Yungilla

So, the latest news from us is that we bought a little piece of land about an hour out of town from Cuenca in an area called Yungilla. Since the elevation is much lower, the weather is actually quite a bit warmer than it is in Cuenca, and it's a popular place for people from Cuenca to have vacation houses. The property that we bought is about 8.5 hectares or 20 acres, which is pretty big for us of course but we got it relatively cheap because it is so far out of Cuenca and because only about 1/3 is flat, another third is inclined but useful, and the other third is basically mountain and not so useful.

The property also has water rights from two different reservoirs, which is a good thing in the long term but a bad thing for us in the short term. The good news is that one really does need to have irrigation for all your cows and crops and whatnot, but the bad news is that we have to pay someone to take care of it because the water currently is fed to the property through a series of channels or irrigation ditches, which is a great system for cattle but it requires quite a bit of maintenance, and we learned the hard way that if one of those ditches gets clogged, the water can accumulate and cause a landslide. We are going to have a reservoir dug and a system of sprinklers installed as soon as we are able, which will distribute the irrigation water evenly around the property. We also plan to plant coffee and bananas just for fun!

Nice view, eh?

Lots of space for cows! The cows are not there anymore since they belong to the family that sold us the land (it was a cows-not-included contract).

Lots of space for raising livestock and youngins.

There is an ancient little house made of adobe, but aside from that there isn't anything there yet except for the cows and the trees.

Mooooo!

This little creek marks the border of our property at the lower end.

I took this photo standing in the creek bed looking up.

Jason and Gabe, on patrol!

Nelly posing in front of her new hacienda!