"Getting to know your new neighbors on the farm is like herding sheep. It may be a bit woolly at first, but once ewe get the hang of it, it's a real pasture time!"

I asked Stable Diffusion to generate an image of neighbors shaking hands with farm tools and it gave me this. I think artists jobs are safe for now.

Our journey has been a bit crazy at times, and full of a lot of "well, let's see how this goes" and for the most part it's turned out pretty well. One of those cases was when the first neighbor we met introduced us to the next in our quest to find a reliable source of bulk water for the sink and showers.

Most water wells on St Croix seem to be used as gray water use and not for drinking. It's some combination of some wells being salty (brackish), and some other mineral and contamination issues. We haven't done a water quality test, and I suspect there are some bacterial contaminates in some of the wells given the state of the well head and cover. An interesting series of articles from 2019 (which predates the refinery likely being permanently closed and the subsequent loss of perhaps 10k people according to Census) covers some of the water concerns on the island.

Given that background, the second neighbor we have really had long conversations with is Henry. Henry was born nearby and owns a half acre of land. On this half acre is a dragon fruit "orchard" (what's a group of cactus called when farmed?), endless unused solar panels, generators, batteries, and about 8 lifetimes worth of projects. Henry, by trade, was a welder at the refinery before it shut down. Upon meeting Henry I followed him to his well and set up the truck with its IBC tote in tow. His well pumps slowly and he had to run so I simply walked back to our RV and waited an hour or so. 150+/- gallons later we had our first load of water. I regret not having a 1-ton truck but given diesel prices around here, maybe not so much.

Now, I drove down just a little ways expecting I would walk back shortly while the well filled our second tote when Henry decided it was tour time. Having been introduced to him only a few hours before in a rushed state (he needed to go translate, did I mention he speaks a few languages?) he now had some free time to talk.

Henry has been busy. Very busy. He has begun clearing some land for a secret project, clearing an old abandoned road, cleaning up some of the rubbish the neighbors have been accumulating, and metalworking. His current large project is his own hand-built mower deck for a zero turn radius mower. Quite impressive when you consider he has none of the modern tools for metal shaping and simply uses a hammer. After getting the local tour, Henry decided we should go off in the bush. I had flipflops on that do not have a hard bottom and had already removed a number of thorns that poked through the soft foam, but why not.

When you meet a random stranger who wants you to walk alone up a road and you didn't tell your wife where you are going, you do have some thoughts. I suspect we made it about half way up the hill before he finally granted me a reprieve of hiking in flipflops. The view was incredible, being up a few hundred feet about most of the south of St Croix you could see so much. The entire airport, refinery, ocean, Cruzan Rum operation. It was really cool, and gave us a lot of time to talk. Well, it gave him time to talk and I tried to absorb as much as possible.

One fun thing, Henry is originally from Saint Lucia. Saint Lucia has the most venomous snake of the Caribbean, the Saint Lucia Lancehead. He said that growing up there (he left before he turned 12) he didn't remember being afraid of snakes but somehow picked up that fear from US culture. Anyway, St Croix really has nothing to be afraid of since all of the snakes here are either imported boa constrictors that got loose or native species that are shy and also not a threat. Henry's solution is to kill them. And for the Boa's, that's a good thing. But when a man has a chest freezer in the middle of the bush and you assume, like most things, it's not working then you're in for a real treat when you see a 6 foot boa curled up in there, frozen and headless. I guess he takes them to the Mt Victory Camp for processing and they give him back the skin. He doesn't eat meat (he's vegetarian, like quite a few people here seem to be) but he loves to hunt, and killing snakes eases his fear.

It was a fun two hours. Turns out I missed a call from Courtney, though, and she was understandably concerned since I expected that I would walk back after parking the truck and starting the process of filling the IBC tote (about 15 minutes) and it was two hours later when I met her driving back with Henry in the passenger seat. She was walking our most ferocious guard puppy Luna to come check on me.

More to come on the neighbors, the ones who own property really are warm and generous people that we've had a lot of fun talking with. Everyone has big plans here.