We are settling into our new home. Our kitchen wall now displays a clock (thanks to Harlan) and a Paul B. Zimmerman calendar (compliments of Andrea) to help us keep track of time. Dwain painted our front door with leftover wild lilac paint, and now the children call our house, “La Casa Morada” (the purple house).

On Wednesday, Harlan gave us a tour of La Otra Finca where there is a large well-watered soccer field, area for cattle to graze, and a pen of sheep. The cattle herd included a large docile bull that good naturedly left the children crawl all over him.

Dwain, along with many eager helpers, spent the week sowing carrots, beans, tomatoes and lettuce. They tackled tillage by hand as there is no machinery in town and the only team of oxen got worked to death. He also began pruning the mandarin and sweet orange trees and started to thin out the banana plants recently overgrazed by La Finca cattle.

Using an idea from ECHO, Dwain constructed an A-frame level used to find the contours of hilly ground. A couple boys helped him mark out some rows at the bottom of the patch. The garden will sport crooked but easy-to-irrigate rows as a result.

Yesterday Angelica and Ali helped organize the school room (located in our house). School for Angelica, Ali and Zack begins tomorrow. The children at La Finca are on vacation until February.

Our bodies are adjusting to the new altitude and breezy-by-nature house. Nights and early mornings mean sweatshirts and warm caps (yes, in the house). The feel reminds us of perfect April weather in Lancaster, PA or mid-May breezy days with intermittent drizzle dampening the ground some evenings. We’re told the dry season is beginning and will last through mid-May when the rainy season begins. Our goal is to have the bulk of the planting finished by that point.

Here are some photos of our house.