newspaper seed pots.

I spent this morning making 72 newspaper seed pots. I then filled them with dirt and planted tomatoes, tomatillos and orange habanero peppers! I have all of my gourd seeds soaking overnight and I'll put those in the seed pots I'm making now. I have hundreds of these things to make...yipppee.

homesteading it's our dream, it's our future.

We have been in Xela (a big city for Guaemala) for a year and a half now and we've been in the house we're in for a year. We've been pining for dirt, trees and open air; in other words, el campo!

We move in 10 days to just that, the country, just outside of San Juan del Obispo, Sacatepequez!

We think we have an acre to farm (homestead) and a house with a big chicken run and a separate building that will make two nice stalls. We have big plans for this place and our new lifestyle and we are busy putting them into action. We procured an arsenal of non-gmo seeds including:

egyptian kamut wheat

amaranth oppeopo

quinoa

corns

beans beans beans

peas

tomatoes galoure

gourds

melons & watermelons

squash (summer & winter)

cucumbers

eggplant

carrots

onions

peppers

rapini

broccoli

romanesco

herbs

sunflowers

highbush blueberries

black currants

peanuts

cauliflower

collards

kale

mustard greens

Our goal with the homesteading is to become food independent! I feel like that should be capitalized, it's so important and special to me! Food independence goes hand in hand with having a whole-diet farm and that's what we are aiming for. It's not going to happen over night but, we'll work as hard as we can towards our goal.

For meat & eggs we are going to have:

Chickens

Turkeys

Ducks

Guinea Hens

Rabbits

For milk, butter & cheese we are going to have:

GOATS!

The property has an avocado tree, it's young but, it's already producing. There's also a 2 year old cinnamon tree! How cool is that? We really just can't sit still we are so excited!

We are going to garden using Intensive Gardening methods to maximize our space and work with the earth....can't wait to have a Three Sisters Garden!

Mexican Garlic.

Last week I was lucky to go on a lovely Valentine's trip (ok, slash, visa run trip) to Mexico. We went to San Cristobal de las Casas and loved it. The market there was, of course, incredible. I brought back that braided bunch of garlic..smelled great all the way home! I can't wait to cook with it since the cloves are bigger and easier to use than the ones here in Guatemala. I have a sneaky little feeling that they'll be tastier too!
I also got a beautiful little stack of Haas type avocados. They were the tastiest avocados I've had in ages and you can bet your bottom dollar that all four of those little seeds are in jars (hopefully sprouting) on a window sill in my house right now. Yay! I <3 C.A. markets!

egg dreams.

We love love love the markets here and do the majority of our shopping there. You just never know what you're going to find each time you go and we go almost everyday. It's always fun when one of us stays home and the other goes on a market shop. Surprises from the market are the best!
The other day Zach came home with all kinds of great treasures: geese eggs, a duck egg, 7 fist size Crystal Quartz rocks, 1 big chunk of Obsidian and a bike! About those eggs though...he got them with hopes of hatching them. Right away, he whipped up an incubator out of a lightbulb and cardboard box, marked them so we can turn them...we have a thermometer and by adjusting the lid we have the temp hovering at 100 degrees. Incubation period is 21 days and we have our fingers crossed that we have some hatchlings in a few weeks or less. Fingers crossed, fingers crossed!