Fixing up the country place

In 2012, about a year before the Cyprus bankers stole their depositors’ money, we decided to move cash out of our European bank account. We purchased a 5+ hectare chacra about ten kilometers inland. For what? That was to be seen. We chose to fix the little disaster of a house, going against everyone’s recommendation. You can see my various posts about the chacra here.

It has been unoccupied almost entirely since. A couple from Namibia stayed there in the summer of 2016, and a local guy and his family the summer a couple years ago. We spent New Year’s Eve 2017 there, only to be awakened at 5:30 AM by 35 dogs barking—boarded for summer holidays by the veterinarian next door (happily, she no longer has that business). We have thought about selling it, realized it needed a lot of work, and I started making lists….

Last few days, bathroom: replaced bath/shower faucet to get it working, replaced float mechanism to get toilet working, needed to remove sink faucet. Close to impossible, so I decided to remove the L-shaped counter with its two drawers. The flexible drain pipe broke as soon as I tried to move it, which was just as well since the counter construction made it impossible to remove except by detaching it from the wall, where it was glued (?!?) to the wall plumbing. I don’t recall how that happened. Anyway, got the whole thing home and took it apart this morning.

My god what a mess! 50+ screws, all kinds of little bits and pieces of wood cobbled together. Who was the idiot who designed and built this thing?

Of course you know the answer.

Encouraged by an American woodworker, I had bought a pocket hole jig from the US (now sold here a dozen years later, I notice) and decided it would be fun and creative to build cabinets for our country place! Well it wasn’t.

(Actually, the pocket holes are cool.)

So what now? Well, I see all kinds of bathroom furniture for sale online. Not particularly expensive, not particularly challenging. And at a certain point that appeals.

Blueberries! and more

Blueberries in Uruguay

In addition to fresh (harvested before your eyes) affordable organic produce, Saturdays in November include a chance to pick blueberries.

My haul of blueberries in Uruguay

In a half hour or so, I had three kilos (6.6 pounds). Cost? Just under US$2 per pound.

Neighbor cutting our field, Uruguay

Checking in our nearby chacra, I met a neighbor I don’t know cutting our field using the tractor of our immediate neighbor, who I gave access for his cows. I was expecting to borrow his tractor and do it myself, but seeing the grass, I realize it’s much to his cows’ benefit. What he’s cutting is some kind of nasty brushy weed that the cows ignore. The grass they will like.

Reminded me of the time I couldn’t fix the fence.

My Saturday in UY

We really appreciate the opportunity, every other week, to buy fresh-as-you-can-get-it organic produce at bargain prices. Here Ricardo has just harvested a variety of acelga (Swiss chard) for us. Acelga is arguably the vegetable in Uruguay — if you order ravioli or canelones con verduras in a restaurant the verduras will be acelga. You can get it year-round. It took us a year or two to realize this was our desirable spinach substitute, since spinach is only occasionally available. And needs much more washing.

So then off to our chacra nearby where the in-places knee-high grass needed cutting. A couple of wild ducks flew into our tajamar, but decided the noise of the lawn mower was offensive, and left. I had seen one on my previous trip. Other posts about the pond we created. It’s an interesting experiment in “letting nature do its thing.”

Then there was the twice-monthly (because “bimonthly” can mean either twice a month or every two month; thanks English language) Atlántida-area English-speakers’ get together. 23 people showed up. Many lively (and funny!) discussions. Nationalities included Uruguay, US, Canada, England, Holland, and Germany. On other occasions we’ve had South Africans, Argentines, and no doubt others I can’t think of right now.

And this Saturday Occupy Couch performance art.

The country kitchen, or lack thereof

I still haven't made the kitchen cabinets

June 2014: It’s been six months now that the kitchen of our little country place has looked like this. After building a few little pieces of cabinetry, I froze on the kitchen. First, it was bloody hot, and woodworking is not great fun when you’re sweating and sawdust sticks to you. Then the awful rains, and then … well, no real excuses.

The other day I had a breakthrough of sorts. I realized that I’d been trying to start with the largest, most critical component, which would maybe present no problems if I had experience. But I don’t. “Warming up” with the smaller, less critical pieces makes a lot more sense.

Update: it’s been 2-1/2 years now, and it still looks like this. I think maybe It’s not going to happen?

Tajamar

This was our “test” pond two years ago. We didn’t know if it would fill with water or not.

Indeed, it did. So this year we enlarged it. And no rain came. And it went to almost bone dry a few weeks ago. Fortunately, we had never put any fish in it.

To get a feel for the difference in size, note that the earlier version ends on the left partly past the front of the neighbor’s ugly barn.

Now to go near Tienda Inglesa, trim some willow branches, and try again to get trees started.

Going, going, gone

going-1

going-2

gone

I asked my neighbor Horacio if he wanted to work on our common fence, figuring he would be flush with cash from the sale of all these trees for firewood. Turns out he was paid in full for them six months ago. He was doing some repairs nonetheless.

The pond comes to life!

The pond has filled to its exit point, also its entrance. I don’t like that design. At some point I’ll get to work making a drain at the far end. But not today: after the temperature plunge of a couple days ago, and the flooding, the temperature has popped back up to 32/90° with oppressive humidity.

Our plan when we made the pond was to introduce plants to clear the water, then fish. That is, if it ever filled with water at all. The floating stuff on the right just appeared one day; turns out our neighbor planted it. Today brought another surprise, one which I don’t think has to do with him (but you never know!).

A gift from the alambreros

This is the strip of our land that borders the neighbor who advised me this would be good to fence off (hence the fence on the right) to provide passage to the back fields (the red arrow indicates the back end of our property). Unfortunately, he thus advised me after I had planted fruit trees (white arrows) which have been doing not at all well in any event, given fierce sun and winds. You may recall that I was not able to fence the back of this strip (which is now fenced).

I was out there to cut the grass in this strip, when I fortunately stopped brush-hogging with the lawnmower just short of this, in a tangle of grass in a corner near the simbra.

Though not very conspicuous in the photo, this pile of wire trimmings (here pulled from the tall grass) were inches away from being discovered by the lawnmower blade when I spotted it. My neighbor came out to say hello and complained that the alambreros always do that, but I was impressed it was all in one place, and not strewn everywhere.

What a difference a day makes…

…when that day includes a lot of rain. This first summer we’ll learn whether the tajamar will retain enough water to stock it with fish. Apparently after disturbing the soil to create the pond, the initial seepage of water through the (already almost impermeable) soil seals it further, so that subsequent water loss is almost entirely through evaporation.

The sitzbad

Bath I designed for our country house, Uruguay

Given a bathroom space that didn’t allow for a full-size bath tub, we recalled the sitz bad of my wife’s apartment in Frankfurt. I made a wood model of the seat, and the albeñil Martín went to town. No doubt this will end up as the single most expensive item of construction, but we’ve lived with a place to soak for almost seven years, and will install a solar hot water heater when I get around to buying one.

Of course, there’s always got to be a surprise, and in this case it comes through the semi-Medieval plumbing they do here. The draining water from the bath (this was its first test) goes into that little floor drain, then exits the house. Except that it doesn’t go into that little box; it floods into that little box, under considerable pressure, of course flooding the bathroom if you don’t slow it down. Not a show-stopper, and not unsolvable, and fortunately the floors consist of tile over concrete, so even if it were to flood the adjoining room it would simply be an inconvenience.