ah

It's been a while since I last blogged, it seems I'm otherwise occupied with many varied but hard to pinpoint thoughts, tasks and activities. The farm is entering a more dormant period with the rains and change of light. Here, being 9 degrees north of the equator, we don't experience such dramatic solstices, we still have close to 12 hours a day, but the quality of light is different.

My pumpkins while still flowering will not set. The cranberry hibiscus having put all its energy into flowering is dying back, the malabar spinach is dropping leaves. It's a time to back down, weather the wet and take a moment out of the crazy growing spiral that is the rainforest.

In the orchards the mondu (Garcinia dulcis) is still fruiting, the araza has dwindled to one or two malformed fruits and my beloved champedak is almost done: each harvested fruit smaller and lighter than the last.

We are harvesting vanilla for the first time and I will post about that. And our salak is strong too, today in the kitchen I'll be drying the salak and making mondu jam.

Otherwise we've been busy going back and forth to San Jose for various appointments. We took part in a 'Sustainable and Fair' faire last weekend, it was very good. We were the only vendor there selling dried fruits and cacao and we sold out of everything but jam. It was also a good opportunity to connect with others and we have a couple of new clients from it. There were a lot of craft and artisan vendors selling some really nice things from shoes to masks, and several indigenous vendors selling heirloom grains and medicinals. And all of it fair trade and 'sustainable' (whatever that means). The faire is bi-annual and is by invitation only. I hope we are invited to the next one in May. Oh one more thing, the President was there and bought some jam and fruit from us. Does that make us by presidential appointment?