More on Daily Life in an Indonesian Village

We’re deep in the dry season and the weather has been clear and cool lately. Last night it was 64 degrees F, and even now at 7:30 in the morning it’s only 68. As usual during the dry season, water is at a premium, but it’s something that you get used to here in Sumbawa.

Despite the lack of rain and water, we have some crops growing: our cauliflower in the back is doing well as is some green, leafy vegetable that tastes like spinach. We also have hundreds of tomatoes, which are doing well, and dozens of cucumbers that we have already started eating. Five of the banana trees and five of the papaya trees are bearing fruit. It’s not mango season yet, but it will be soon.

We continue to have baby animals arriving here on the farm. Six baby ducks hatched last week – two mysteriously disappeared, so we have four left. We had to use one of our hens to hatch the duck eggs because the mother duck destroys her eggs after she lays them – we don’t know why she does this, but she always does. So, this time we placed her eggs with one of the chickens who sat on the eggs until they hatched. They follow her around (was it Lorenz who did that experiment with the baby ducks?) like she is their mother which she is in a way. She in turn protects them, but our two geese have entered the picture. They have adopted the baby ducks for some reason – they don’t adopt the baby chicks so somehow they sense some affinity with the ducklings. Having the geese protect them gives the ducklings a lot of security because all of the other animals are afraid of them including Dave the dog. Whenever Dave or the puppies get close to the ducklings, the geese attack. It’s quite humorous to watch.

On other local events:

Little League baseball started again yesterday. This will be my last time coaching a team after 30 years or so of doing this. Hmm…a part of retirement that I won’t particularly enjoy. We lost 19 -15. Not too bad. We had two innings of sloppy fielding, but otherwise did well. Anyway, it was fun to be out there.

Four more weeks until vacation and a chance to see my eldest daughter in Bali.