Quinta Quijote

Last updated 6/22/08 Our Home & Blog Page

Septic System

The main yard is one manzana (1 3/4 acres) and we chose the septic spot as the lowest. place in the yard. Unfortunately, this was also a spot with lots of volcanic tuff. It's as hard as cement and the workers were none pleased to spend several months digging a hole to Roger's standards. Besides housing the plastic, roughly 200 gallon septic tank, this hole will serve to drain the entire yard during those heavy Winter rains.


Grey Water System

Every corral needs a water trough and we plan to supply ours with grey water. This little pond was built by our first set of local workers and they were mighty proud of their work. The ramp for small livestock, such as guinea fowl, was a big hit once the cement dried sufficiently for them to test it out. The pond leaks a little as the bottom isn't sealed but rests on volcanic tuff. The area stays green year round and will be ideal for a copper grounding rod for the electrical system.


North Fence Line

This was one of those must do, but not right now projects. The finca had stuff that passed for decent fencing, but the whole north side needed replacing before we could think about buying cattle. We finally fit it in at the end of 2007.




Lots of experience with neighbor's cattle and their fruitful efforts in getting at our pretty, green finca grasses made this a stout and sturdy fenceline. The posts along this stretch are tiguilote, chicarina and maderas and are set 30" deep to discourage leaning cows. The cows that rear up on their back legs and crash down on the fence are a different matter all together and it looks like we'll have to have yet another talk with neighbors. I never more fully understood the line 'good fences make for good neighbors' until I bought a finca!



Firing Range



Our finca's flat land surface has one big scar, a hole about 60 long, 25 wide and 30 deep. The previous land owner was looking for piedras canteras but found only good dirt in this area. From the size of the hole I imagine he used big machinery. We considered filling it in briefly then decided to turn it's depth to our advantage. A gun range was part of the original layout and this site seemed incredibly ideal, just far enough away from the main yard for noise control and by being underground, all danger of strays would be easily handled. Now it was just a matter of cleaning it up a bit.

 


Empty Toņa and Victoria beer cans, Nicaragua's local brews, make for good target practice and this is the last work that willl be done in the firing range for some time. There's many more important projects to work on first befoer we can begin our plans for the range, such as stairs, leveling out the bottom, and eventually a canopy for shade.

The trees we left standing around the range have a small, sweet, red fruit that the birds love. They taste a bit like strawberries and it would be nice to put up some protection from the avian menace. In three years of them bearing fruit, I've only had the opportunity to taste the fruit once!

Bridges



The road to Quinta Quijote crosses two rivers and this larger one definitely needed a bridge. Now there's not many real bridges in Nicaragua once you get off the beaten track and Roger was looking forward to making one of the few, his first attempt at that. Building our homestead in Central America has required quite a bit of on-the-job learning, and I can truly say that we know waaaay more stuff than we did before getting ourselves into this adventure!