The clouds come to my room

I have said goodbye to Hellshire and hello to Woodford. The landscape is very different; Hellshire was walking distance to the beach and Woodford is in the Blue Mountains. I liked Hellshire and the community very much but I have always felt much happier in the mountains than by the beach. Everything is green and blue everywhere I look and the clouds come and go, sometimes covering all around so I can't even see the mountain in front of me.

So, I live with a family of three; an older woman in her 80's, her niece on her husband's side, and the niece's daughter who is 14 and really enjoys throwing salt on slugs (I can't really blame her, it looks kinda cool when they shrivel up and fall off the wall). The house they live in is really amazing and the yard is full of plants like coffee, banana, mango, peach, pineapple, tomato, mint, scallion, ginger, garlic, gungu peas and there's probably some that I am missing. This is a farming community so I can see all these plants plus cho-cho, cocoa, coconut, guava... growing everywhere but I can't tell where someone's land starts or ends or if a tree had been planted by someone or if it's there on its own. A lot of people here have their farms on government owned land so I guess it's illegal for them to be there but it doesn't seem to be a big deal and some of them have had their farms for decades. I think that there are benefits that people get that own their land that they don't get but I don't really understand. The cost of coffee gets tricky, and seems to be very political , so I really try to stay away from that topic although I did have one farmer break it down for me and at some point it becomes impossible to make money off of coffee. Most of these farms are hillside farms so it's also really difficult to go up and down to take care of crops.

Yesterday and today my PCT neighbor, Alice, and I went to shadow farmers. We got to plant a few things but mostly we just talked with the farmers and got a lot of information. Having a small farm doesn't bring in very much money and most of them do several things, it seems most of them are carpenters.

I would post photos from that last 2 days but it takes too long with this internet so maybe some other time.
Leita!