We have done some of the work. But there are real world issues that confront and trump vague ideological notions. For instance, it really does matter how long it takes for this work to get done. The rainy season approaches and progress on everything not completed prior to the downpours will be slowed drastically.
We can and have dug some post holes. It takes us about two hours, maybe more to do one. Some Belizeans can dig a post hole in less than an hour. One such man charges $17.50 US a day, 7am - 4pm. He is one of the men that dug the well.
So, we can fool around and play at hard work, or hire a guy who isn't playing at getting the job done. If we do the work, I can keep some silly pride in doing it ourselves no matter how long it took. If we hire a serious hard worker, he can afford to pay the various fees his child's school charges.
And post hole digging... well, that's an aweful lot of work to do.
Peeling beams... well, we will do at least one.
Sinking posts... if we can do it without getting killed, we want to sink one of them.
Raising beams and nailing them to posts? ah... Bolts would be stronger and I got a generator and someone can use my electric drill.
We are not nearly as soft as we once were. However pragmatically, practically, if we want to get anything accomplished in any reasonable amount of time, we need to hire people with the skills to do "unskilled" labor.
We have temporarily surrendered our body building equipment to someone who can make the appropriate number of 3 foot holes in the ground before the rainy season. The dry season appears very much to be over. It rained every day last week, not the all day torrents of water from the sky kind of rain, but rain never the less.
Christopher and I went early in the morning to see if the man was there to work. He was there, he was working. Not wanting to sit around and watch him work, Chris and I got busy in the garden.
Christopher pulled grass from a row we previously planted. I dug a trench along the next row to be planted, putting the soil on the row to make it higher. The soil dries very fast right now, but when the rainy season arrives, I hope that the trench will give the row good drainage.
The dirt looks like the kind of dirt people would pay money for.
Here is a little tree that can't be more than two years old. It is is some sort of fabaceae. The fabaceae family of plants includes beans, acacias, mimosas, and lots of other plants. Most of them, maybe all of them fix nitrogen in the soil. They are about the only plants that can turn the nitrogen in the air into a form of nitrogen in the soil that plants can use. The fabaceaes that are trees probably have the added advantage that their taproots go deep into the underlying marl and pull up lots of minerals.
There are many small trees growing in the meadow. They are natures way of turning the meadow into forest. For the time being, I am not cutting any of these small trees down. There are techniques of agriculture that take advantage of fabaceae trees growing right in with the crops to provide fertilizer and shade. Here most gardens need a bit of shade as full sun is just too much here.
But I am willing to cut the side branches of the trees in the garden. I am thinking that this helps the tree grow a straighter and taller trunk. There are techniques of feeding these side branches to livestock, however I don't have any livestock other than a dog. Also, I don't know exactly which fabaceae these trees are, and some of them should not be fed to livestock.
I mentioned that the soil is dry within an hour or so of rain. While I want drainage latter, right now, I want to try to keep the soil damp as long as possible. Not knowing what else to do with the side branches, I put them in the current row of the garden in the hope that they can maybe keep the soil damp longer, and as they rot, fertilize the beans and garlic that we planted in that row.
I have no idea if this will work. The only thing that has grown well for us has been chaya, a plant eaten like spinach.
No comments:
Post a Comment