On the Move

I have some big news, but haven't been able to figure out how to share it! I decided today that it's time I just delve right in. If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask away. It may help me decide what subject to write about next. The news is... my family is on the move again. This time instead of it being across a state or across the country we're going to move to Nicaragua. It's a small country in Central America - north of Costa Rica and south of Honduras.


I guess the first logical question to such news would be, "Why?" Well, farming in the northern U.S. isn't easy. The growing season is short and the area we're in currently has horrible soil. It's expensive to raise animals when you have to buy hay from other farmers. In Nicaragua there is a year round growing season. Not only will we be able to grow plenty of food for our animals, but we'll be able to grow food for ourselves (a lifelong dream of ours). Still, you might ask, "Why not just move to California or another warmer state?" That one is easy. California is simply unaffordable (plus we're not fond of the laws down there). The U.S. is not a cheap place to live. It's hard for a family to be able to buy land and actually own it without a ton of debt hanging over them. The last thing we want is to be in debt. In Nicaragua the wages are terrible, but living off of U.S. wages in Nicaragua is ideal. Even if you were just an off site telemarketer you could live like a king/queen down there. As most of you know, Brad has off site computer work, so that will work perfectly with our plan.

Nicaragua is a poor country. You can easily find a 3 bedroom home for $300/month. The problem is, as I mentioned before, the wages are terrible. A doctor only makes about $100 a month, which can't even pay the rent in many areas. Extended family often live together to make ends meet. Petty thieves are everywhere.

The weather sounds wonderful. Whatever warm temperature you like, you can pick an area of Nicaragua that has that year round. Right now that sounds heavenly. The cold winds are already blowing and we've had multiple snow storms here. Farming can be difficult in such a cold climate. In the "spring", when Brad is out of town for work, and I have to get up and go milk goats in the freezing wind I sit there and wonder what we were thinking when we got into farming here of all places. I'm not kidding myself, I'm sure there will be problems in Nicaragua, too. They will be different ones from here, but there will be some. For example, instead of the cold winds when I go out to milk the goat, maybe I just won't find our goat at all. Maybe our neighbor will have stolen our goat the night before since they were hungry and wanted some milk. If that's the case, and we end up losing a bunch of livestock to thieves, we'll probably come back.

Our first trip down there will be a 4-6 month long one. Our goal will be to decide whether we truly like it enough to live there, to learn Spanish better, to figure out what area we would like to live in, to meet locals in that area, etc. It should be a wonderful learning experience no matter what our final decision is. We won't take more than a few suitcases for that first trip. After that, assuming we still want to live there, we'll ship over a container of our things.

Well, my children are asking for lunch now, so I had better sign off. I'll try to write more tomorrow about this venture. Remember, I love questions! :)

Oscar

Meet Oscar. Oscar the llama. He's our sheep guardian. He has been around our farm for going on two years now and I love him dearly. I had wanted a llama for years, so you could say he was one of my dreams come true. The problem with Oscar is he loves to take our sheep for long walks across the street to a greener buffet. This isn't just some dirt road you only see one car go down each day... no, it's pretty busy. Not by city standards, but by country standards. I would say at least 10-20 vehicles go by on an average hour. The reason our herd is able to cross this road is because there is one side of our property not fenced in. There are several reasons we haven't fenced it in:
1. We're renting here and our landlord says we'd have to leave the fence if we put it up (legally, he doesn't have a leg to stand on, but it's still a hassle we don't want to deal with).
2. Our landlord is trying to get someone to rent the property for grazing purposes even though the property was included in the contract we signed.
3. It would cost a LOT to buy all the posts and barbed wire.

Last year Oscar took the sheep for this walk across the street about once a day and then we'd have to drive over there and chase our herd back. This year it has been more like 2-3 times a week that we've found out livestock across the street, but that's still not good. We got a notice from the animal control saying that we're going to be fined $500 if our animals get caught on the road again! Apparently, even though we haven't actually caught our animals in the process of crossing, someone else has. So, we've decided that since we're not going to be putting a fence up and are unwilling to feed them hay all summer (it's just not worth the cost) we're going to sell Oscar and our herd of sheep. Whenever we have our own place (somewhere where we can grow our own hay) we'll get more sheep and probably another llama. We were planning on making a move like that this year, but it didn't work out. So... goodbye, Oscar.