In the Yucatan for hundreds of years, the Maya have made walls and fences out of rocks.  They call them Cotes.   It's just a lot of big rocks, and a few small rocks stacked on top of each other.  The weight of the rocks makes it strong.  Periodically some of the top rocks get knocked off and you just walk along and ut them back in place. There are men in the pueblos who build these walls for a living.  I had them build some for me.  But I decided I needed about 300 more meters and would prefer to pay that money to my co-workers rather than hire others. I asked my men if they could do it, and they said they didn't know.  They had never tried, because that is what the Cote builders do.  I told them one day, I thought they could do and we'd give it a try. For the first couple of days they were not as fast as the "pros".  But by the 3rd day that had picked up the rhythm and were going just as fast.   They beamed with joy to discover that they could do this.  I beame

  In the pueblos of Yucatan, there are no supermarkets like you'd find in a larger town or city.  The closest supermarket to me is about 30km away in Oxkutzcab.   Instead the pueblos have small neighborhood stores called Tiendas that might be 15m2 to 20m2 and they have the basics.  Sort of like a convenience store, except even smaller.  These stores would not have meat, because you get that from the butcher who kills a cow every few days and only sells fresh meat.   They would have eggs, and a few items of produce and bread and lots of sweets.  My pueblo has about 3,000 people and probably 50 tiendas.  It is planned that the tienda is close enough that you can walk to it because every day you go and get what you need that day. Besides the tiendas, every pueblo will have many tortillerias.  Again, they are located in neighborhoods so you can walk every day and get what you need.   The idea of buying a week's worth of anything is alien to these Maya people. I go into the pueblo h

  The rainy season officially arrived this past Sunday night, the 14th of May. Thank goodness.  Now we stop watering my asparagus and coconut trees and let Mother Nature take over for a while. It's now been almost 9 months since I planted the first Asparagus.  And contrary to all the naysayers who said I could not grow it here in Yucatan, my plants are healthy, full and growing.   Next year we'll have some spears but two years from now (the 3rd year) we'll have 100's of kilograms of asparagus weekly.  Woohoo! Also shown are the progress of my coconut trees that are growing in bags, to be sold in 4 years at retail in Merida.  The first ones are very tall now for less than a year old.  Probably 80cm and the newer ones are almost 30 or 40 cm. Next year will be a great year for the farm!    Click here for video of the progress

  My neighbor on the next ranch has 10 beehives and is always offering to share some with me.  Of course, I cheerfully accept, and still try to buy a liter or two from him. Mid-April begins the heaviest honey harvesting time.  Starting April 15, he, more or less, collects 90 liters of honey every 15 days.   So he got his first harvest April 15, then 90 liters May 1, and today 90 more.  He has told me that he'll get 90 more the end of May and then one more harvest the middle of June.   Then the collection stops until November and December.  Then nothing in January and some in February and nothing in March.  Then the process repeats itself next April. Click here for video of harvesting honey today in the Mayan tradition He has told me that I have enough land that I could put in 40 hives in 4 different locations of 10 hives each.   I have decided though to put in Melipona bees, which are stingless and unique to the Yucatan.  They only make about 1/5th honey that he makes, but it sells

  For me, I feel like I have many advantages living near the small Maya pueblo of Mayapan.  It's only about 3,000 and everyone is friendly.  No crime.  Lots of fresh food and meat. But there are some disadvantages.  1 is there is nothing like what most people would call a supermarket or large grocery store.  The nearest one is about 30km away and it's not a really large one.  But it is a supermarket.   There are no banks or ATM machines.  No one takes debit cards.  Everything is done with pesos or barter.   There are no gasoline stations closer than 15km away.   There are not big stores to shop at for a big selection.  But pueblo life goes on and people live with what they have. To make up for no supermarket, the pueblos have little stores called tiendas.  They are generally about  15m2 or about 150 sq. ft.  They have the basics.   Some might be 1/2 that size.  And a small pueblo like Mayapan has at least 20 of them that I know of.  They are spaced all over the pueblo, because

  The vaquerias are on the 1st and 2nd nights, and after that begin la tradicional corrida de toros.  The fighting of the bull.   The corrida is in the afternoon with more dancing at night that may last all night.   Contrary to popular Expat myth, no animal is harmed in these corridas.  Quite the contrary, the bull ends up being the winner, and it is the men who are getting tossed into the air.   The bull is chasing the men who show themselves brave enough to get in the arena with it, and the lure the charging bull to them, and then are fleeing in every direction.  It is orchestrated chaos.  :-) The crowds roar with enthusiasm and are cheering the men, and the children beam with pride at the "bravery" of their brother, or papa, or son.  I personally think it's more analogous to the Running of the Bulls in Spain, with a bunch of your men, and a few older too, jumping in the arena to show their bravery with the charging bull. The entire event is very colorful, festive, and

 I live 90 km south of Merida Yucatan Mexico, near a trio of pueblos: Chumayel, Teabo, and Mayapan.  All 3 are only about 8km apart and many families from one, have family in the others.  Each has about 3,000 residents.  It's a wonderful, happy, friendly, peaceful, content, hard-working community that I've been blessed to become a part of.   Right now, and starting on April 29, 2023, there is a celebration going on in Teabo and Chumayel.  When it is over there, it will start for 7 more days in Mayapan.   It is not because of Cinco de Mayo (May 5th Independence Day) but coincidentally coincides with it. Each pueblo in Yucatan has a patron saint, and this is the week in the pueblos to honor the saint.  In Mayapan it is Santo Cristo del Amor. In another video I posted and another blog post, I mentioned the slaughter of the pigs that most families have been raising for the past 3 months to share this week during the fiesta.  That too is a family affair that concludes with the deep

  Today we harvested the last of the ears and stalks from my first corn crop I've grown here on my Ranch.  As I have mentioned before, the Maya will plant their corn on June 1 to coincide with the beginning of the rainy season.  However, I have water and irrigation pumps, so we can grow 2 crops per year. click here for video This corn was planted on January 15, and came up 6 days later.  We began collecting ears of corn about 10 days ago, and the last ears were ready today. In the video you see the men cutting down the stalks after picking the ears.  We will take the stalks to Chumayel and selling to a cattle rancher who will grind them into feed and we'll sell the ears at market. When all is said and done, I don't think that I made a dime profit growing this early corn.  I didn't lose money, and I managed to give my guys work to do and the crop paid for their labor.  That's just fine with me.   We'll plant again in a couple of weeks, and that corn will grow its

 Today is Monday, May 1.  In the pueblo near me, the fiesta began on Saturday night, two nights ago, and last all week. The days of fiestas are to honor the saint of each Pueblo.   Parades, getting dressed up, booths of all kinds, party lights, music, and of course bull fights.  2 nights of celebration followed by 5 days of La tradicional corrida de toros with dancing at night.   It generally coincides with Cinco de Mayo but it is not a celebration of independence.. Many, and maybe most, of the families in the pueblos have been raising a pig for the past 3 or 4 months in preparation and anticipation of this week.  And Saturday was the day to slaughter the pig for the families own celebration this week. The slaughter and preparation is a big family affair. My superintendent, Salvador, asked me on Saturday morning if I would like some of his family's pig and I was eager to accept.  I told him a few ribs and some pork loin would be my favorite.  He brought both to me this morning, and

 I have a large tree by my pool.  It makes a tiny fruit, that the Maya (and myself) like.  It's not very fruity, because it's so tiny.  But it has a soft shell on the outside that peels away easily, and then you pop it in your mouth, and suck the fruit off, and spit out the pit.  The Maya enjoy them more like a piece of candy than a piece of fruit. In Maya it is called Huayum and I'm not sure what it is in Spanish. I noticed about the first of March, I started getting tiny pieces in my pool that I'd have to clean out every couple of days.   5 or 6 or 7 pieces.   The birds like them and would fly into the tree, peck a little at them, and knock them off the tree into the pool.   Day by day, the quantity increased, I suppose as the fruit was getting mature and ripe.   Besides knocking them into the pool, they knocked many more to the ground.   About 2 weeks ago, April 15th, there started to be forty or fifty pieces a day in the pool and it was getting filthy.   So I draine

My helpers had gotten off and I expected to see them leave to go home.  Instead, a few minutes later, Salvador and 2 of the others, Diego and Pedro, came walking past my house with something that had smoke coming out of it, and my 9 meter extension ladder. Click here for video I asked Salvador what they were doing and he said they were going to get 2 big wasp nests down from trees, to take home and eat.  I had heard of this before, because Liborio showed me a small nest he knocked out of a tree and he told me that he loved to cook and eat the larvae. I decided to go and watch this and wondered how on earth they'd get them down out of a tree that needed a 9m ladder.

Sometime yesterday, or perhaps the night before, a small snake about 30 cm got on my front porch, with its rough surface, and sloughed off its skin.  I didn't pay any attention to the old skin laying there when I walked out yesterday, but my dog saw it.  And he was not happy about it.   I guess Logan can pick up the scent of a snake from the old skin, and he thinks it is still a snake.  I imagine he's spent a total of 4 or 5 hours staring at it yesterday and today. Click here for 3 minute video It's one of the funniest reactions I've seen between a dog and a piece of dead flesh.   I am happy though to know that he at least knows what a snake smells like, so if one gets in the house, he can alert me to it.  I can't imagine what his response would be if the snake was alive and started slithering around. Fortunately, I've got a very good feral cat, Patricio, who does a splendid job of keeping the area around my house free of snakes and mice.  Apparently he missed o

I've posted before about what a nuisance the iguanas are to me here on the farm.  They are a predator to many of the vegetables I'm trying to grow and I wish I didn't have any here.  I don't want to just kill them and considered trapping them and carrying them away.  But then I discovered that a couple of my workers really like to BBQ them and eat.   So I started paying my guys a bounty of 10 pesos (about 55 cents) for everyone they catch and kill.  That's worked pretty good and they've probably removed 20 or 30 in the past few months. I also got 2 plastic decoy owls from Home Depot to mount on a tall post.  Those didn't work.  I think the Iguanas figured out they weren't real.  But the heads are mounted on a swivel spring to help them appear alive.   The problem was they head just didn't move that much or often. I had an idea about how to remedy that and cut a big plastic coke bottle and mounted a large clear plastic sail on the back of the head.  N

I posted earlier about when we planted this corn in the middle of January.  For corn it is possible to have 2 crops per year here, since there is no frost or winter.  This corn will be ready to harvest about the end of April.   Click here:  Here's a short one-minute video I made this morning while watering. The Mayans will plant their corn in June, because that is the start of the rainy season and they need the rain to water the plants.  I have free electricity and unlimited fresh water and an irrigation system, so we are able to plant in January and keep it watered with the sprinkler towers I had built. When we harvest this corn, we'll clear the stalks and fertilize the ground well with cow manure and then the last week in May, we will plant more. Also, very interesting to me this lesson.  About 3 weeks ago, I had to go to Merida for the day.  On the way home there was a severe storm with 50kph winds and heavy rain.   When I got back to the ranch at 5:00 Salvador was still her

 It's dawned on me that during this time of year, we get a lot of wind.  I can tell because 1. I feel it.  2.  I see the trees swaying big and blowing.   3.  The windmill has to be shut down often because it keeps the water tank (See previous post Logan's Doggie Pool), full and overflowing. Looking back, it seems to have started getting windy about a month ago in the middle of February, and I remember that because I have several really big brush and tree piles, I need to burn, and I haven't felt safe about starting a fire that might spread to the other jungle. I've been noticing the past few days that it seems pretty still at night after the sun goes down.  And stays still until about 9 am when the sun has come up good.  The sun and the heat seem to make it more windy. Now, this is not to say there isn't always some breeze here in the Yucatan.  We are, after all, surrounded by the sea and the Gulf of Mexico and both of those always bring some breeze and the windmill

 I had a drone aerial friend come a few days ago and take some updated aerials for me so I could see the riding trails that we've worked hard on clearing the past four months.  Obviously, you get a different sense of perspective from a "bird's eye" view. After we were finished and I was reviewing them on my computer, and it dawned on me how ugly much of the land is right now. Much of it, away from the oasis of my home, is brown and looks bleak or dead.   And then I realized, it's because most of the trees have dropped their leaves.   The seasons here are much different from the USA.   I jokingly tell people that Yucatan has 3 seasons.  They are Not-so-hot, Hot, and Very hot.   Now the locals think that the "not-so-hot" season is winter.  It's funny to gringos because it simply means the daytime temperatures are usually in the high 70's to low 80's, (F) and the nighttime temperatures are in the mid 60's.   In the USA I guess we'd call

  Click here for video I got a dog a week ago from a lady in Merida who had rescued him from an abusive owner 6 months ago.  She named him Logan, so I kept the name.  He's probably 2 years old and is a Belgian Malinois breed.  They have good protective instincts and also are good jumpers. It's just so quiet out here by myself most of the time, that I decided it would be nice to have a dog around.  Plus I can go to church on Sunday night and leave him here to guard the house and stuff. We've had to come to an understanding on a few matters.  1. the big swimming pool is the Human swimming pool and not for him. 2. The doggie pool is by the windmill. He gets so dirty and would just go and take a flying jump in and all the mud on his feet would come off in the pool for me to clean out.   I took him down to the windmill where there is a water tank and when he saw it, he jumped right him.  So now, I'm not only the only person in the pueblo who has a swimming pool, but I'm

 I mentioned somewhere else in the blog that I have a very large cave near my house.  And about 6 weeks ago, I was sitting on the porch one night and pondering that I'd not been bitten by a mosquito since I've lived here.  In fact, I only remember one buzzing near my ear one time.  There are just not mosquitos.   There are however lots of mosquitoes in the pueblo 2.7 km away, and lots of them all over the Yucatan.  The cities like Merida are terrible with them.  But I'd had none.  Then one night a friend was visiting at night, and we were sitting on the front porch with the porch lights on, and we saw what appear to be a bird fly by in the dark.  My friend commented that it was a bat.  Wow!  I'd not thought about having them, and of course you typically don't see them since they only come out at night.    As I considered it, I realized they must be coming from the cave that is near my house.  It's huge with a tiny opening. There was my answer.  The bats eat all

  Click here for video I've been trying to keep my stuff water adequately since it's about to be the very hot season.  I had 3 sprinklers like you might stick in a residential yard.  But as my corn gets taller, I knew they weren't going to be able to reach over the tops of it. In Yucatan, a welder is called a blacksmith.  I had an idea and drew up a little tower that would be about 2meters tall that the sprinklers would sit on top of and shoot from a higher place. He charged me $80.00 to make me 3 of them.   Now it's made the watering job automatic and I don't have to have a man standing there moving the sprinkler around to get everything.  We just shoot these in a 360 circle and only have to move them twice in a day.

  We finally got cleared to the top of the small pyramid across from my house.  I'm sorry the video is not the best quality.  It was a very windy day.   At about the 40 second mark in the video, you can see the residue of some structure that some man made at the top.  This is definitely not nature made.   We have a lot more clearing to do, but this gives a very commanding view of my house across the road and the surrounding land.

I have made no secret of my ambitions here in the Yucatan that I'm trying to empower these Mayan people to rise up from their extreme poverty and make a good income.  It is an unfortunate by-product of poverty that one of the first "luxuries" to be discarded is education.  In my eyes, education is the ultimate and best steppingstone out of poverty. In the Yucatan, children can go to school for free thru the 8th grade.  9th-12 though cost money.  It cost about 1,500 pesos per semester, which is about $75.00 USD.  That doesn't sound expensive, but in the pueblo where the average monthly income is only the equivalent of about $125.00 per month for a family, it is a fortune and unaffordable for many.   Hence, they drop out after the 8th grade, and the boys go to the field to work, or go to Merida for construction jobs.  The girls start looking for a boy to marry or get them pregnant and then marry.  Often times in the reverse order. There are barely any job opportunities

  Click here for video You would have to see the jungle here to appreciate how dense it could be.  I've spent months clearing much land for planting and also around my house so I can see out.   But before the clearing, you could not see 5 meters in front of your face. Across from where my house is, there is a 20-hectare tract that I'm starting to clean up and sell.  I have looked at it from my porch every day for months and saw nothing but dense trees.   But after my guys started into it from the driveway, I was inspecting their work and could see that the ground started rising pretty rapidly.  I sent them up the incline with machetes, and by gosh! There was a small pyramid.   Now lest you start thinking of Chichen Itza or Cheops, forget about it.  This one is about 15m tall.  It would have been typical for some important official or area ruler to have been buried in 500 years ago when this area was a big commerce center for the Mayan.   In any case, we've begun the clearin

  Click here for video: I used to pay a supplier about 4.00 US a bag for cow manure.  I use a lot of it for asparagus, cucumbers, watermelons, and coconut trees I'm growing. I've recently found a cattle rancher who has large pens of feeder cattle and will give me all I want if I sent someone to pick it up and bag it.  Now I send Salvador with my truck every Thursday afternoon, and we gave a young high school boy a job every Thursday to pick it up for me.  Now every Friday morning Salador brings back to the ranch about 20 bags . . . and it's free. Also, I show some Aloe Vera that my guys mistakenly cut down when I asked them to clear a fence row.  Some friends told me to pick the plants up and stick back in wet, soggy soil and they'd live.  The sure did. Lastly, I explain here about why we are bagging up 100's of bags of leaves.   Yucatan has 3 seasons really.  Not so hot.  Hot.  And hot as hell.   We're about to go into the hot as hell season and so I've sho

I'm posting this so I can remember this time next year when the bees arrive to my yard.  I've been hearing this loud buzzing for a couple of days near my front porch of my house and didn't think a lot about it until it got so loud this morning I decided to walk out and try to see where they were coming from.  I don't have a lot of flowers near the porch and thought the buzzing much be coming from the trees.  I was right.  I do know that February is not a big month for collecting honey from the local hives.  That won't begin until the middle of April.  But I guess they are starting to work now to make the honey that will be collected in large quantities in April thru mid-June. Click here for video if you'd like to see.   Sorry.  It was too windy and I wasn't able to capture the buzzing.

  I used to buy cow manure 100 bags at a time for about 4.00. 25kg each bag. Now I've found a cattleman who gives me all I want, and I gave a young boy a weekly job to pick it up.  I pay him the equivalent of $7.50 and he picks 20 bags, more or less, a week.  I let Salvador take my truck home on Thursdays, along with 20 empty bags, and he brings it back on Friday.    Big savings in $$$$$.  And all the free fertilizer I need forever.  Plus a young boy has a weekly job to look forward to. Win/Win

  A few days ago, I posted about how to keep leaf cutter ants away from harming your plants, shrubs, and trees.   As I said, there is no way to get rid of them.  All you can do is keep the population down, and take some preventive steps to keep them from attacking.   But they will go on. But there is something that can be done to keep the very tiny ants away from the fruit trees and shrubs, as the Mayans have done for many centuries.  It's a limestone powder that is mixed with water, and then put into a paste and applied directly to the trunks of the trees.  It doesn't harm the tree, and it doesn't harm the ants (though I'm not opposed to the latter).  What it does do is make the surface too slick and the ants cannot climb up or down. Here's a very short video of my fruit tree orchard with a fresh coat of Cal.  It does wash off over time from the rain.  But generally, will last many months.  If it rains the same day, you apply it, and the paste has not dried it will

  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