Life on the rural farm land of Costa Rica is a never ending list of duties. My wifely duties include whole grain bread making every other day. I grind my grains (oatmeal and flax seed) and add them to the whole wheat flour for more nutrition. I am thankful for my Kitchenaid pro as it lightens the job immensely. My son made about 6 pizzas last night for our dinner guests. We ground pork and made Italian sausage earlier in the day to top the pizza. The different availability and quality of products made duplicating my recipes a challenge the first few times. Sometimes what you thought was in the package, is different than your use to. For instance the coconut milk I used today for my Thai red curry lentils. It was sweet. I do not see anywhere that it was sweetened, and sweet is not what I traditionally use. So I have a sweet lentil dish instead. Who knew? Well the bread will be good, I have that mastered.

The sky is clear and blue today, no sweatshirt needed. Nice and pleasantly warm.

We hired a housekeeper, Carmen, Oh thank you Lord. I just could not get everything done everyday and we are still unpacking. With no dishwasher and farm style cooking I was not able to get ahead of the work. We have had company for dinner and or breakfast and lunch nearly everyday. My husband and son have been great at pitching in and washing dishes.

Everyone is up the mountain at the farm today. We are moving another horse up to Esperanza I expect they will be home for lunch and starving because other than last nights homemade oatmeal cookies no one has eaten. No fast food out here.

I am preparing to make (cure) bacon today. One batch will be with apple cider and the other with honey. I bought a whole pork belly at the carniceria. I will let you know how it turns out. Everything tastes better with bacon, even too sweet lentils.

We have vampire bats on the mountain at night. They scratch animals and lick the blood. So we are protecting the horses by screening in their stalls with nursery cloth and putting them up at night. We have fruit bats and bug eaters at the house and come dusk they start swooping along with the night hawks and wills. We call it the bat show and watch with our lights off while sitting in the glass enclosed living room.

I think about TV and our lack of it, but when would I have the time to watch? The internet is my source of news and perhaps we are better off not knowing the really horrible stuff. We came here to get away from violence and what we see as the dumbing down of America. Our concerns have been redirected to hungry children who want to go to school but can not afford to do so. A kind and generous neighbor has offered to let us use his house as a library and classroom. I would like a teacher to volunteer to come for a year and live with us while working with the local students. If you know of a candidate please tell them about us and ask them to email me Ginnee@gmail.com

Kristofer and 3 friends hiked up to some of our waterfalls today. Through the river, waist deep in water at times, crisscrossing back and forth in order to climb up the mountain. Their rubber boots filled up with water and the knee high waterproof snake boots were good until you were up to your waist in the river and then they weighed an extra 2 kilos each. Good quality river shoes with great traction ability is the answer. You should bring a waterproof camera, perhaps a disposable water proof camera.