Our Baja Adventure
Submitted by adambehar on Thu, 06/04/2009 - 05:17.
By: Barbara Thornburg
Our Mexico adventure started three years ago. A friend mentioned a charming bed-and-breakfast in Baja California, in the middle of Mexico’s wine region, El Valle de Guadalupe. My husband and I have an ongoing love affair with Mexico and have traversed the country from the Yucatan to the Sea of Cortez. We are always ready to discover some new treasure in this amazing land. We set off one brilliant spring day in 2006 for a get-away weekend. Sprinting past the TJ border we headed down the sinuous quota highway where steep desert cliffs meet the azure sea. Ranchera music blasting, we sang to each other—loud and off key—feeling suddenly free from the stresses and obligations of our L.A. life. Nine months later we owned an 8-acre property with 300 citrus trees.
Our Rancho La Mariposa—Butterfly Ranch—is a short stroll down the unpaved road from the La Villa del Valle inn where we first stayed, owners Eileen and Phil Gregory now our closest valley neighbors and friends.
So many adventures have ensued since that first fateful weekend when we decided to take—like so many others—the Baja plunge. Already there are memories to look back on and laugh at—like the wire transfer we sent to purchase the land. The transfer got lost. We had to wire another payment—not so funny at the time, as I recall. Then, a month later—un milagro!—the money turned up in our Mexican bank where it had been all along. Then we discovered that the well on the property didn’t function; in fact, wasn’t exactly legal. That’s when Toby with his pipa (a truck that brings water to your pila, an above ground cistern) started making weekly, and later, almost daily pilgrimages. All of the irrigation hoses were broken, and there was no electricity to run the pumps. The leaves on the neglected trees were brittle and falling, in immediate need of water, fertilizer and a good pruning. With the dog days of summer fast approaching, we feared the beautiful orchard we had fallen in love with might die.
We hired a crew to water the 300 trees by hand. Over the next few months, we transplanted 50 more citrus to replace those trees that had indeed succumbed, as well as 20 gnarled olive trees for an allée I’d always dreamed of having. Our water bills soared to $1,200 a month. I felt like we were serving Perrier to the trees. The citrus had become like so many children to fret over. Still living in Los Angeles, I thought about them constantly—prayed for rain, and lived in angst that they were being properly taken care of. We needed water pronto. But as anyone who has lived or traveled in Mexico knows, time is a liquid thing. Pronto is not always, well, pronto. We secured water rights (4 months), applied for permiso from the water board to drill a well (8 months), then had a brujo (diviner) pick a propitious spot. At $100 a foot for drilling—much of it in solid rock—my engineer husband wanted a bit more science. We had a geologic study of the land done to find the best place for a well. It wasn’t the same as the brujo’s.
I worried. We drilled one well. Not enough water. Ka-ching: we drilled another—closer to the brujos’s mark. The two wells, combined, gave us what we needed. We waited another two months for the pump parts that would make the wells actually produce water; then Andy, frustrated, bought parts and fashioned his own device. We installed it this March. Total project time: 18 months.
Last year, I took four days off from my job as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, to make blood-orange marmalade at my friend’s B & B. Eileen and I, along with her kitchen staff, spent an entire day cutting, seeding and bagging over a hundred pounds of citrus. My hands smelled like two ripe oranges for a week. Our efforts were deemed a success when a guest at breakfast asked, “Is it for sale?”
I have Walter Mitty fantasies of becoming La Marmelada Queen of the Valley. There’s still so much to do. Andy is slowly transforming the small open pavilion, where the former owner used to barbecue with his family, into our two-bedroom casita. He
extended the concrete slab floor and enclosed the small structure with spiffy new red doors and windows. He still needs to build a chimney, put on a roof, install the bathrooms and kitchen cabinets—then there’s the electrical, plumbing and air
conditioning.
It’s definitely a work-in- progress. Brando, our young Mexican neighbor who now tends our orchard, fashioned us a bed from manufactured wood boards. Topped with an air mattress and a sleeping bag with three Virgin of Guadalupe candles on the headboard, it’s where we bed down most weekends now. Andy has fixed up a shower and toilet in the small shed that houses our tools nearby, and I have a refrigerator and microwave. Still no sink with water to wash the dishes or a stove, but then we do have a wine cooler full of amazing Mexican wines from the Valley, and there’s always the barbecue for cooking. Under the ink-jet sky blanketed with stars, sipping Phil Gregory’s own tempranillo wine, it doesn’t seem to matter.
I bought Andy a telescope for Christmas and now he’s talking about turning our pila into a small planetarium—a mini-Mt. Palomar with a church facade. God only knows when that will happen. Our Los Angeles friends keep asking when our Mexican casita will be finished so they can visit. We’re still working full time, so we smile and say, “soon, very soon,” then laugh quietly to ourselves. Just like the Mexicans, time for us has come to be a fluid thing.
Submitted by adambehar on Thu, 06/04/2009 - 05:17.
By: Barbara Thornburg
Our Mexico adventure started three years ago. A friend mentioned a charming bed-and-breakfast in Baja California, in the middle of Mexico’s wine region, El Valle de Guadalupe. My husband and I have an ongoing love affair with Mexico and have traversed the country from the Yucatan to the Sea of Cortez. We are always ready to discover some new treasure in this amazing land. We set off one brilliant spring day in 2006 for a get-away weekend. Sprinting past the TJ border we headed down the sinuous quota highway where steep desert cliffs meet the azure sea. Ranchera music blasting, we sang to each other—loud and off key—feeling suddenly free from the stresses and obligations of our L.A. life. Nine months later we owned an 8-acre property with 300 citrus trees.
Our Rancho La Mariposa—Butterfly Ranch—is a short stroll down the unpaved road from the La Villa del Valle inn where we first stayed, owners Eileen and Phil Gregory now our closest valley neighbors and friends.
So many adventures have ensued since that first fateful weekend when we decided to take—like so many others—the Baja plunge. Already there are memories to look back on and laugh at—like the wire transfer we sent to purchase the land. The transfer got lost. We had to wire another payment—not so funny at the time, as I recall. Then, a month later—un milagro!—the money turned up in our Mexican bank where it had been all along. Then we discovered that the well on the property didn’t function; in fact, wasn’t exactly legal. That’s when Toby with his pipa (a truck that brings water to your pila, an above ground cistern) started making weekly, and later, almost daily pilgrimages. All of the irrigation hoses were broken, and there was no electricity to run the pumps. The leaves on the neglected trees were brittle and falling, in immediate need of water, fertilizer and a good pruning. With the dog days of summer fast approaching, we feared the beautiful orchard we had fallen in love with might die.
We hired a crew to water the 300 trees by hand. Over the next few months, we transplanted 50 more citrus to replace those trees that had indeed succumbed, as well as 20 gnarled olive trees for an allée I’d always dreamed of having. Our water bills soared to $1,200 a month. I felt like we were serving Perrier to the trees. The citrus had become like so many children to fret over. Still living in Los Angeles, I thought about them constantly—prayed for rain, and lived in angst that they were being properly taken care of. We needed water pronto. But as anyone who has lived or traveled in Mexico knows, time is a liquid thing. Pronto is not always, well, pronto. We secured water rights (4 months), applied for permiso from the water board to drill a well (8 months), then had a brujo (diviner) pick a propitious spot. At $100 a foot for drilling—much of it in solid rock—my engineer husband wanted a bit more science. We had a geologic study of the land done to find the best place for a well. It wasn’t the same as the brujo’s.
I worried. We drilled one well. Not enough water. Ka-ching: we drilled another—closer to the brujos’s mark. The two wells, combined, gave us what we needed. We waited another two months for the pump parts that would make the wells actually produce water; then Andy, frustrated, bought parts and fashioned his own device. We installed it this March. Total project time: 18 months.
Last year, I took four days off from my job as a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, to make blood-orange marmalade at my friend’s B & B. Eileen and I, along with her kitchen staff, spent an entire day cutting, seeding and bagging over a hundred pounds of citrus. My hands smelled like two ripe oranges for a week. Our efforts were deemed a success when a guest at breakfast asked, “Is it for sale?”
I have Walter Mitty fantasies of becoming La Marmelada Queen of the Valley. There’s still so much to do. Andy is slowly transforming the small open pavilion, where the former owner used to barbecue with his family, into our two-bedroom casita. He
extended the concrete slab floor and enclosed the small structure with spiffy new red doors and windows. He still needs to build a chimney, put on a roof, install the bathrooms and kitchen cabinets—then there’s the electrical, plumbing and air
conditioning.
It’s definitely a work-in- progress. Brando, our young Mexican neighbor who now tends our orchard, fashioned us a bed from manufactured wood boards. Topped with an air mattress and a sleeping bag with three Virgin of Guadalupe candles on the headboard, it’s where we bed down most weekends now. Andy has fixed up a shower and toilet in the small shed that houses our tools nearby, and I have a refrigerator and microwave. Still no sink with water to wash the dishes or a stove, but then we do have a wine cooler full of amazing Mexican wines from the Valley, and there’s always the barbecue for cooking. Under the ink-jet sky blanketed with stars, sipping Phil Gregory’s own tempranillo wine, it doesn’t seem to matter.
I bought Andy a telescope for Christmas and now he’s talking about turning our pila into a small planetarium—a mini-Mt. Palomar with a church facade. God only knows when that will happen. Our Los Angeles friends keep asking when our Mexican casita will be finished so they can visit. We’re still working full time, so we smile and say, “soon, very soon,” then laugh quietly to ourselves. Just like the Mexicans, time for us has come to be a fluid thing.