👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 September 2026 – Family Matters

Posted September 20, 2026

Family has been the predominant theme at La Floresta this month, by far. As I've mentioned in the previous blog posts, my mother and Heydi's mother have both been in town, and thankfully they're still here. To add to the mix, my brother Sunny and his wife Jenny came for a visit as well. We don't just have one kid at home now—Tonantzin has had to make room on the family bed for our newest member, Dante. I'm impressed by how well she's taken it all. Luckily, we've also had an older volunteer, Agnes, who's been helping us tremendously with the huge increase in domestic tasks lately. She's almost become like a member of the family. All the support with the kids has allowed me to get the farm maintenance back on track, but there have been some other issues that have challenged my efficiency.

In many ways, our whole routines and ways of doing things have been completely altered these past couple of months. I guess that's inevitable when a newborn baby shows up, but having so many other family members around has switched lots of things up too. Still, that certainly beats facing this season alone. With family comes compromise, and keeping the harmony often means learning to adapt. For example, since Isabel's been here, I've been sleeping with my dad in the big room next door to our bedroom. It was the only setup that made sense.

We managed to get the downstairs bedroom finished and furnished right before Sunny and Jenny arrived. So they got to inaugurate the new container room and had a comfy setup while they were here. It had been almost three years since the last time Sunny came to visit, and the farm has changed a lot since then. He was impressed by how big all the trees and plants have become. Jenny had actually been here before too, back when we had scouted the property before buying it. She remembers this place as simply a cow pasture.

I was so excited they were here that I kept feeding them all the fruits and spices we have in season: safou (Dacryodes edulis), Amazonian grapes (Pourouma cecropiifolia), lemon-drop mangosteens (Garcinia intermedia), gin berries (Glycosmis pentaphylla), cacao pods (Theobroma cacao), allspice berries (Pimenta dioica), cardamom (Elettaria cardamomum), Sichuan peppers (Zanthoxylum bungeanum)—that last one got me in a bit of trouble. Those little peppers can be quite intense. The only fruit I was upset they missed was a big jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) that ripened right after they left.

Sunny and Jenny were only here for a week. Since this was an important vacation for them, we wanted to accommodate their desires and have some fun while at it. They really wanted to spend some time at the beach, so the whole family took a trip to Playa Ballena, where we spent a couple of nights. We have a secret little getaway spot there that's magnificent. You can literally throw a stone into the ocean from the balcony, and since it's an older house without A/C, it's actually quite affordable. Nothing beats having the pad just steps away from the beach. With a newborn baby, I don't think it would have worked out anywhere else.

Thankfully, Agnes was here to keep an eye on the farm while we were away. She even helped wash all my clothes while we were gone. Some volunteers really go above and beyond. Though vacationing with family was pleasant, coming back home was turbulent. I was a little sad that I wouldn't be seeing my brother again for who knows how long—he and Jenny left straight from the beach house. Maybe it's because of the alleged "El Niño" year, but the day we headed back home was suffocatingly hot. So much so that I came down with a fever and we all got colds. I think a bug has been going around, but the extreme heat certainly helped bring down our immune systems. Even though I felt like sh*t, I was more worried about the kids. We're all recovering now, nonetheless it slowed me down.

Besides our handyman Juan, who helps with weed whacking, the volunteers and I do everything else. That means that when I'm out of commission, not much is getting done. Agnes has been wonderful, but we've had her helping mainly with the vegetable beds and domestic tasks. She does know how to harvest some of the fruits, but there's still so much here that if I'm not doing the rounds, we're going to be losing harvests.

Maybe it's superstition, but I believe that trees get sad if we don't pick their fruits. I allowed myself to rest all of Sunday, but even though I wasn't 100%, I still went out on Monday to check out the trees. What did I harvest after just four days away? Another huge jackfruit, several cacao pods, large bunches of Amazonian grapes, our first-ever java plums (Syzygium cumini), rambutans (Nephelium lappaceum), cas (Psidium friedrichsthalianum), and custard apples (anonna mucosa).

We're getting to the point where something's always giving, and if we look away too long, we may miss the bounty. We're juggling lots of things at La Floresta currently, so I can't express enough how grateful we are to have received so much support lately. We're looking ahead to the end of the month, though, when Isabel and Agnes are both leaving. I'm trying to find another volunteer to fill in the gap they'll leave behind— that's gonna be tough.