Las gallinas

         These are our chickens! I have to take care of chickens! Isn't that hilarious?? It's like I'm in Iowa or something. Two weeks ago Bill sent me an email with a list of things to do around the property, and to my bemusement, one of the items was to purchase and maintain chickens for a constant supply of eggs (we eat a lot of eggs). So I put the chicken chore far down the list figuring it would take some asking around to find out what kind of chickens to buy (who even knew there were different types of chickens), where I can buy them, how many to buy, and how to maintain them, cause before this I'm not even sure I'd ever even seen a live chicken. Then three or four days ago I was picking up lunch from Milania's (the woman who cooks for the groups when they are here), and thought to ask her about the chickens because I knew she had a bunch of her own. I usually pick up lunch around 12, and by 2 o'clock that same day when I went back to return her tupperware, she had like 15 chickens lined up for me to buy! We ended up settling on five gallinas (hens) and one gallo (rooster), and Milania gifted us two more chickens out of the goodness of her heart, one full sized hen and a little teenager one. Eight chickens in total. While I was still at her house she was showing me her chicken set up, where they lay their eggs, what to feed them, and that whole deal. When she was showing me were the chickens sleep, I got a little bit confused. Now, my spanish speaking and comprehending abilities have improved vastly over the last eight weeks, and I can almost always understand Milania now, but when she was explaining where the chickens sleep I was sure I was misunderstanding her, because what I understood was that the chickens sleep in a tree! I was cracking up and asked her three or four times to make sure I definitely understood her that at night, the chickens hop up a ladder (pictured above) into the branches of a tree and sleep for the night. My mind was blown. It makes sense if you think about it, they are up high securely away from predators, but before I was able to wrap my head around the fact, it was the funniest thing I had heard in weeks.
          Ok, so now I have the chickens in a cardboard box in the back of the pick up, I know how to take care of them, Milania's grandkids helped me set up their nests for egg laying, and Milania even lent me one of her chicken ladders so they could get up into a tree. The only problem now is that most Dominicans have their chickens running around their houses and their yards, but chickens smell awful and are quite noisy (particularly in the morning) so we weren't about to let our chickens run around the staff house. So I found a beautiful spot for them, far from the staff house, under a big shady mango tree perfect for sleeping in, but now the problem is that they were far away, so we couldn't monitor them and they could run away or get stolen pretty easily. As a solution to these problems Peter and I decided we would build them a fence out of chicken wire! So we got chicken wire, called our friend Meima to go out into the woods and cut us some posts (cause apparently you can't just buy them in a store) and after three days of the chickens roaming around randomly (thankfully they're all still around) we were building them a fence today. Digging individual holes for each post and dealing with the surprisingly rigid chicken wire was a bit tedious, but that was not, as we expected it to be, our most difficult task of the day. After we built the fence, we had to get the chickens into it. Trying to run down one chicken is hard enough (we found out), but eight seemed like a mountain we wouldn't be able to climb. Maybe if we were working out in an open field we would have had a chance, but we were by no means in an open field. We were surrounded by barbed wire fence on two sides, and lots and lots of thorny plants. So the first chicken we caught was the little teenager one cause we luckily ran it into one of the thorny bushes and it got stuck, but after that, it got much, much more difficult. Peter and I spend well over an hour army crawling under and jumping over the barbed wire fences all the while pulling thorns out of our feet. At the end of the hour and change, Peter had 10+ thorns stuck in his feet, and my right arm and leg were covered in blood from all the bushes and barbed wire I ran into, but let me tell you, it was all worth it. Each time we were able to catch another chicken and put it in it's new fenced in habitat, the feeling of satisfaction we felt rivaled that of pulling that piece of plastic off a new cell phone, or popping an entire roll of bubble wrap. So now as you can see, the chickens are happily in their shiny new enclosure living the chicken lifestyle. They eat a surprising amount of food and drink a surprising amount of water so I'm back there two or three separate times a day feeding and watering them. Now, after lots of hard work, we have a steady supply of fresh laid eggs (which are much better than ones that have been shipped all over, think fresh vs. frozen fish), and another chore to keep me busy. And *spoiler alert* I believe our next such venture on the property is going to be getting honey bees, so I'm going to learn how to be a bee keeper, how awesome would that be??? But until then, I have plenty of time to become a master chicken keeper.

Las motocicletas

Riding motorcycles is fun. No ins or outs about it. I never rode one until I arrived here, but now I find myself making up as many excuses as possible to ride them. Part of my job is to run them daily to ensure they don't die from lack of use, which is great because as I said, riding motorcycles is fun. As you can see, we have three motorcycles on the property, two road bikes, and one dirt bike. The dirt bike is by far the best one we have, especially for the terrain on which we have to ride. If there is a down side to it, it's that it's not terribly fast once you get it on the road, but that's a minute detail especially compared to how well it runs on the rocky dirt roads around here. The black Yamaha is a piece of crap. It's not its fault that it's a road bike, so even getting it out to the road is a pain (literally, I feel like I should be wearing an athletic cup). Because of this, no one rides anything but the dirt bike, hence the necessity to run them everyday. But, unlike the dirt bike, once you brave the pain and the bumps and get the Yamaha out on the road, it's super fast and very fun to drive, aside from the fact that it's a piece of crap and the whole thing rattles and vibrates while being driven and it's terrifying, but that just adds to the experience in my opinion. And the red bike on the end is a Suzuki, but the kick starter doesn't work so you can't even start it unless you get a push down the hill. Why don't we get it fixed you may ask, well, like I said before no one ever drives it so there really isn't a point. It would just be a waste of money, something we try really hard not to waste. Why don't you just sell the two road bikes that no one ever drives and buy a new dirt bike that people will drive you ask? Well Bill wants to "limp them out" for another year, and Bill is the boss and what he says goes. So until then, we stick to the dirt bike, which as I'm going to say for a third time now, not to be repetitive, but to emphasize a point, is quite fun to ride.

Monté en caballo

I rode a horse for the first time today! I think I'm kind of afraid of horses, so I always assumed that you didn't have much control when on horseback, but turns out you have complete control (at least on this horse). I went very slow at first, but then sped up a little bit and just bounced all around uncomfortably so I stopped that immediately. It was cool riding the horse, but I don't really get the appeal, maybe it's more fun if you go faster than three miles per hour.

Imbert

I was walking down the street in Imbert (a small town about 20 minutes for the property) and I passed this street and saw it out of the corner of my eye, did a double take, and said out loud to myself, "damn."

Los animales de la finca: Rex

I couldn't get one quality, in focus picture of Rex (cause he doesn't stay still unless you're petting him) so you get two pictures of Rex! He is our property guard dog, despite being secured to a tree 24/7. I know, I know, it sounds harsh, but listen to the story first then decide. Actually, I'll get to that in a second, first Rex's back story. About a year and a half ago, our former security guard told Jaime about a dog tied up to a tree not far from the property that was basically dying. Jaime went to the owner of the dog and asked if he could take him but the owner said he wasn't for sale, which was ridiculous. So Jaime would bring food to the dog and eventually got him healthy and back up to weight, at which point the owner eagerly offered to sell Jaime this dog. Our property security guard was a terrible one, so Jaime was able to buy the dog for $300, and we had a new security dog in Rex. Now back to the reason he spends his days tied to a tree. So as you may have figured by the blurriness of the pictures, Rex is quite the rambunctious puppy. He's between 70-80 pounds, and loves to jump. Initially we let him run free around the property, which went well for the most part, but then Rex started killing stuff. One time, actually while I was here in March for ASB, a stray piglet got onto the property and Rex killed the shit out of it. Long story short I think the mission got sued, or threatened to get sued, so we had to give them two or three piglets to avoid a huge debacle. After that, and I think other similar incidents, Rex was condemned to his tree. It's unfortunate cause he is a really good dog, and surprisingly good on a leash for such a big dog. He'll eat absolutely anything (and super fast). And he has a big water bucket, but he knocks it over every, single, time you put it in front of him (pictured in the background of the photo on the left). The silver lining to Rex's sad story of being tied to a tree all the time is that he's (most likely) gonna get to go to America for a better life come December! We had a group down here and one of the women in the group heard his story and offered to take him home for her friend who is apparently obsessed with Rottweilers (and willing to pay all the expenses of getting him to America), which is great! Rex deserves a better life than the one he has here, so I'm happy he'll get that.