His Sweet Blessings...

Hola!

Here is Sunday-Wednesday, days 26-29 of my trek in Costa Rica. 

I now have exactly 2 weeks left of my journey here. 

Here is Christian trying to remember the alphabet in sign language.

 Here he is remembering the letter “R”. Both Christian and Christopher are 

doing sign language with me when I dont understand what they are trying to tell me. 

Sign language does help me understand them.

Ohh, Christopher makes wonderful Oreo smoothies. 

We had them for breakfast. YUMMY!!

When Christopher and Christian told me that there are crabs in the river up here in 

the mountain, I had a hard time believing there were crabs here. I live in NJ and we

 have crabs in the Ocean! Jesus actually found one crawling around in the yard. 

Would you believe that?!! A real live fresh water crab in the river...esp. 

near waterfalls up in these mountains.

Here is a close up one of the river crab. They say it gets quite big. This crab is a small one. 

This tree is a mango tree. I like Mangos here.

 I don't care for the ones in NJ. Nice fresh mangoes- quite tasty.

These are passion fruits. They hang off of vines high above our heads. 

I never had passion fruit until I came here in Costa Rica. 

They look similar to small size grannysmith apples. Tammy and Jesus grow them on the farm. 

A better picture of the passion fruit hanging on vines. 

Here is a picture of one of their cows. This one has big horns!!

Jesus, Christopher, and Christian getting ready to work on cutting down sugar cane.

Jesus brought out a sugar cane from among the sugar cane plants to give to Christian.

 Christian was responsible for putting sugar canes into the sacks.

When the sack is full, Christian carries them to the front of the bodega. 

The path to the bodega is very slippery and muddy. I have a hard time

 holding myself up sliding everywhere on the path. 

Here is one that has sugar cane in a cart. Give you an idea of what they look like. 

I thought at first it was bamboo sticks. But I was wrong, they are sugar canes.

Here is a good picture of the porch on the side of main house. 

I love the size of the porch. The only disadvantage is bugs. It is not screened in. 

Yet it has a great feeling of big and open space on the porch.

I am sitting on the porch sifting the rice. I am picking out unopened rice and 

separating it from the rice. Tammy and Jesus grew rice on this mountain. It's homegrown rice,

 not store bought. You need to have good eyes to see the unopened rice from the rice

 already opened and patience too. It takes quite some time to do this. 

Here is a close up picture of the unopened rice in my hands.

The electric went out just before dinner. It got very very dark inside of the 

house as well as outside. I asked Christopher to find a candle. He found one small 

tealight candle to light up part of the table. There are no street lights or neighboring

 houses near by to see some light. No no it was very dark without any light. I did not

 like eating dinner in the dark. It is what it is without electricity.

The following day after cutting the sugar cane, the Montanez boys got together and

 work on grinding the sugar cane. Christopher and Christian grab the handle and start 

pushing the handles to grind the canes, Jesus pushes the sugar canes into the grinder. 

The liquid comes out of the sugar canes and flows into a bucket. 

It looks like very hard work to do this job for the men.

Here is a close up pic of the sugar cane grinder. This time Christopher 

takes a turn pushing the canes into the grinder. I realized by watching 

Christopher doing this that he is very strong young man.

Here is what the sugar cane juice looks like after the sugar cane

 liquid is cooked after 24 hrs on an open fire. It is a thick dark brown 

syrup of sugar cane. It is very tasty with tea. I really like it.

Ohh yeah, did I tell you there is no TV, no hot water, and no air conditioner on this farm?? 

Who needs TV when you can enjoy the majesty of God's creation by 

enjoying the scenery of mountains, the lush green everywhere and the waterfalls. 

This bag is a Solar Shower, it warms the water by the sun. I was very

 impressed how warm the water was when taken a shower with this. 

I only have had a warm shower twice during my stay here in 4 weeks.

The neighbors on this mountain lent Tammy and Jesus a fan for the main house. 

I am deeply appreciative of the fan. It really does gets hot and humid up here on the mountain. 

Christopher is very good at fixing things. He is working on 

a neighbor's farm equipment. Jesus looking in to see how Christopher is doing. 

Christopher is a natural in fixing just about everything on this farm.

 

I am learning so much about living on the farm. I am also learning few things 

about technology from the boys that I never knew. Those boys really do

 know about computers and cameras. I am very impressed with them. 

I am grateful that I am continuously being open to learning new things.

Tomorrow we hope its a good weather. We want to get out and visit people. 

 Another roller coastal ride down the Mountain and through the river (literally)

 to get off the Mountain. Once we get off the Mountain, it's about an hour on 

dirt road till we hit the pavement of the road. Fun, fun and all fun traveling from

 Tammy's house to friends' house. We are looking forward to seeing Luis,

who was in a serious accident as well as other friends of the family in the area..

End of days 26-29. It's getting close to the end of my journey here in Costa Rica. 

May the Lord bless my cousin Tammy and her family in having me here. The Lord has 

been very good to us with good weather and full of events on the farm. 

I hope you are enjoying my blog. More to come when electricity and internet are available.

Jen

The Lord's light will shine in truth and follies...

Hola!

Today I will be posting Days 22-24: Wednesday to Friday of my trek in Costa Rica.

  On Wednesday Tammy taught me how to make homemade ketchup. 

The ingredients: Onion salt, garlic powder, sugar, white vinegar, and tomato paste. 

It was so easy that I could do this at home. 

Today we headed out to the city of Limon. Did I tell you we go through the banana 

plantation every time we get off the Mountain? We stopped at the banana plantation 

warehouse supply- the ATM bank is right next to it. Inside those blue bags are the bananas. 

The blue bags are lined with chemicals for pesticide and to stop 

the ripening stage of the bananas on the trees.

 We had to stop in the middle of the dirt road because the bananas were 

carried off on a cable sending it to the warehouse supply building.

 We are in the city of Limon- about an hour and ½ drive into the city. The stores 

were closed for Lunch. They have lunch for an hour and half. Imagine if we have

 that kind of lunch break in NJ. WOW! So we had to find something to eat if 

anything was open during that time. We found ice cream for lunch.

We initially went to Limon for Christopher. We noticed that he was having trouble

 seeing so I said he needs to get his eyes checked. Sure enough he needs glasses. 

He takes that after his mom (Tammy). (P.S. Doesn't Jesus look good in glasses?? Haha)

 

We visited the Fabric shop in Limon. I loved the visit to that one shop. 

They had all kinds of fabric. Tammy and I picked out few fabrics to make panties. 

Oh the panties are going to be beautiful!!! 

Thursday I couldn't wait to work on new fabrics to make panties. It was hot and my

 hair is getting longer so I had to wear a bandana to keep me cool and keep

 my hair out of my eyes. I was having a great time with the new fabrics.

There are no lawn mowers here in this part of Costa Rica. Christopher is using the 

weedwacker to cut down the grass around the main house and bodega. 

Here is a close up one of Christopher and his weedwacker.

They have ducks on this farm. This one really likes the whey that was intended for the dogs.

Friday I was cleaning the porch on the main house. Here I am scrubbing the floor. 

Notice the tiles on the porch. Quite pretty. One disadvantage of having free range 

chickens is that they will poop on the porch as well as the ducks and the turkeys. 

Oh I almost forgot Rio the parrot on the porch as well. 

Beautiful sunset on the horizon of the mountains.

More pics of the sunset on the mountains.

End of these three days of my trek in Costa Rica. This week we had problems

 with electricity and internet. They keep going off on us several times a day.

 One of continuous problems of living on the mountains. Oooh I do miss the fan 

when the power goes out! Humidity is very high up here on the mountains.

 I love my bandanas and cooling bandanas- they really do keep me cool.

I have 2 more weeks left of my journey in Costa Rica. I hope to make the best

 of my time here. Tammy thinks this will be my last visit here to Costa Rica. 

She may be right. So we will spend most of the last 2 weeks of quality time together. 

 I love my cousin Tammy as if she is my younger sister.

End of days 22 to 24 of my trek this week.

More to come when electricity and internet is available.

Jen

Blessings of the Field...

Hola!

Here we are on Tuesday, Day 21 of my trek in Costa Rica. Today is an exciting day,

  I have been given the honor of having one of their sheep killed for meat.

Jesus and his knives, getting ready to kill a ram. 

Jesus killed the ram and is bringing it to a area to be skinned and cut into pieces.

Christopher and Jesus working on skinning the ram.

All the outer fur of the ram is off now. It's time to cut it into pieces.

Jesus working on cutting the meat into small pieces.

Tammy is rubbing a combination of salt and garlic into the meat.

The end pieces of the ram is ground down into ground meat. 

Check out the hand held grinder. Christopher ground the meat by hand.

What a good workout for Christopher!

We had lamb for dinner that night. It was very delicious!!

Like my new hat? Do I look good in it??

This afternoon we went to visit the cattle and calves. The mama cow(named Moodini) 

has humungous horns. A little too scary for me to be that close to them. 

One of them is not too nice, I literally stood behind Tammy when they arrived into the stall area.

This little calf is Simcha. She loves me scratching her face.

Simcha rubbed her face into my face. Soo cute!

This calf is named Buttercup. She is a friendly little babe. There is another calf but 

she is really skitterish, she won't come near me. Poor thing! The other two were 

very nice and friendly. They will grow big with humungous horns just like their Mamas'.

Ohh, I almost forgot, another unexpected surprise, a baby lamb was born on

 Sunday afternoon. I couldn't hold the baby lamb until few days later because

 the mama sheep was very skitterish due to being a new mommy.

It was an exciting day for Day 21 of my trek in Costa Rica.

More to come of my journey of Costa Rica. I am enjoying being here and I am 

feeling much better than when I first got here. God has really blessed us all 

while I am here visiting. Keep praying for well being and safety of my stay here.

Thank you...

Jen