oven (which is Kimberly´s birthday present), making adobe bricks, and introducing ourselves to our new chickens! We made a coop (which is a moveable chicken tractor) and today we should be receiving them from our friends. Yippee! Photos soon to come... stay posted.

Our Cup Runneth Over...

A salute to the dry corners of the earth, wherever they are (cause they ain´t here.) The last month has been, let´s just say, a wet one. True, it has been interspersed with days of glorious sunshine and perfect temperatures. But the Uruguay River swole over 12 meters (!), which means our little creeks who feed into it also grew. Our cute little Babbling Brook which runs just by the campsite grew into a water-bellied barage of swift-moving energy, which stole a beer and challenged our bucket-fridge. Luckily, we all survived, staying "mostly dry" under the roof, and deepened our appreciation for sunny days and dry winds!


Paloma, the cow, also survived, and even enjoyed the refreshing rainstorms (as you can see by the smile on her face in the photo below.) We are getting more used to each other now, and I dare say, she likes us. Well, at least she has stopped headbutting us, mostly because I bring her treats like banana peels and corn cobs, and let her lick salt off my hands.

Rambo, on the other hand, did not quite know what to do with himself on those rainy river days...

The Cabin: We´ve moved in!! Not to say the cabin is finished (blasted rain!) or that we are not in our tent anymore (cause we are)... Actually, we are in our tent in the cabin. So, I guess we have a partially enclosed tent platform that we live in. But soon it will be a real non-tented cabin with windows and walls and even a loft and floor! We are inching along, but now that summer and dryness are predicted, we should be out of the tent soon enough. (The photo is pre-tent set-up...) Oh, and we installed ur solar panels, which work even on cloudy afternoons. We get enough electricity to run our kitchen light, a small radio, and charge all our batteries, and then some... Halallujah!

The gardens: We have several, all experimental, and in-progress as we speak. There are hoed and bermed beds, potato tyres, sheet mulched beds, untilled earth beds, and broadcast wilderness kamakazi beds... Our inspirations: all the books we have and are reading (by experts and the like), and our generous neighbors and local farmers. Learn as you go, as usual. So far, so good. The only problem is that the grasshoppers and the cutter ants have taken a particular liking to a few corners, and we have to "organically encourage" them to move elsewhere (like that delicious jungle that surrounds us!)

These are some of the culprits who munch our chard...

Speaking of creatures... this is full on butterfly season, which also means caterpillars!! They are everywhere! And most of them are hairy and itchy (from the juices on their tiny hairs). Some are totally impressive in size and color, and will certainly be gorgeous gigantic butterflies one day.

Bonus photo: A walk through the woods to one of our swimming holes...