These are un-edited pictures of the Ranch House-Finca Salma. A mini house built on 20 Hectares that is over budget and delayed.
The pictures are organized by category: Road, House, Ranch (shed etc) and Dog Family Views (that’s of course our dogs’ views on all matters including but not limited to food choices, truck rides, “foreign” dogs, face licks…
In order to gain access to our new lote of 20 hectares, we needed to build a road. This was a known issue for us but it was a complete surprise at the distance that it would take (~700m) and at the tremendous cost to construct it (both from raw land and then to prevent erosion by capping large parts of it with rock)—more on that later.
The “Paja” is native tussock grasses that grow in bunches and thrive at this altitude. “Grass páramo may consist of tall- and short- grass communities ("pajonales", "pastizales", or "prados") that include both herbaceous and woody vegetation, but they are dominated by tussock- or bunchgrasses. In the tall grass communities, with grass up to 1 m tall, Calamagrostis recta usually dominates on drier sites, while C. effusa dominates on moister. Short grass communities usually indicate grazing and burning pressures and are often dominated by species of Agrostis, Festuca, and Paspalum. “
http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/paramo_ecosystem/introduction.shtml
At the top of this pictures you can see where he has already leveled a 4m high hill. The road bends to the right.
Jovani is one of my 6 neighbors who are all new landowners receiving lots carved out of a 1000 hectare parcel called Contadero. Lot sizes vary from 50h to 5h.
Jovani’s FT employment is as a ranch hand at a large hacienda about 60km South of this location called Tambo and owned by the Chiriboga family (same family that owned all of Contadero).
It was amazing to me to see how quickly sensitive native grasses could be removed and the road created, revealing the deep black volcanic dirt that is highly fertile and productive for the locals, and it saddened me.
The horses here are drinking from a small sequia (channel carrying water) that runs West towards a barrio named San Jose. This is an “illegal” sequia becuase it’s used by a local from San Jose. Nobody cares about the legality of this—as most every local has small parcels, with ganagos (cattle) that need water.
Sunny, our rescued Belgian Shepard on the new road. She was only mildly interested in Jovani’s horses.
My newly created road begins where the neighbor’s original road ends (and we share their road from the main entrance to ours, but they don’t need access to mine).
The raining season begins in Oct/Nov and the road was built just before the rains began. This was the first part of the road that we created and continued behind me where I took this picture. The road is a total of ~700m. Looking downhill (West) is the original road created by the neighbors. Their part of the road was only cleared and leveled from the main entrance. My new friends were indifferent to the rainy season washing away the road and prohibiting passage via vehicle. Why? Because they either ride their horses, use moto-bikes or walk! Lots of walkers among the subsistence famers.
Great panic rushed over me when I realized that, a new road with fully exposed volcanic dirt, would become un-passable even for my Toyota. Never mind the large truck expected to haul all the needed material for building the house. At one point one of the brand new heavy duty AT tire sprung a leak due to the weight of the rocks. In future telling, these will be called “bolders”…
After a couple of sleepless nights, we bit the bullet and spent the additional funds on: 1. Leonardo’s heavy equipment to put down gravel, 2. paid dearly for that gravel at a local mine, 3. paid dearly for having to spread out and yet it was insufficient.
For the entire road, mine theirs everyone else’s, I solely would be responsible to “poner piedras”—creating cobble/stone road. Here is part of the crew#2 dropping rocks off my truck after crew#1 loaded them at the mine.
We spent $$ and hired 10 workers for 2 weeks to cobble stone the worst parts of the road (all of which were on the main/neighbors portion). At one point several of them had the gall to inquire as to why I didn’t ask them to help construct the common part of the road. I said: “Can you work today”-it was Tuesday. Raymondo said: “No, but maybe Friday”. I calmly rejected his generous offer.
Several lessons were learned: 1. roads are F expensive, 2. just a little bit a rain produces an enormous amount of mud when the soil is freshly exposed, 3. rocks are heavy and rough, 4. I’m a new neighbor and must be patient…
