I’ve posted a couple of more pictures up in the Gallery. The Christmas/Family ones are in General > Family. The others are in The Farm section.

Also, for those of you wondering exactly where we are at, here are the Google Earth coordinates:

18 degrees 21 minutes 32 seconds North
66 degrees 51 minutes 44 seconds East

We are just east of the intersection of Carr 4453 and 455. Too bad it’s too blurry to see us waving.

Merry Christmas from Puerto Rico! Right now I’m heating up the grill so that I can put the pernil (roast pork) on for smoking (takes about 4 hours or so–it’s 11 AM here right now). We’ve opened up our gifts–thanks to everyone! I’m right now posting the pictures up into the Gallery. Check out the ones named “Christmas2005…”. I’ve also uploaded some more pictures of the dogs, and a shot of the bat house. Again, thanks for the books, movies, and music. They are much appreciated!

Yesterday (Christmas Eve) we went over to TJ Ranch (near Lago Dos Bocas) since it was Tony’s birthday. The group that gathers there is a lot of fun, and it was very relaxing. Of course, it started out with some adventure: One of the visitors got their truck stuck in the camping area of the land…so we all had to lend a hand and push it out. Too bad I didn’t have my camera at the time! Anyhow, we got our exercise and hung out for a while (we didn’t spend the night–we came back to Camuy last night around midnight). We’ll be going over there again on New Years Eve; something we’ve done since we first went down there in 2002.

We had our first home-grown coffee today! It actually came out really well, pretty mellow and not at all bitter (though people in PR usually drink cafe con leche, so bitterness is toned down anyway). It was a lot of work, and Mrs. Gonzalez put a lot of time into it. In the end, we have about 3 pounds of completely home grown coffee. Pretty cool!

Today will be a pretty lazy day. I’ll be cooking, and reading my new books–we’re already listening to the music that Ann got Evelyn–it’s a good album.

Best wishes to everyone. We hope that you have a wonderful Christmas.

Hi All,

How are you? We’re okay. Just hanging out. A slow day today. Wake up..to guys repairing / switching the house main power supply to the front meter box… After a while they left… Ron and I had breakfest… went out side with plastic bags to go get grapefruit off the tree. That took a while. Once in hand, I washed them and Ron used is baby food processor that has a juicer kit to extract the juices from the grapefruit. We made two jugs of that stuff. Not bad.

I didn’t walk the puppies today nor did I yesterday…since would you believe this…. they managed to get their paws on one of the baby chicks… poor things had accidently crossed over/underneath the fence and both of them straight away attacked her.

When I saw Mama chick running towards them and flapping her wings and crowing aloudly…I ran as fast as I could to kick at the gate to get them off the baby chick… that was so scary… they just kept coming back, while I tried to keep them off of the baby chick to give her time to return to this side of the fence…finally she managed to escape…but ran off to the otherside of the fence next to the portero… that was a cliff …

I grabbed a stick and ran to the other side to find her but to no avail… sadly I returned… I walked up to the pups and told them they were punished for doing such a horrible thing. So now, when they see me, they jump, wanting to be taken out for a walk and I just keep on walking. They sense something is wrong. They just don’t necessarily understand my action with respect to their action. I figure one more day… and then start the process again. This time I’m make a point of telling them not to chase or attack baby chicks.

Luckily, an hour later, I looked up when Ron and I were working on the Bat house and spotted the missing baby chick returning/ uniting with Mama chick. I was so releaved and very happy that the little one was not seriously harmed.

That’s been my advanture. Today has been a slow and mellowed day. Ron made smoked pork chops for lunch and everyone enjoyed it. So, we rest, read, and just keeping eachother’s company.

Hope to hear from you soon.
Evelyn

Christmas is coming. Everyone knows what that means–smoking meat on the grill!

A big holiday treat in PR is roast pig (shoulder or ham); called pernil. I’m doing a Chicago-Camuy fusion by using the PR spices and then slow smoke roasting (4-6 hours) the shoulder over hickory. I did a test run the other night and it came out great. Nothing like being able to BBQ in December.

Things have been pretty quiet around here. Christmas is PR pretty much goes from 12/17 through 01/09, so we’ve been trying to stay away from the stores and whatnot, since they are madhouses.

We started working on another (taller) bat house, which we should have wrapped up shortly (we’re waiting on one of Evelyn’s young cousins to stop by, since he wanted to help out). The first bat house looks really sharp, now that it’s all painted and stained. Hopefully the bats like it, because the mosquitos have been getting out of hand recently (not enough rain, so the standing water isn’t getting “cleaned out”).

Tomorrow (Christmas Eve) we’re probably going to be visting our friends @ TJ Ranch in Arecibo/Utuado (east of Lago Dos Bocas, for those checking on a map). It’s Tony’s birthday, so it should be a good time. We’ll spend Christmas here in Camuy with Ev’s Mom & Dad.

We wish all of our friends and family a very merry Christmas. We’ll be thinking of all of you with a drink in one hand and a chunk of roast pork in the other.

Today Ev and I built a bat house. Since we’re near caves, have a nearby pond, and lots of flying bugs, we thought it was a good idea. We had already spotted a number of bats flying around the area, so chances are good that they will move in.

If you want to build your own, check out the Bat Conservation International website (we’re members, of course). They are a good association with lots of info. They have a couple of good one-page PDFs that gives you hints, plans, etc. We’ll see how this one goes, and then maybe make a bigger one.

Here is there main page; for bat houses check under Conservation Programs > Bat Houses:
Bat Conservation

I’ll post a picture of the bat house shortly.

I’m going to be trying out Google Talk for instant messaging. I’ll also be on MSN and YIM. Here are the different accounts:

MSN : nelsonii(at)hotmail
YIM : rlnelsonii(at)yahoo
GT : ron(dot)nelson(dot)ii(at)gmail

Well, I gave up messing with Coppermine (I couldn’t get it to upload pics for some reason). So, I installed another piece of software (4Images) and it’s working much better. This link is:

www.sybarite.us/puertoricopictures

I’ve also added permant links to the navigation area to the right, so you don’t have to bookmark the URLs anymore. As they say down here “poco a poco”.

This old gallery has pics of our December 2002 trip to PR. First bunch of pics is around the Naguabo area (south end if the El Yunque rain forest), second bunch of pics is of the Utuado area. I’m still working on getting my proper image galleries working…I should be able to make progress, now that I have internet access again.

Link To 2002 Picture Gallery

(Be careful: None of the full-sized images have been re-sized, so they are quite big.)

If you have farm land in PR, most likely you have a number of coffee trees. We have quite a few on the land here and are in the process of harvesting and preparing the coffee.

The first thing that was done was to pick the coffee (red berries only, please). Next, we set them out in drying racks for a couple of weeks. This shrivels up the husk so that it can be stripped off. Next up, the dried berries get soaked and the husks removed with a homemade grindstone.

After that, we wash the beans (now they look like real coffee beans, but light in color). Right now we have our beans drying in the sun (beware the rain!). Once they get dried out, they will be ready for a final cleaning and then on to roasting. I’ll cover the roasting in another post (once the beans are ready).

For those of you who might not know, Kate Bush is one of my favorite artists. She finally came out with a new album (after 10!!! years) and it’s good. I was glad to see that it went platinum (300k sold) after 4 weeks. Maybe that will prompt her to put out an album more frequently. For those Chicago people, I’m sure there’s some Kate out on the “X:” drive, if you want to check her out. Hounds of Love is probably a good album to start with.

Why do I bring this up? Because we were playing the new album (Aerial) earlier today. Ev’s dad comes in and sits down. We ask him if he wants to watch TV. Nope. And he proceeds to listen to the entire album. (Keep in mind, that he speaks mostly Spanish.) That’s the power of K8.