City Born Girl in Panama Country Life

  Panama Farm Life February 16, 2025 Ting ting....ting ting.  A lazy morning interrupted at dawn...well, barely dawn.  Marta strumms the metal bars of the doggie gate to our bedroom.  Normally she just jumps over this barrier when she wants to change scenery.  This morning the bedroom door is also closed.  She has learned well from Codi. My feet contemplate the cold tile floor.  Ding!  WhatsApp calling.  Amanda and Carlos have left Pilar's diaper bag behind and the three of them are now somewhere up the cleft of the continental divide to assist with a clinic for the animals of a remote indigenous village.  Could I bring the bag to them?  I tell Gary his pancake breakfast is on hold. 45 minutes of driving and I am lost.  No cell signal and the last pin location sent by Amanda renders no one at the site.  The last time I was in this beautiful area of the Boquete valley was the first year I was in Panama. With a focus on the ...

  "Order what you want, eat what you get."  These are eight perfect words for life in Panama.  Heck!  Great words for what is happening around the world at the moment!     Thanks to Caryn and her recent visit with her spouse, my cousin Ron, I now have a great 'ism'.  A saying.  Sage advice to mess around with.  Her stories about  global travels in leadership training and management consulting yielded this gem.  She was told this at a restaurant while dining with her client in Thailand. This, after she was served something other than what she thought she ordered. Lately, our orders yield something close to what we end up getting. But, 'close' by what measure? Orders not in a restaurant sense but working with our Panamanian service providers.   A commitment to begin work on a Tuesday typically yields someone showing up on a Thursday.  Or the following week on a Tuesday. Sunday night. My phone dings.  I tense a...

 Codi is out.  His morning routine is underway.  Barking at the farm workers that pass by our gate on their way to the bus stop is an important job.  This oddly comforts me rather than annoying.  I seek anything familiar and routine in this, a chaotic and devastating, start to 2025. The normal routines of the farm go forward as if nothing else in the world impinges.  The horses clang their feed buckets as the sky yields pinks and corals heralding the sun.  The nocturnal sounds recede as the morning birds fill the air with their song.  I take comfort.  I need comfort.  Los Angeles, my childhood stomping grounds, is burning to the ground. This new year began with family visits.  Cousins on both my mom's and dad's side have finally come to see what our Panama farm life is all about.  There will be a constant flow of family through the next few months.  I am my mother's daughter... I delight in this company and the ability to ...

  Scratchy, scratchy, scratchy....  Nope.  This early morning, 5:10a to be exact, it wasn't Codi.  The new early morning signal comes from Lilly inside her crate and telling me she has to go pee... and NOW!  I whisk her outside on the terrace and put her on her pee pad.  Success!  She knows the reward is to burrow under our bed covers and snooze for about another hour before Codi taps at the door and the farm wakes up. We have just returned from a family cruise in the Caribbean and relished every moment of sleeping in without twitchy paws or herky jerky rudely awakening us.  But then, we did miss the pack toward the end and could not wait to return home.  My hope was all would be in order, nobody died and the dogs remembered us!  Yes, check, check and check.  Except my favorite plastic coffee measuring spoon disappeared and I suspect it is another victim of Lilly's  mandible munchies. The day beckons and my list of chores is to...

  Eye of newt, toe of frog... no, scratch that.  Head of bat and kidney of rat. Our farm cats are fierce hunters.  Almost daily we find pieces of...things... and that starts a game between Gary and I.  What is THAT?  And what animal did it come from?  Gary's veterinary and research career makes the ID fairly easy.  My ability to ID, not so sharp. The last week or so has been a real challenge living on the side of this mountain. The forecasted deluge came in fast and furious.  Locally, foot bridges have been swept away, sections of the roads have washed down the slopes, trees have fallen across power lines and brought them down, homes have flooded and the coffee beans are drowning on the trees.   Damage and hardships are felt all through Panama. Pieces are missing from the main highway along the route from Panama City to the west side, where we live, and on through to Costa Rica.  This rain event is something very unusual especially ...

  There is living on a farm.  And then there is living on a farm in the tropics.  In Panama. Retirement has many definitions to those who chose to define their later years rather than just go with the flow.  My definitions of  living an easy, laid back, bucolic retirement on a farm in the tropics of Panama have not necessarily matched with my expectations of achieving same.  Expectations smashed by reality.  An atom smasher type of smash. Total obliteration. A few days back, the custom designed hay elevator decided to break.  Yes, exactly when the 180 bales of hay were delivered. The hay was stacked in the car port area of the barn instead of riding the conveyor belt up to the specially designed hay loft.   The metal axle supporting the golf cart tire driven by the motor that made the conveyor belt rotate just...broke. Our very crafty Rube Goldberg hay elevator design had failed. On a Friday, repairs would not be possible until the speci...