On July 28, we, the horses, and the dogs spent the night at the farm, so the move was official. Our official day to start work was July 30 rather than August 1 because the farm runs on a Tuesday to Saturday work week rather than Monday to Friday. Because the farm is about an hour of bad roads from San Ignacio, it’s too far for the staff to commute, so they stay here four nights a week. That means that if they worked the traditional Monday to Friday work week, they would never be in town during traditional business and school hours. With the Tuesday to Saturday schedule, Monday is a day off when they can be in town to take care of business, and they don’t have to worry about missing work. We decided to move in the Sunday before starting the job so we’d have a few days to get settled, and be here and ready to go on Tuesday morning when the staff returned from their weekend.
“Move in” turned out to be a bit of an overstatement. Despite everybody’s best efforts, the house was nowhere close to done. Part of our mission with this job is to help the pine forest regenerate from the pine bark beetle outbreak in 2000/2001, and in the early summer fresh beetle outbreaks appeared on the property. 
Obviously, the first priority for the staff was to head out to fight the beetle, especially because the quicker it is contained, the less likely it is to spread uncontrollably. So, the house crew was reduced to a minimum, and we had to decide what really needed to be done. Having lived a no-frills lifestyle for the past six and a half years, Tom and I agreed that we needed a suitable place to keep the dogs, a place to sleep, a working stove and kitchen sink, and a toilet. And that’s what we got, basically. The guys worked to get a fence put off the back of the house for the dogs, and cut a dog door so the dogs could go in and out. We put a closeable door on “the dog room” so we could go out for the day and lock them in a safe space where they could go in and out at will. The bedroom hadn’t needed a whole lot of work to begin with, but since the whole house had been rewired, we had to have the lights, outlets, and switches put in the bedroom before moving in so nobody had to climb all over the bed to get them installed, and that got done. The guys moved my new stove from the coffee barn to the kitchen, and Tom connected it to the butane and made sure it worked. The sink was already in, and Tom stuck a couple of long planks under the ends so I had a little bit of counter space. We had purchased a small chest freezer from the previous general manager, and had put some food in it a week or so before we moved in, so even though we didn’t have a refrigerator, we had cold food and enough stuff that didn’t need to be refrigerated, and a way to cook it, so we weren’t going to starve.
Obviously, the first priority for the staff was to head out to fight the beetle, especially because the quicker it is contained, the less likely it is to spread uncontrollably. So, the house crew was reduced to a minimum, and we had to decide what really needed to be done. Having lived a no-frills lifestyle for the past six and a half years, Tom and I agreed that we needed a suitable place to keep the dogs, a place to sleep, a working stove and kitchen sink, and a toilet. And that’s what we got, basically. The guys worked to get a fence put off the back of the house for the dogs, and cut a dog door so the dogs could go in and out. We put a closeable door on “the dog room” so we could go out for the day and lock them in a safe space where they could go in and out at will. The bedroom hadn’t needed a whole lot of work to begin with, but since the whole house had been rewired, we had to have the lights, outlets, and switches put in the bedroom before moving in so nobody had to climb all over the bed to get them installed, and that got done. The guys moved my new stove from the coffee barn to the kitchen, and Tom connected it to the butane and made sure it worked. The sink was already in, and Tom stuck a couple of long planks under the ends so I had a little bit of counter space. We had purchased a small chest freezer from the previous general manager, and had put some food in it a week or so before we moved in, so even though we didn’t have a refrigerator, we had cold food and enough stuff that didn’t need to be refrigerated, and a way to cook it, so we weren’t going to starve.
The toilet turned out to be the only hitch. We decided that we didn’t need to worry about the shower because we could use the staff shower, complete with hot water, right next door. So, Tom and Dave had spent most of the week before we moved tiling and grouting, and they made sure the corner by the toilet was done. Tom put the toilet in the Friday before we moved, and made sure that everything was connected and it wasn’t leaking. He says he flushed it about 50 times to make sure it was working and not leaking, and I believe him. It took us about two and a half hours to ride the horses from the B&B to the farm, and although we had packed lunch, we found it easier to just keep going and not take a break. We got to the farm, untacked the horses and introduced them to their new home, G came out to welcome us, and I professed the desire to pee in my own toilet. So I did. And then I flushed, and it overflowed. Welcome home, to a pee flooded bathroom!
I called Tom and said I thought he had said that the toilet worked. He swore it worked two days before, and we stood and looked at it. When it gradually drained, we flushed it again, just to see what would happen. It flooded again, although at least this time the water was clean. We decided we had more to do than worry about the toilet, especially since the staff bathroom is close to the house, and went about unpacking, although Tom was fretting about the toilet and kept darting off to try different remedies such as making sure the vent was clear, digging up the drain pipe out of the house to make sure it hadn’t broken, and looking for a snake in the shop which, as it turned out, he fortunately didn’t find. We had a lot to do on Monday, so we didn’t do much more about the toilet, although after not solving the problem on Monday, Tom didn’t sleep for thinking about it Monday night, and was up well before 6AM on Tuesday with the mission of pulling the toilet up and reinstalling it from scratch. I was still in bed, and heard him working in the bathroom, but didn’t really think much of it when I heard him come out of the bathroom, shut the door, and start rustling around in the kitchen.
I finally got up a little after six, got dressed and went out to the staff bathroom, and came back in the house to make our breakfast. Tom told me he had something he wanted me to look at before I started breakfast, and led me into the bathroom, where the toilet was pulled away from the wall. It’s a rear-drain rather than a bottom-drain toilet, so the drain hole is out the back, and it was completely clogged by the front end of a very large and very bloated marine toad, with just its back half and legs sticking out.
And, it stunk. We both laughed, and I escaped to the kitchen to make breakfast while Tom used a pair of pliers to pry and yank the very dead toad out of the back of the toilet before reinstalling it. We spent a few tense days waiting for the toilet to clog again, knowing that the drain hole had been open for months, since the old bathroom was gutted and the old toilet removed, and not knowing what besides the giant marine toad had crawled into the hole. It has now been another month since the toilet has been installed, and we’re thinking at this point that anything that was down there has died and won’t be attempting to reappear in our toilet.
And, it stunk. We both laughed, and I escaped to the kitchen to make breakfast while Tom used a pair of pliers to pry and yank the very dead toad out of the back of the toilet before reinstalling it. We spent a few tense days waiting for the toilet to clog again, knowing that the drain hole had been open for months, since the old bathroom was gutted and the old toilet removed, and not knowing what besides the giant marine toad had crawled into the hole. It has now been another month since the toilet has been installed, and we’re thinking at this point that anything that was down there has died and won’t be attempting to reappear in our toilet.
In the past month, we have been slowly working on learning the job and finishing the house. Overall, things have been going smoothly, although the resurgence of the beetle has made the reality a bit different from our expectations; we feel like we set out on a peace keeping mission, and instead of talking, we landed in the middle of a skirmish and had to start fighting, although fortunately it’s not all out war at this point. This has meant that we’ve done less work on the house than we expected, but we can hardly whine and let the beetle get out of control, especially since at this point we have a fully functional bathroom and kitchen, and the bathroom is even pretty. We’ve also learned more about the beetle than we thought we’d know by now, and knowledge is always a good thing.
Besides getting a good start on the new job, we have been quite pleased, although not at all surprised, by how well Julio and Janeth are doing with the B&B. We picked the August 1 transition date in part because we thought that would give them an easy month with light bookings before their kids went back to school. Then we got a lot of bookings for August in July, so we ended up giving them something of a trial by fire, where they had almost two weeks of solid bookings, and almost every booking had some sort of quirk – dietary restrictions, special transfer needs, or last minute changes. They managed all of it extremely gracefully, and although Tom and I made a point of meeting all the guests and spending time with them at meals, they all told us that while we’re nice enough, they really enjoyed the authentic Belizean experience provided by Julio and Janeth, from Janeth’s real Belizean cooking to Julio’s stories of growing up in Guatemala and Belize, to spending time with the whole family. September might be a little more complicated because school starts and the two youngest sons are still in primary school in the village, but it’s also less busy with booked guests, at least so far, so they will get a little bit of a reprieve. It’s going well enough that Julio mentioned to us that they would be interested in continuing this arrangement on an ongoing basis, but at this point we want to take a few more months and then evaluate how things are going, not least because we want to make sure Julio and Janeth and their family still enjoy the work after going through a busy season.
We have lots of stories, comments, and rants, both from the past month of living here and from the past 10 months of getting ready for the move, but that’s about it for the background and overview of how we got where we are right now, and what we’re doing. I will try to keep the future posts shorter and more to the point!
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