We have 'Saccharum officinarum'

     ...better known as sugarcane.  It grows in small stands all over False Bluff.  It's great as a snack and we also have a small press for extracting the juice.

     As a snack, a piece of the cane is cut, peeled, and cut again into small bite-sized chunks that are chewed (the fibrous remains end up in the garbage).  I'd never had fresh sugarcane before growing and harvesting it at False Bluff and so was unprepared for what a treat it is:  nothing like pure sugar at the end of a hot day.
     We have a simple but effective press to extract the juice which is mostly used for cooking.  A simple treat that doesn't involve any cooking, other than what nature does, is made from grated coconut that's mixed with the juice and then dried in the sun.  Preserving this 'candy' is never an issue. The press is a two person operation.

  One holds the cut 'cane under the pressing 'lever'...

...while a second person operates the lever.  Works really well.

     And, of course, there's Nicaragua's rum, Flor de Cana, made from sugarcane.  Flor de Cana wins awards all over the world.

Ready for company

     A room is ready for visitors...a bed, a book and the sound of the sea.

Highways near False Bluff

   

Frogs...really

     This is the song of frogs, not ducks.  One night a few years ago I taped a chorus of singing ranas.          
     Brown and about three inches long, they aren't as interesting to look at as they are to listen to.  And they only sing at night which is why you won't see anything but darkness - and what may be a lightening bug. 
    Close your eyes and enjoy some Caribbean music...

More beach treasures

     These tiny shells are so fragile many of them break just washing ashore; but I've tucked away a small handful in a little box.

     

     And almost as fragile is a different sort of shell I have in a tiny bowl.

From lagoon to sea

     On the pontoon boat getting ready to enter the creek from Smokey Lane Lagoon to make the half mile trip through the mangrove swamp to False Bluff on the Caribbean.

Phone central

     There's a pathway worn from the house to the beach which you can see in some earlier posts' pictures.   There are benches at the end of the path and it's a nice place to relax at the end of the day when the sun's going down behind you: cool and breezy and you can see for miles.

     And where the benches are is just about the only place anywhere along this section of coast where cell phones work. The False Bluff family has cell phone reception in the house; but visitors, usually from the north, will come down to False Bluff partly for the company and partly so they can call out....to wherever.

An any-time snack

     So, we've got all those pineapple plants producing fruit (and more plants being put in the ground), what to do with all that pineapple?  Staff pick them, guests pick them...they all end up in a plate or a bowl.

Pineapple

     We have lots of pineapple plants...about four hundred so far.   And as a plant produces fruit it also produces more plants so we'll be adding to what we've already got.  

The fruit, the actual pineapple, starts in the heart of the plant

and grows slowly over several weeks

but it's worth the wait.

There is a new, young plant visible just to the right of the fruit.

Facebook

     False Bluff now has a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pages/False-Bluff/142899219245180 and you can 'like' this blog on your own Facebook page. 
     We've created a Facebook page to cover things that might not be happening at False Bluff but that are relevant to False Bluff and the part of Nicaragua where it lives...resources or other information that might be of interest to people curious about this part of the world.  
     For instance, if you land in Bluefields and want to visit False Bluff, how do you get here?  Can we recommend a good and reliable boat captain?  Yes, we can and we will...on our Facebook page.
     And for those of you who might have visited Bluefields and been concerned about the plight of street dogs, in the (near, I hope) future we hope to be able to post on Facebook the creation of a group to take positive action on behalf of these animals.
     So check out the page from time to time and see what's going on or who's being featured.
   

Covenants and Restrictions and Electricity

     In preparation for offering some house lots for sale at False Bluff,  I'd spent some time writing covenants and restrictions...including a portion dealing with electricity for the houses that would call for the installation of solar power as primary power source, with generators to be used only during construction or as emergency back up. 
     And then one day during a walk on the beach I met a man who asked permission to bring his boat up our creek.
     Our language difference made clear communication awkward, so when we got back to the house I phoned a friend in Bluefields who helped the two of us get at just what he was asking for.   A crew chief from Enel, Nicaragua's electric company, he wanted to be able to bring his crew up our creek because the creek presented such an easy way to get the crew to their current work area.   
     Under his authority twenty guys showed up the next day to continue chopping the right-of-way they had begun far to the north of us (they're not all shown below).   These guys were followed a week later by the chain-saw crew, cutting trees that were too big for machetes.  

     The machete crew does the first job in Enel's project to run power from Kukra Hill north of False Bluff south along the coast to El Bluff and then across the bay to Bluefields.  Actually the power lines will run all the way across Nicaragua from Managua to Kukra and then down our section of the Caribbean coast.  The poles are being delivered by way of the sea and have already been installed from Kukra about half-way down to False Bluff.
     My reaction to this life-altering event is the same as that of everyone else who's heard it:  simple disbelief.   Electricity along any of the RAAS coast was not on anybody's radar, but it's happening.
     

     

Smokey Lane Lagoon - RAAS, Nicaragua

     I've posted lots of pictures showing the Caribbean....beautiful and hard to miss when you're at False Bluff.   
     But somehow Smokey Lane Lagoon seems to have been lost in the shuffle.  We're always in a boat when we get to the lagoon and maybe it's just worry about what a bad combination water and cameras can be that keeps the camera packed away.  
     The creek that we opened early in this project connects the lagoon to the docks at False Bluff.  Being on a boat in the creek is like floating through a tunnel that wanders through a mangrove jungle all the way.  
     Here we're about to break into the bright sunlight on the lagoon leaving False Bluff for a run to Bluefields, eight miles away.

     And just outside the mouth of the creek there's a good view across Smokey Lane to Kukra Hill.

A night on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast

     When there's literally nothing else around for miles, full moon nights are beautiful.

Looking east...

 and looking west.

Coconut tree's incredible root system

     I've planted hundreds of coconut trees primarily for their looks and their impact on the environment.  My employees and most of the visitors from Bluefields agree the trees are nice to look at but they're mostly interested in the food-producing capabilities of the trees and have advised me that I've planted so many the trees won't produce very well.
     An excellent reason for planting coconut trees is their extensive root system and what that root system does to stabilize the environment.   The trees are lost sometimes:  a poor start that didn't allow the root system to get a good grasp at the tree's beginning;  years of people hacking at them with machetes; encroaching seas that wipe out what the roots hold onto.  
     Here's one that got a bad start and then was chopped at for years.  Planted just to the right of the trunk are two small plugs of a grass that may help this (see May 16, 2013 post about the grass).

     But none of them give up easily.   

Photo by Andre Shank

Sea turtles and 'agua mala'

     Simply meaning 'bad water,'  the phrase 'agua mala' is used locally to describe most any kind of stinging thing that floats along this part of the Caribbean, including jellyfish.     
     For the first time recently I saw several of another kind of agua mala:  Portuguese man o'war.
     There were no live ones visible while I was in the water, I'm glad to say; but several had washed up along the beach to die.  Their stings, leaving red welts that can last for days, rarely cause human death; but the venom causes intense pain.          
     This particular agua mala, the Portuguese man o'war,  is a common part of the diet for loggerhead turtles.  It's said that when you see lots of these around - in or out of the water - the turtle population is down; and we know that turtle populations are down world-wide.  
     The fact that they eat these things is one more reason among many I can think of to not kill sea turtles.  

    

How to open a really big seed

     Coconuts are just really big seeds.  People with experience can separate a coconut from its heavy outerwear with three machete strikes and a few pulls - and make doing it look easy.  But that kind of expertise takes a lot of practice.
       Finding coconuts for practice isn't the problem it used to be.  Before there was a constant presence at False Bluff our coconuts disappeared as fast as somebody could knock them off the trees. Now we pick up nearly a dozen a day. 

            
     But getting at the useful parts of the coconuts can be a whole other story.   Mr. Allen (see a couple of previous posts) has opened a lot of coconuts and he coached.  

Seeds

     A common vine that creeps along the sand close to shore creates these seeds, some of which I put in a bronze cup.  Each seed is slightly different....size, thickness, color...

The gardening challenge, part 2

     My first post about the problems of growing things like cucumbers and tomatoes at False Bluff was in the December 11, 2012 post;  and it took us less than a year to learn that the approach I wrote about then does not work.  The heat, the intense sun, the salt spray, the sometimes-heavy winds, and the sometimes-heavy rains aged the protective structure into uselessness.   Sure, I could have a longer-lasting wood cut for poles and set them in concrete, or paint everything, or buy and install real thatching for the roof of the shade house.
     Or I could have a living, productive defense against the worst of the weather:  banana trees.   
     Banana trees aren't entirely immune to the problems of things that grow near the sea, but so far the worst damage I see to the banana trees we have already have growing close to the sea is some scalding that puts brown patches on the leaves.  I haven't noticed any decrease in fruit production.  
     So, the first line of defense will actually be two lines of defense:  one straight line of banana trees; and about fifteen feet away from these (and to the south) a second straight line of banana trees.  Each tree in the second line will be planted in the spaces between the trees in the first line.   Together, the two staggered lines will present sort of a wall between the Caribbean and vegetable plants.
     Bananas grow and clump up pretty quickly, but it'll be at least a year before we'll start a vegetable garden.   In the meantime we'll probably add a few more rows of banana trees so that we can plant vegetables between rows.  That way when the trees are grown they'll provide some shade from the worst of the overhead sun.
     Here's the process....

From a clump of banana trees choose a tree.

and separate that tree from the clump,

 Prop up any tree that decides to come along.

Plant the tree...

and admire your work.

Voila!  The first row of defense in place.

Coconut trees...new and old

     We've planted hundreds of coconut trees.   After the clearing began came additional coconut trees to join the ones 'uncovered' by the clearing.   Initially we had to buy these small trees to plant because at that point in time the coconuts on the trees at False Bluff disappeared before we could harvest them for food or for sprouting.
  

     We used the tallest trees we could purchase to line the avenida, or main roadway...the one that bisects the section that we cleared first.  The rest of the trees we planted in the way we hoped nature might have planted them.   We've lost some of these young trees to one thing or another and have replaced them as needed.   But even with planting replacements, we seem to keep on finding new places to put more coconut trees, like those near the palapa where the sea turtles come to lay and hatch.   And, of course, the trees have grown.

From upstairs, 2011

    From upstairs, 2013
     (definitely not the rainy season)

picture by Andre Shank