Living in Mexico: The Joys of a Warm Climate

How important is climate to you?

Mexico’s Climate is Pretty Darn Good

Let’s delve a little bit into climate, shall we? I’ve experienced a lot of climates in the world, and from all my travels, the weather by Lake Chapala is the best climate I have had the pleasure of living in. Almost every morning I know the sun will be shining and the sky will be blue. There will be a slight breeze, or no wind at all. Birds will be singing to welcome the day. In four years of living in Mexico, I have never seen or heard of an event being cancelled due to inclement weather. Some people would say it’s too hot. It is hot in April and May, but the June rains arrive and cool the area, bringing green mountains and pleasant, sunny days after the rain has passed.

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No More Winter

I would take +35 degrees Celsius any day over -35 degrees Celsius, and here’s why:

Winter sucks. Sorry Canada. Your weather is terrible. Sure, summer can be lovely, but it’s riddled with storms, hail, wind, and a short two-month window that shatters hopes when it slams shut to prepare for winter. The longest winter I endured in Canada was eight months long. Eight months of sub-zero temperatures, snow, ice, and fog. The sun hardly shone through the dense fog covering the land. The winter came so quickly the leaves on the trees didn’t have a chance to change colour in the fall. Instead, they froze black and dangled from the trees like shrivelled up bats.

You need fewer clothes in a warm climate, leading to less money spent on four seasonal wardrobes and reducing waste in landfills.

You don’t need a car to get around; while a car is convenient, in warm climates, you can walk anywhere without worrying about slipping on ice or freezing your face before getting home.

Our skin is also much better since we relocated to a warm climate. In Canada, we had fiery rosacea flare-ups, cracked skin on our fingers that bled. Feet that would make an ostrich jealous. Dry, alligator skin requiring doses of lotion daily to maintain sanity were necessary when we lived in Canada. In Mexico, no rosacea flare-ups and no more cracked, bleeding, painful skin. We don’t even use lotion anymore.

Self-Sustainability = Sovereignty

But the most important thing is food.

Cold climates rely on countries like Mexico to provide them with produce since they cannot grow fruits or vegetables year-round. Plus, the vegetables and fruits you do receive pale in taste compared to when you eat the food in the country of origin. Produce is harvested early to withstand shipping to other countries, then undergoes artificial ripening processes like SmartFresh (ethylene gas), resulting in attractive but flavourless products. Try a tomato in Canada and then try one in Mexico. Tomatoes in Mexico burst with juice and flavour, like a savoury sweetness. In Canada, they have no flavour whatsoever.

You are reliant on grocery store chains to provide you with food, too much of which is processed and toxic anyway. When I grocery shop in Canada, I only visit the outside aisles, gallantly walking by the middle aisles stocked with food unfit for human consumption.

We had the privilege of housesitting for a week for a friend who had to return to the US unexpectedly. It has been a treat to stay here while living in Mexico, literally.

She purchased this house four years ago and also bought the empty lot next door that was overrun with weeds and dead foliage. She had plans for that vacant lot. Plans she put to good use.

In the lot, she now has access to all the fresh fruit and vegetables she needs:

• bananas
• pomegranates
• moringa
• papaya
• monkey pods
• chayote
• strawberries
• blueberries
• mangoes
• celery
• broccoli
• peas
• green beans
• multiple types of medicinal herbs (the legal kind)

It’s incredible. She has a dehydrator and makes all her own teas.

It’s A Paradise Living in Mexico

She can grow food year-round and eat what’s in season. Organic food at her fingertips. The only thing missing is chickens for fresh eggs.

She could survive here on what she is growing in this incredible climate. Her gardener comes three times a week, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to weed and perform maintenance. He waters, cleans all the filters, drains, and pipes. He loves her dog, Canela, so he takes her for walks and cleans up after her, too. To have all this taken care of, and it’s a big yard, she pays him 1,500 MXN pesos a week, roughly $120 CAD or $87 USD. Certainly, a person could take care of it themselves, if they so choose, but the price seems affordable for a gardener to do all Fernando does to keep the place looking great and producing life-giving, healthy, fresh food.

Consider the climate where you live and what impact it has on your life, mentally and physically. Food is medicine, and we should be treating it as such, and not as a commodity to be mass-produced with an unrealistic shelf-life, to feed millions from a laboratory.

Feed yourself, feed your community. How different would the world be if we gave the responsibility of food back to smaller family farms and focused on feeding those around us on a smaller scale while saying “adios” to Big Ag.

Tell me, is a garden in your future?

Photos by Charlotte Tweed