Yucatan Mexico Farm and Ranch Predator 2 - The Leaf Cutter ants A few weeks ago, I posted about my attempt to rid my property of iguanas. While I would wish them all the best, I'd wish that for them anywhere else except here.  They are vegetable destroyers. My other great nemesis is the Leaf Cutter ant and more particularly their queens.  I have discovered, like the iguana, that it's a battle that I cannot win and eliminate them, because they just keep coming back.  But after they completely stripped 4 out of 7 of my gardenia shrubs a while back, I made it my mission to at least try to destroy them at the same rate the queens can build new colonies.   It is a continuous battle, and so far, I've been able to hold them back. As this video says, here in Yucatan, there are 2 kinds of people.  Those who have had leaf cutter ants attack their shrubs, trees, or plants, and those who will be attacked in the future by these dwarf-monsters-from-hell.   I see postings in different g

I speak to my co-workers often about the need to rid the ranch of any iguanas we can find.  3 of my 5 guys eat them and love them BBQ'd, so to kill them is just giving them some meat and not just killing the iguanas for the sake of killing. Click here for video about these 3 and 1 more we got afterward. Today I had to run into the pueblo to pick up a few things at the store and when I came back it was time for the guys to get off work.  They were all walking up to me, and I could see that one of them, Santos, was carrying something in one hand.  As he got closer, I could see it was 3 iguanas that he'd killed.  Actually, he'd "almost" killed them.   I wish I could have snapped a picture of the look on his face.  He was so proud of his accomplishment and doing something he knew would make me happy.  I give the guys a bounty of 10 pesos (about 50 cents) for each one they kill.   That's not a fortune, but it is a welcome extra for them.  Plus they get to take the

 I'm raising coconut palm trees for future sale in 3 or 4 years.  For now, I use them as shade for my asparagus plants that I have growing.  I have 740 trees in containers growing before these.  Today added 48 more.  My goal is to have 1,000 trees growing by the end of March. Click here for video of soil mixing and bagging of the sprouted coconuts!

 We planted 4 rows of corn today.  I'm actually about 2 weeks late to have 2 crops this year, but it will be fine. Click here for short video of planting Yucatan is a tropical climate, so we have 2 growing seasons a year, if you have water available.  The local Mayan farmers usually wait and plant their corn on June 1, because that is when the rainy season starts, and they need the water to get it up out of the ground and start to develop.  Since I have unlimited free water, and am sitting on an ocean of fresh water, I can plant a crop now, and in 4 months harvest it, about the end of May.  And then we can plant another crop on June 1 and let nature water, plus we make up what nature may be lacking in moisture. The plants are about 9 per M2 and since the beds are 1 meter wide, that means 3 across and then a row about every 33cm.   Compared to Midwest USA farmers, or my farmer friend from Belize and Minnesota, I am very small time.  But for a local farmer, this is a lot of corn in a

 Planted today 1.19.23 200 Forget-Me-Nots and 60 Albahaca

 Maybe a reader would be interested.  But I'm making this note to myself to refer to later. I planted 500 asparagus plants in mid August 2022 in two rows in my raised-garden-beds.  Each row had 3 rows of asparagus with about 75 plants per row.  September nothing.  October 19th, 60 days later, they popped up overnight.   A month later, on November 21, 2022 they were about 30 cm tall (12"). You can see them in the rows between the coconut trees I'm growing (for sale).  The coconut trees give the plants partial daytime shade from the very hot Yucatan sun. On November 21, 2022 I decided to pursue growing asparagus for a 2nd income stream.  To raise as potted plants to sell retail in Merida in 3 years to expats and nationals who would like to buy a mature plant and begin cutting spears from the plants immediately.  2 mature plants would provide a couple of small family enough asparagus for their own needs to eat it as often as they'd like.   The mature, ready-to-harvest pla

  click here for video of my co-workers fixing, and eating a Mayan breakfas t  I've got 5 guys that work here with me 5.5 days a week. I could not ask for 5 co-workers that would be any more hardworking than these fellows. The man without a shirt is the "jefe" or superintendent of the others. 3 of the men only speak Mayan but Salvador, the jefe, is bilingual Mayan (first language) and Spanish. I'm learning Mayan but for now we communicate often with handsigns, my own Tex-Mex, or Google Translate in Spanish and English. These men all have their own cows or animals or crops to work, so they come to me at about 6:45 (rain or shine) and work until about 12:30 , Monday thru Saturday. There are other places where you can hire men for the full day, but not here. As part of their work routine, they stop at 10:00 and eat breakfast. There is no time clock punched or hours kept up with. It's just part of the deal, that they work, but they stop for breakfast for a

 At the beginning of this video you can see some red Solo cups that I planted asparagus in 6 weeks ago.  They are up now and about 5 to 10 cm tall (2 to 4").  Today it's time to transplant them from the red cups to the blacks 1 liter nursery bags that will keep them for 2 or 3 years until I sell them as mature plants in Merida.    Then tomorrow we will repeat the process and plant new seeds in the red cups and transplant in about 6 weeks to the permanent bags. Click here to view video of transplanting. My goal is to have about 2,000 plants in bags each year, that I hope to sell in 3 years for about 500 pesos each ($25.00).   Then each year I will repeat the process and raise 2,000 more, so that starting in the 3rd year, I'll have 2,000 plants to sell retail each year or about 1,000,000 pesos per year in sales.   And additionally, I hope to harvest about 200 kg per day of spears to sell at the market in Oxkutzcab. As I have previously written, asparagus produces nothing in

 I drove into the village today to pick up some building materials and to my surprise a "circus" had come to town.   I use that term a bit loosely.  This is not what you might imagine with Ringling Brothers.   But for the pueblo residents and children it was fun.  Cost of admission:  About a dollar in pesos.  The "acts" were dog tricks, and chicken tricks and flying birds.  A few men and women doing tumbling.  No highwires, and definitely no elephants.  But still a break from the ordinary and all kids love clowns and dog tricks.  What can you expect after all for a dollar these days? 

 I mentioned this yesterday in a post, that I've got a few banana trees that have just not kept up with the others in growth.  I planted 20 in August and they were all about the same at about 1m high.   Most of them have gotten huge, and over 3m tall. But I've got a couple that are runts.  I'm starting to wonder if they're a different variety.  Maybe they make the baby bananas.  But I made this particular photo so I'd have a baseline of comparison and can look back in a month and see if the double dose of urine yesterday helped them to spring to life.  We'll see.

I recently read an article written to farmers in India about being able to fertilize their 45m2 garden with their own urine as the total source of fertilizer.  The more I researched it, I found it is true.  Urine is one of the last great natural resources we can get free from ourselves of Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphates.   When you buy a bag of fertilizer at the store, you will usually see three numbers on the package.  Perhaps it would say: 17-17-17.  Those numbers represent the % of Nitrogen, Potassium and Phosphates. Today is the 12th, and I began saving my urine last Sunday the 8th.   By this morning I had accumulated almost 15 liters in plastic Coke Lite 600ml bottles.   I ran out of bottles so I decided to start applying to my fruit trees.  (I have 120 trees in my orchard.  20 each of 7 varieties.) When I finish the fruit trees, then I'll begina program for my 1,000 asparagus plants and then lastly my 500 coconut palm trees that are planted in containers for sale in 5 year

 I can remember as a kid, seeing pinup girl calendars in the automotive shop my dad took the car to be worked on.  Some of them my dad made me turn away from, but most were just an attractive lady in a swimsuit or fancy dress.  I think they probably started during the war and became popular, and businesses would give them away to their clients to advertise their name all year long. A couple of days ago, my material supplier gave me one from his company.   Seems like some things go on regardless of the country you're in.  However, the Mexican version of it was certainly not risque.  In fact, I was telling my friend this morning I find this one quite beautiful and the lady serene.  

 My asparagus that was planted in late August, continues to thrive and grow taller.  2 years before any spears to harvest, but since everyone I talked to told me that I'd never get it to germinate here, I'm pretty please with my results.   Tomorrow, we will prune them down to about 10cm (4 inches) tall.  I want the root system to continue to grow and not need to feed such a tall plant.  I will keep them at 10cm at least until October when the rainy season starts.    As I've mentioned, I have coconut palm trees in nursery bags growing next to them to give them partial shade during the day and keep the extreme heat and sun of Yucatan from stressing them. these plants at the rear of the bed, don't need the coconut trees to shade them because there is the large tree next to them to give them partial sunlight.

 We're building a 2-car garage near the house, and I decided to do it in a palapa style.   Another posting will show the construction, but to get the palm leaves for the roof, we have to order them in advance so the man can go out and cut them.  When he cuts them, they are green, and we have to bring them here and lay them in full sun for a few days to dry out and be ready to put on the roof. I call them palm leaves.  The Spanish name is huano, but the Mayan name is xa'an.  It will take almost 1800 leaves to do the roof for a 2-car garage.  The xa'an are 7 pesos each of about 30 cents.  They should last for 10+ years. Click here for view of drying

I already had one palapala building that was an old chicken house that we rehabilitated and put a new palm roof on.  Now we're building a new bodega as a 2 car garage from the ground up. Click here for video

click here for a view of my little Pueblo near my ranch, Mayapan, Yucatan, Mexico  I live 3km from the small pueblo of Mayapan which is about 90km south of Merida. It's a small pueblo with a population of about 3,000 and 30%+ of the residents only speak Mayan. Those who do speak Spanish, it is their second language. Things are slow and very slow here.  Many things are still done by traditions that are centuries old and not just generations. come see me and I'll show you how to grow Asparagus as a cash crop in Yucatan. And this is a close up of my little Catholic church that has services, usually, on Sunday nights.   If there is a wedding on Saturday, then they have mass on Saturday during the wedding and nothing on Sunday.  It's a small congregation, and I'm the only white guy, so a bit of a curiosity.   The priest is a nice fellow and has come out to the ranch to meet me.  He is the full-time priest in Teabo, about 10km away and so the church in Mayapan does not have a

 My friend in Izmal who raised 100's of banana trees tried telling me last summer that Banana trees grew very fast.  So when I planted my orchard of 120 fruit trees, I made sure to include 20 bananas.   When we got them in mid-September, they were about 1m tall.   I wish I'd taken a photo but I did not. Here is one of the trees, one month later, after planting them in my mixture of red dirt and cow manure, Vertigrow fertilizer, and diluted bull's blood: And here is a photo of the tree on month later after the photo above, on November 15, 2022: And here is a photo of the tree on month later after the photo above, on December 27, 2022:

 I was blessed today when I heard my Mayan interpreter in the pueblo call and tell me that the previous owner of the ranch was at her house, with his daughter and granddaughter and they wanted to know if it would be alright for them to drive out and see the ranch, because they had heard from the fiesta about how nice it was and the Paradise that it was now.  Of course I said yes. They came and the interpreter came with them.  I told her to show them around and in the house and that anything they wanted to see was open to them. The old man is 92 years old (more or less).  He lived his entire life on the ranch, until about 2 years ago when he kids moved him to Teabo to live with them.  His wife has a form of dementia and they just weren't capable of living remotely any longer.  Before him it had belonged to his father, and before that his grandfather, and he's not sure how many generations before had owned it. It was delightful to see the old man walk around and smile and be happ

 In celebration of having the house finished, and the gardens and orchards not only planted, but thriving, I had a little fiesta today on a Sunday afternoon.  All of my co-workers have families that have been very curious about what their husbands have been doing here.  As I've said, I'm a bit of a curiosity with the local pueblo Mayans because some of my farming and agricultural techniques are not exactly Mayan orthodox, plus I'm the only non-Mayan anywhere near the pueblo or in the village. It was funny though with the group who turned out.  I've got 5 full time guys and 2 part time very young helpers. The 2 p/t have only been working for a few weeks and this week will be their last for a while.   I told the 5 guys who have been with me from the start, that they could all bring their spouses, and their children, and grandchildren if they had any.  Then I also added, if they had a very close family member that they wanted to also bring, that was fine.  It was planned f

 We've been working on the pool for almost 6 weeks.  It's been a big labor to do the irregular shape and also from solar rock with exposed rock facing.   But today my construction guys stayed until 9 pm and finished the inside so it would be able to be filled in time for the fiesta this coming weekend.  We still have some piping for the filtration system to be covered over and landscaped, but the pool itself is done, and the video shows it being filled.  I estimate it will take about 18 hours to fill to the top.  At the top end of the pool (with the steps) the water will be 1m deep.  In the middle it drops down to about 1.25m and at the deep end it is 1.5 meters (about 60 inches) deep.   It's about 7m long and so it's truly a swimming pool and not the typical Yucatan "dipping" pool.

 We got the bottom of the pool poured today.   It just needs to cure a few days and we can start to fill it.  It's taken longer than I thought it would be the finished product is exactly what I saw in my imagination. We're putting a new palm leave roof on a little palpala bodega next to the house.  Ultimately I want it to be a chicken house, but for now it's just storage for my tools, and bags of fertilizer and stuff.   Before the coconut palms can be put up they have to lay flat on the ground a few days to thoroughly dry.  I was doing something nearby today, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Liboria (my oldest worker who "thinks" he is about 62 years old) pull out his machete and swing it at the ground, all in the flash of a second or two.   I walked over and saw that he had picked up a drying palm and there was a snake under it.  The rule is "if it has rings, it's mah-ma'loob.  Mayan for no good.  I'm not sure, but I think it is a copperhea