Stephan Schwab

This blog is about a farm in the rainforest of Panama. So where is that rainforest? It is actually all around us. Only to the south the forest has been cleared a long time ago.

Here is a series of pictures showing forest next to the farm and on the borders of it. You can very well see that the tropical forest has several layers.

In those trees are quite a lot of monkeys. Unfortunately I don’t have a lens to capture a picture of them. They do a lot of noise though.

Large birds like Tucans can be seen too.

The forest on top of this hill and its flanks is part of the piece of the farm that we did the survey for. We had to climb on top of it following a barb wire fence that separates our farm from our neighbor’s.

The land survey provided a great opportunity to take pictures of all the different flowers and fruits that grow naturally on the farm. Here is a selection.

In addition to what I can show you here there are coconuts, oranges, lime – and probably a lot more that I don’t know of yet. When we start putting cattle on the farm we will get easier access to many areas. Plus we will do some weeding and then we should be able to create some inventory and a map to know what grows where. It’s a big place and you don’t grasp it all in a few days.

This is Guava.

There is a segment of pasture that is full of Guava trees and these trees carry a lot of fruits. It is said that cattle likes Guava as well and of course they distribute it all over the place. We have to figure out how we can let them have fun and enjoy a good Guava harvest ourselves.

Besides an abundance of fruits the farm counts with about seven creeks that carry water all year around. These creeks open into the Chulugandi river which borders the farm on one side. There are little fish in there as well. When it rains the high tide takes them to the river and further down they end up in the Bayano reserve.

So water supply is not a problem at all. It is very clean and fresh. Here Luis is filling a new bottle. The humidity and all the physical activity walking up and down the hilly terrain makes one sweat as you can’t imagine, if you are used to a colder climate. Think of more than 80% humidity and about 30 – 32 degrees Celcius in the shade. That is 86 – 90 degrees Fahrenheit. By noon you will be wrenching out your shirt and find about four liters of sweat in it.

So it needs a lot of fluid but there is another problem. When you sweat you loose salt and minerals. Once the body lacks these you will feel tired and fatigued. So you have to replace that loss somehow. We discovered that the local supermarket carries Gatorate in powder form. That is much easier to carry. So we take fresh mountain water and mix our own refreshment. Imagine how that tastes!

During the survey we had barbeque for lunch. We cleaned the weed at a place with some fresh breeze and used a “light the bag” pack of coal. That’s a quick and easy solution and disposing the burned out coal is clean.

Pedron and Toby enjoy their lunch as well. Actually our horses go crazy due to the abundance of pasture. They don’t know where to start or to end. It takes some force to make them stop eating and keep walking ;-)