THE BEAUTY AT FALSE BLUFF WITH CAYMAN ROCA ON THE HORIZON
CASHEWS GROW ON APPLES
At False Bluff we have both yellow and red cashew apples.
Who knew that in some places in the world the nut, the seed, is less important than the fruit it grows on...not in, but on. It's that thing on the bottom.
And there's only one seed per apple, which explains why cashews are so expensive when you can't grow your own.
Yellow cashew apple
Red cashew apple
A PLAN, RIGHT FROM THE START
A canal for easy and safe access. Clearing brush and planting stuff to replace it. And planting with an end result in mind.
The end result will be some sort of tourism, sharing this incredibly beautiful quiet place with others.
So a large number of the first coconut trees were planted to form a pathway running north and south to our boundaries in those directions. Our east and west boundaries are water...the Caribbean to the east and the lagoon to the north...easy.
Coconut trees are spaced at about 15' apart on both sides of a pathway wide enough to eventually accommodate a golf cart or something of a similar size.
THE FIRST PATHWAY
New
The swamp lily, with huge onion-like tubers, is one of very few ornamental plants that can withstand the really tough Caribbean weather; and it can grow right up to the water's edge. The flower is beautiful... ethereal without being frail; and the things bloom off and on all year long. We use this plant a lot.
Shame to see one of the close by large trees come down and block the canal.
The front yard has grown in and is really looking nice. Yes, the grass is as plush and soft as it looks.
LUMBER THIEVES
A couple of times, coming into the canal from the lagoon, heading for the beach, we've come across very clear signs that people have used our canal for the wrong reason: easy access to wood, lumber, building materials.
To date we've not had anybody arrested. A couple of diligent days (and nights) have interrupted the work and kept the people from coming back. When you listen for it, when you're on alert, you can hear a chain saw even from nearly a half-mile away.
Wood and ferrous metal do not last long on the Miskito Coast. Time to replace some posts and retighten the wire.
FROM THE CANAL TO THE LAGOON
Even before we began to clear and plant at False Bluff we decided to have a canal dug from Smokey Lane Lagoon all the way up to a landing place close to the Caribbean.
We had made our first trips out to False Bluff by way of the Caribbean...and some of the trips were not pleasant. Thus, hiring a crew to hand dig a half mile canal through a mangrove swamp was a no brainer.
Now we come and go with ease and safety. Many others do the same because we have opened the canal to the public from sunrise to sunset. People use the canal who had spend decades, hauling stuff from town and slogging through the swamp on foot rather than risking a boat trip loaded with supplies.
And some now take family members out - very young or very old family members who had never made the trip before because renting a boat and making the trip via the Caribbean was too expensive, or because carrying supplies through the swamp was just too much.
At the end of a visit, be the visit hours or days long, travelers move by boat through a leafy tunnel and out into the sunny lagoon.
TRASH. LOTS AND LOTS OF TRASH
Pumice isn't the only thing that washes up on our beach, by far. Almost nobody lives along our section of Nicaragua's Caribbean coast and so thrash has floated in for decades...most of it overboard from some passing boat since the closest land-side civilization to us is 40 miles away.
Cleaning up the beach was something that started as soon as we began clearing. Keeping it clean continues on an almost daily basis as more stuff comes in on every tide. Initially a huge amount of all kinds of trash ended up in big deep holes...and was burned. The holes aren't so big any more.
The pictures below shows trash at False Bluff at its worst. This trash is long gone.
A SPECIAL KIND OF ZOYSIA
So - after clearing, and after beginning to plant coconut trees, the shrubby undergrowth kept coming back…fast. A lot of time was spent chopping the damned stuff down....a lot of time we considered wasted, since there was so much other stuff to do.
I remembered having seen a very thick grass that grows on at least one of Nicaragua’s islands. The stuff seemed to inhibit unwanted growth...where the grass grew, undergrowth didn't. The grass would be a beautiful solution to both the brush and the work problem.
Bright green, tough, and beautiful but nowhere near False Bluff. But I found a small patch in the front yard of a school in Bluefields, only eight miles away from our place - a whole lot closer than the island. And what was in the school yard had followed cracks down the retaining wall into cracks in the sidewalk…a public area. I figured the bit of grass in the public right of way was free for the taking. And so I did…
But the amount I considered free for the taking, truly was a ‘bit’ of grass. I harvested enough to have made two footballs. Then I separated that into tiny pieces and planted each small piece in a box. Rather than two footballs I had two small boxes.
Once the boxed pieces had established themselves, I removed and planted each (still tiny…we’re talking just a few weeks here) on the leeward side at the base of coconut trees, old and young. The grass has an affinity for coconut trees, massing at their bases; and the leeward position gave protection from the ever blowing breeze/wind off the sea while the grass took hold. This is how it began, one or two small plugs at a time.
A young tree gets one
(The stuff on the right side is a weed grass)
The grass grows in an interesting starburst pattern, one section extending from one tree, reaching out to knit itself with a section at the base of another tree. (I’d never seen it at its beginning.) As each section stabilized, we cut 4” plugs out of the more well developed turf and transplanted these plugs at the base of our increasing coconut tree plantation.
And 'knit' really does describe what the stuff does. It forms a tough mat, similar to a scrubbing pad, but it's comfortable to walk on, even barefoot. Also it turns out the fire ants hate it, so that’s one pest gone; and snakes don’t like it, so that’s another pest gone. Neither the ants nor the snakes can navigate through it - they have to travel over it….something they don’t do.
WHERE IT IS NOW
Incredible stuff.....
We have a sizeable piece of property on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. When we first ventured there, there were old coconut trees and some sea grape plants…but mostly there was scrub so thick that moving into it was like stepping into an oven…it blocked every sea breeze. And it was scratchy.
We concentrated on clearing and planting the northernmost section, something done with machetes…and very labor intensive. Initially we planted only coconut trees. At first we bought young trees in Bluefields, eight miles away. But as we cleared around mature trees that were already there, those trees dropped coconuts into spaces we had cleared. And the cleared areas allowed those big seeds - coconuts - to germinate and grow.
So we began transplanting home-grown babies instead of buying plants somewhere else. And then we set the un-sprouted coconuts in areas conducive to sprouting, supplying ourselves with a seemingly endless supply of baby trees, which we then planted.
And then those baby trees grew big enough to drop more coconuts and on and on it went…on and on it still goes.
Something seldom seen out on the Bluff is a nest of sea turtles hatching. The Bluff is a beautiful, but harsh environment and very few people live out there. The people that do live on the Bluff are sometimes seasonal farmers but some may set up camp to walk the beach in search of "treasure". A beached turtle is easy prey and money. Most nests are easily located and the eggs are dug up and sold at the market. This is life on the Miskito Coast.
We occasionally hear rumors of a nest hatching nearby and we have found old turtle egg shells left over from hatches when out walking. A couple weeks ago we were sent a video of a turtle hatch that occurred at False Bluff. Windy night time video, it is what it is and not much more details than that. Hopefully a good sign though!
When the farms were cleared, some Sea Grapes were selectively left to grow. The farms had very dense vegetation and there were not a lot of large trees out there except for some old Coconuts.
Since the clearing and the removal of the smaller vegetation the selected Sea Grapes have been able to grow better and have become noticeably larger.
Just a quick update. Pandemic is still going on. Now its the delta variant. Looking like this might be endemic. Been to long since we have been able to travel. Looks like a trip will be made very soon. Lots of stuff to get done. The farms are being well cared for and look great.
During a recent conversation someone asked how much it rains on the east coast of Nicaragua? We talked about the difference between the rainy season (a whole lot of rain) and the dry season (still some rain). I was informed some smart people had actually calculated the weight of a cloud. So I had to check that out.
Link - Cloud Weight
