The Adventures of Familia Bajaboy

 We have been pretty consistent with our daily workouts.  Most days we hike, run, or mountain bike.  And now, most afternoons we boogie board and get in some swimming, too.  Today we drove out to the mostly abandoned fishing village of San Roque for our hike.  The loop starts with a climb of about a mile before the trail heads west to a small house used by the vigilancia.  Our town has two fishing cooperatives.   Each one has people who patrol the coast looking for potential poachers and to keep an eye on their fishing grounds.   There are fishing cooperatives up and down the coast of Baja and Baja Sur.   It’s reassuring knowing someone is around especially when in the middle of nowhere.   If you come across one of the vigilancia, I recommend saying hola and maybe offering up something cold to drink.   I have been rewarded more than once over the years with a bit of kindness. Once at the house, the trail loops back to the village.   The coast here is so beautiful and reminds me a l

In the 14+ years of owning our casa, we have longed to have a thriving garden.  We have had mixed success, though, primarily due to inconsistent watering and harsh, windy weather.  Now that we live here full time, we are up the challenge. Good dirt is really difficult to come by and is definitely one of our biggest challenges here.    In order to get decent dirt, we drive out to the desert and up an arroyo looking for a mesquite tree.   Normally, the dirt underneath has nutrients although the dirt can still be sandy or full of clay.   We bring the dirt back and place it in our “dirt” planter.   We mix in seaweed, pieces of torn up paper, compost, spent grains and hops, and worm tea from our worm composter.   We water and mix up the dirt a few times per week.   Trust me, this is very time consuming but so far is paying off. This morning, I planted some seedlings into one of our new planters.     We have a variety of tomatoes, orange butternut squash, and lemon drop melons.   We also

 

  Wednesday, July 14, 2021 Before I start, I wanted to address the reason I have not posted the past two Mondays. The reason is that there was not much interest. I have found that as things have slowed down, it would be smarter to write when things of interest occur and that is what I will do. Monday, July 5, 2021 We had invited some of our friends over and we gave them some of our beer. We thought that our beer was average, nothing to get excited about. But everyone seemed to like it a lot. Later some of our neighbors came by and also really liked it. We were not sure what the reaction to our artisanal beer would be but it was a good sign that it was well received. Thursday, July 8, 2021 My father and I woke up early that morning as we were heading back to the states. We were recently informed that our new license plates had arrived and we decided that my father and I would head down. We decided to get a hotel in Ensenada that my parents had stayed at in the past. After a quick

Today Zeus and I ran the trails behind our house.  Thought I'd share a few videos of my favorite spots. EVERYTIME we run the trails back to the house, Zeus stops to take in the natural air conditioning at this spot.  It cracks me up because I always sing the opening song to Lion King because he reminds me of Mufasa on Pride Rock.   (" Nants ingonyama bagithi baba  Sithi uhm ingonyama"- Circle of Life.   Who knew these were the lyrics?  Mine are just a tad bit different!) Zeus will NOT continue on until we run past him a bit, then say something to him. like. "Good job, Zeus!".  It's always like he's looking for a little validation from us!  

We are nearing three weeks of living in Baja.  I can honestly say I haven’t been this relaxed in a very long time.  I’m sleeping better than I’ve slept in well over a year. We still manage to be very routined.   We are going to bed earlier here and waking up earlier (Zac consistently gets up early, I'm hit or miss!).  I like to slowly rise, have my cup of tea, and start the day by practicing my Spanish on Drops and Duolingo.  (Gabriel and I have gotten very competitive using both apps.  For Drops I am on a streak of 470 days, and for Duolingo I have 375 days in.  How many do you have Gabriel? :)  Afterwards we tend to do some sort of exercise - either hike, run, or bike.  Then we return for a nice brunch, prepared daily by Zac.  Lately this after-brunch time consists of yard work, housework, or any combination of the two.  I find that I clean the house much more regularly here- mostly due to the amount of sand/dirt in the air.  But I am proud of myself for keeping things clean and

We recently went to one of our favorite little markets in town, Escondido.   They have a great selection of meat so we decided to pick up some hamburger on a friend’s suggestion.   The young man went back to a freezer and pulled out some cardboard patties.   We were dumbfounded.                 We reached out to our friend to confirm we were at the correct market.   She said yes but the meat we wanted is called carne molido.   We  went back and this time asked for a kilo of carne molido.   The young man pulled out some lean meat and threw it into a meat grinder.   The meat came out very fine and had no fat.   It definitely was not what I was expecting.  It also did not have the expensive price tag of a US meat market.                 After a few days of contemplation, I came up with a game plan for the meat.   I cut up an Italian sausage to add some fat to the meat.   I also added bread crumbs along with my standard seasonings.    The meat now had a consistency a bit closer to wh