Living in Nicaragua

Living in Nicaragua is very much like the 1960’s sitcom “Green Acres”, where a New York Lawyer and a Hungarian born socialite retire to the country. Nothing is as it seems here and there are always lots of surprises around every corner. We have our share of Mr. Haneys (the dishonest and oily salesman who sold them the farm) and everyone is almost forced to be a Mr. Drucker (the General Store owner who also was a volunteer fireman, postmaster, constable, justice of the peace and newspaper man).

On the farm, our Mr. Drucker is Francisco, the farm manager. Franciso is the local vet although he has no formal training. Francisco is also somewhat of a realtor, a carpenter, an agronomist, a holistic healer and a great horse trainer. Of course, this is all things Nicaraguan and when you throw something out of the ordinary at him, he folds. An example is this year I planted cherry tomatoes on the farm, something uncommon in Nicaragua. Every time I asked Francisco about the tomatoes, he would just shake his head and say “they’re coming”. Finally, one day he comes to me with a handful of small tomatoes and tells me that something is wrong because although they look great, they are not growing any bigger than a cherry. I explained to him that this is as big as they get. He shook his head and he laughed and asked why I didn’t plant “real” tomatoes.

We love living here in Nicaragua (our Hooterville) and especially on the farm. In sharing some of our daily life with you, we hope to make you laugh and say to yourself “Really?” But most of all, we want to inspire a desire for you to visit our part of the world and see for yourself how great it can be.