Farm Update: Things are Happening! (New Terrace Photo Shoot)

Things are finally moving once again up here on the mountain. Between @modprobe's mashup and all sorts of other life things, stuff kinda fell apart here. Progress stopped happening, gardens were barely being kept alive and much of them were dying. We got the birds but we were really just doing the bare minimum to keep them going as we struggled to keep up. The entire property was a disaster, as @modprobe, it was bad. Finally after like a month of hard work we're to a point were moving forward instead of catching up. This somewhat started with hiring and sadly firing our compadre, but we had another friend who was at least making an effort here and there when he could find the time.

The terrace shown in these photos was built by John as @pauliepro moved boulders on the other side of the property. A note on @pauliepro, while we were really disappointed by the perfomance of our local Mexican compadre we have been impressed by our expat friend and Steemian. He had a very public trip here to Acapulco, starting with the preparation of the well known Battle Bus. As he's adjusted to life here, he's made it up the mountain a few times to help, although I will say he's been a huge help especially this past time around.

So no, we aren't just insatiable slave drivers like our compadre insinuated. We actually encourage @pauliepro to nap in the hammock during the hot part of the day, especially this time of year. We just want someone who's interested in actually working, it doesn't have to be super hard but it does have to be somewhat efficient. And that's not hard to do!

Needless to say, John and I both have been more motivated to get things done and keep things moving around here as a result. John made this terrace which will be both a garden bed and an erosion stopper on this steep mountainside in an afternoon as @pauliepro moved a huge pile of boulders.

Most of our terraces are a mix between concrete rubble and local boulders, broken up by local people into manageble sizes. They use these boulders to build here as they sculpt this mountainous city by hand. We use them to build garden beds and the native bouders are easily two to three times as heavy as the concrete pieces of the same size. I am not kidding, these are boulders with extremely high quartz content so they're STUPID heavy.

Like that big square one there is too big for me to handle but I can carry a concrete piece bigger than that no issues.

Using the natural curvature of the hillside and the boulders unbroken up, he decides the best place to put terraces. This one is between two boulders.