Tomatoes_and_rice

Hey all,

Greetings from BF land down under here on the 11th parallel. This week saw the start of our tropic tomato experiment co-ordinated with the Escuela de Campo, Chris' research and our crack cadre of interns. Our hunger for fresh organic tomatoes, and cracking the nut of organic cultivation here in the tropics continues, meanwhile we will sate ourselves on hot chiles and dreams of gazpacho...

This week also ushers in DRYING TIME for our organic rice harvest, looks like we will have about 250 pounds of rice from the farm for the farm. We also harvested about 40 pounds of BF coffee this last week. We will choose the best coffee berries and sow this in the nursery to start an shade grown coffee effort here for home scale consumption on the farm.

Congrats to Tom, Amory, Norman and all other involved in erecting our long term volunteer housing, or the 'Love Shack' as we have dubbed it. All the wood is from BF land, sustainably harvested and processed here mostly with hand tools. The bamboo roof and thatch is also from BF or locally sources. Nice work gents.

Hope everyone celebrates a great holiday with friends and family,

Chris Shanks

First Workshop of the 3rd EdC Season

Greetings all,

This past week saw the beginning of the third year of the Escuela de Campo, founded by Andrea Calfuquir and staffed with great folks like Mai Kobaiyashi, Katherine Young, and Hannah Roessler over the last two years. This season we have a new crop of interns and a mixed crop (in terms of experience) of EDC students from the village, both from years past and new to the work. Nevis is in his third year and he is leading the garden team, putting volunteers to work and co-ordinating with Jackie Pitts. Maria will head up the nursery with Ashley Carter as well. Karen and Aleida will be the medicinal plants and preparation team and all three groups will meet weekly to do group work, have meetings, and share experiences. Just this last Saturday we had Juan Jose Calero from the Masatepe region of Nicaragua come out and teach a group of close to 20 folks a workshop on plant propagation and grafting. The workshop was open to the general public and was well attended.

The garden is shaping up nicely and we are gearing up for our 4th season gardening here, learning daily and reaping the harvest. We will post some green garden shots next week!

Last Monday we managed to get the 3rd part of the playground in, our new swing-set, we are just awaiting the slide and in true Nica style what was promised weeks ago is still in the 'manaña' stage of delivery (you have to come here and live this place to understand this)
Thanks to David Ortiz and Vienel and Hector for the help with installation.

Well, we are gearing up for the holidays here, bulls to catch, drunk people to step over, and LOTS of fireworks, HURRAH!.

Be well all,

Chris

Library opening at 'El Centro' in Balgue

These last few weeks have seen a lot of growth and improvement at the community center. On Tuesday, December 2nd we had a 'soft opening' of our 2nd floor library space. Thanks to Eira, Natasha, Sue Ellen, Patricia, amongst others the community center got an interior sprucing up. Tom, Amory, and Chris built shelves and we all got the books on them. A NEW FACE TO THE community center, thanks to Marta, Maximillian, and a whole gang of local children, we have a new face to the community center, we loved our first initial paint job but we think this mural says a lot more about us, we have been seeing tourists stopping to take photos of late so it seems we have done it well. Congrats to all!!!

We now have regular library hours, local volunteer help, classes offered by local educators and computer classes we well.
The playground that was envisioned by Heather and Ken Knorr is slowly but surely being installed, we now have a swingset, monkey bars, and see saws, we are awaiting a slide, hopefully before the navidad festivities. The farm is busy now, with all interns present and we are getting ready for a new year of learning and cultural exchange.

Be well,

Chris Shanks

Getting our playground on!

Rice is Nice

Hey all,

Enjoy some short footage from our organic rice harvest.

Best to all,

Chris

Late November update

Greetings all!!,

Chris here once again, poised at my G4, posting images and text like nobodies' business. Days have been overcast and cool here, perfect for getting our garden started for the winter months and for germinating seeds in the BF nursery. The last 10 days have been great. We harvested our first OG rice crop last week. Nevis, the team leader for this project coordinated our local crew plus a crop of eager volunteers to cut, carry, thresh and haul our nearly 300 pounds of rice uphill to the kitchen area to be dried and then milled. It was a hot day for harvest but the dryness accompanying the heat was great for post harvest handling.

This week we also managed to begin the installation of the playground at the community center, so far the see-saw and monkey bars are in, in the coming week we will have a swing set and a slide. Thanks to Delvis the metalworker, his crew as well as david Ortiz our crew chiel and Martin 'El Loco' for their help during the installation.

Much work has been happening down at the community center, the library is just a week away from opening to the public and folks from BF and TALICA are woring hard to make this happen. Thanks to Sue Ellen and TALICA for their hard work and support. We will feature fotos in the next posting that highlights this.

Pejibaye (peach palm) or Bactris gasipaes, yep, that is what that is in my palm. first fruits (4) from a BF research project on food security that has been in process for 4 years. We have now identified 2 seperate pejibaye palms of the 100 we have planted so far as having flowering and fruiting cycles that follow the rainy season. This allows these palms to produce a crop w/o irrigation. Now we can reproduce these varieties for greater distribution to the community and broaden our food security palette of species we offer. We are excited here, four years is a good space of time to wait to get results. Patience is a virtue.

Scope out the pitanga fruit as well (pictured as a singular fruit in my palm). Yum. In English we know it as Suriname cherry or in latin, Eugenia uniflora.

Best to all, enjoy the pictures, stay warm in the North!,

Chris

Mid November update

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters. Long time no see. Chris here, I have been away from the farm for 4 weeks and I just arrived back here a week or so ago. BUSY HERE!!

We are gearing up big time here for our 3rd year with our Farm School, the Escuela de Campo. Nevis and I just had a Sunday afternoon meeting. We will be growing a lot of species and varieties that have done well in the past this year, using our saved compost, manures, and more fertile soil due to cover cropping to enhance production. The EDC will undertake a trial of tomato varieties adapted for the tropics and run a number of trials that will employ organic soil conditioning as well as nim seed cake to discourage the persistent soil bacteria that stymies our work with nightshade family plants other than hot chiles. The EDC students will also work in the nursery and with medicinal herbs and will both give and receive workshops in town and at BF. EDC will also undertake individual research projects based on Permaculture, agro-forestry, and market evaluation for sale of BF crops produced.

Finca Bona Fide is loaded (with fruit that is)!!! As you can see in the foto, we have been harvesting ripe and green papaya for fruit and for green papaya salad (YUM). BF chiles and fresh herbs make an excellent green vegetable salad for dinners and lunches. As the papaya season progresses fesh papaya will go down the hill for the children's nutritional program, Cafe Infantil. Featured in the 3rd fotos that shows four fruits (from top left to right clockwise: Araza, Rollinia, Purple passion fruit, and sweet startfruit) What do all these yummies have in common?

Both the araza and the rolllinia are newcrops introductions to the island as part of our food security efforts, the purple passion fruit and sweet 'Kari' starfruit are new varieties introduced to the island from existing species, the passion fruit should have better market appeal whilst the sweet starfruit is superior to the sour ones found on island due to the taste and the lack of need for sugar to make fruit juice from it.

WHAT ARE THOSE KIDS DOING??

The little guys and gals featured in the planting foto are planting live stakes from a spiny cactus like plant in an effort to begin to fence out pigs from our community center in Balgue. The center will be outfitted with a PLAYGROUND this week, so keep your alls eyes open for this upcoming addition to our work. HUGE thanks to Heather, Sarah, and Ken Knorr for helping to fund raise for this project, Heather was also on the ground to organize the materials and labor.
The kids cannot thank you enough!!

The island is SINKING?

Well....No, but we recieved more rain this year than we have in over 2 decades, more than 1992 when Hurricane Mitch dumped over a yard/meter of rain on us in just 3 days. WOW. The lake level is higher than most folks can remember, for those of you who have visited here, the river Balgue, usually a stream about 6-12" or 15 to 30cm in 3 plus feet, a meter DEEP! I have to ride my motorcycle on a new stream crossing upstream to get across. It is wild!


We are excited for the upcoming arrival of both long term volunteers and 3 staff members, one new this year and two returnees.

It is going to be a fine 2008-09.

Best to all,

Chris Shanks
Co-Director Project Bona Fide
Chris@projectbonafide.com

Late September UPDATE

Hey BF friends and supporters,

Well I am back in the good ole US of A for one month. I regretfully left the farm the farm 3 days ago for the east coast and beyond.

Tom, Eira, Katherine, and Heather will be manning the 'fort' whilst I am gone and Vienel and Roylin have our backs.

I would like to fare thee well Rachel, our latest and one of our greatest volunteer coordinators. Rachel was with us for over 4 months and she kept up and vamped up our Sunday art program started by Katherine Young in March as well as supported the development of our library and helped out with English classes at the 'Centro.' All that and she led the volunteers in daily work and kep our kitchen running. Kudos to Rachel and good luck in Canada. Stay warm.

In other news both Rachel and Heather used the much appreciated donation given by West Vancouver high school students for needed medications. The ladies went all the way to Managua to commercial pharmacy to get the best prices. HUGE thanks to Aleida, a member of our farm school and a nursing candidate for facilitating the putting together of the medication list and helping locate the lower cost pharmacy.


In other news we were (David, Vienel, Norman, William and I) able to complete the first covered ferrocement water tank with our BF team of masons for a private client that is a BF supporter. This 13,000 gallon water tank is for domestic water and will be 100 percent mosquito larvae proof (no fish in here to larvae!!) Hopefully this tank will serve as amodel for next generation water systems for communities all over the island and further.

With our corn crop harvested and nearly 450 punds of grain to eat and store our cover croppped field is starting to reclaim the corn patch. velvet bean (Mucuna pruriens) that was sown previosly is starting to take over as the picture shows (see corn stalk).

Last but not LEAST!! MYCELIUM RUNNING:

Whilst planting some peach and african oil palm species we came upon a lovely patch of mycorrhizae fungi. This clever little patch of ultra beneficial soil borne organisms was cozying up to a mulch pile under the deep shade of a 6 year old mango tree. This is the largest and healthiest patch of such beneficial soil organisms I have ever observed at BF. A sure sign of soil and site regenration. Go soil MICROLIFE!!.

Thanks for reading and be well,

Chris Shanks
Co-director Project Bona Fide
Chris@projectbonafide.com

Mid September BF UPDATE!

Greetings all,

Last week was a bit of a doozy! I (Chris) spent 13 hours running around Managua is one of the more challenging days I have had here in Nicaragua over the last 6 years. Customs, shippers, warehousers, a BIG mess that FINALLY yielded 1700 books for our new community center. Whilst I was battling bureaucracy and paperwork folks here on the farm were busy. Rachel's parents were visiting from the US and they jumped right into seeding in the garden, building beds, planting lemongrass and making a WONDERFUL African groundnut stew with local chicken. Tom, Eira, Rachel, and Heather have been kicking butt up here on the farm and down at the center in town. Heather and Eira especially are becoming increasingly more active and interactive with the Cafe Infantil and along with Rachel in the English classes that are being held at the community Center.

I have been busy tracking down breadfruit trees to plant, palm seeds to sow in the nursery, building a ferrocement water tank. and POR FIN, getting our new to us 250 watt wind generator mounted on its nearly 40 foot tower (13m).

ITS GUANABANA SEASON!!!! Sugar apples are coming too and we are still chowing mangoes. I estimate we have harvested one ton of mango this year from our orchard.

Nevis, Aleida, Rachel, her folks, and others harvested our corn this week. Once it is dehusked we will have harvested almost 400 pounds of OG corn for our food for this upcoming year. That is A LOT of Tortillas.

Congrats to Nevis and Aleida for such hard work.

SWEEEET!!!!

Best to all,

Chris Shanks

Chris@projectbonafide.com

Project Bona Fide Update

Greetings all,

We want to welcome Eira and Tom from the United Kingdom to our staff. They will be here for 6-12 months depending on whether we can keep them well entertained.

Tom will be picking up a building project that was started in February. We are going to be harvesting wood for posts and beams for a neem wood structure with a full bamboo and grass roof. The structure is circular and will serve as staff housing.

Eira is delving right into community center work, coordinating some of the harvest from the farm so it finds its way to the table at our children's nutrition program.

Heather and Rachel have finished the 6 sets of book shelves and I go to Managua tomorrow to hopefully after (4) trips LIBERATE 1800 used books from Spain to get our library on line.

Farm is looking great, guanabana fruit is getting close as are sugar apples, we are just setting up to plant the last few hundred trees.

The garden will be partially replanted this coming week as well and we plan a general community center clean up with members of the community.

My (Chris) house is on its way and the DOME is up. Many great things happening.

Bona Fide VIDEO

Kids from the community center at this past weekends tree exchange. We exchanged 200 fruit trees from our nursery. Pictured also: Flora, Heather, and Rachel. Thanks ladies!!!

A Bona Fide Weekly update!

Greetings Permaculture fans and Bona Fide supporters!!!,


Chris Shanks here updating folks on the comings and goings of Finca Bona Fide. We are going to try to do this weekly and we will see how it goes. Please send along feedback.

Well the last week in August is a busy one. We are finishing up almost three months of planting cover crops, corn, beans, rice, dozens of species of fruit and nut trees, legume trees, multi-use palms, bamboo and medicinal plants. Currently we are gearing up to finish a large wildlife corridor enhancement plan that includes 9 species of native fruits and one species of native nut. We are doing all of this whilst we finish the shelving units for 2000 used books from Spain that we will pick up this week. We just had a visit from Ken Knorr who along with hs daughter finished closing in the second floor of the community center. We now have power there and the work is moving forward faster with power tools from Chris' workshop. Tomorrow (tuesday the 26th) we will plant African oil palms, coconut palms and native thatch palms to finish up our agricultral reforestation efforts on a 2.5 acre piece of BF that we are currently reforesting.

The farm is producing nicely right now with guava, passionfruit, the last of the mangoes, coconuts, araza fruit and edible leaves.

Chris is heading to Leon this weekend to do some private consulting and he hopes to meet with the IPM (integrated pest management) researchers up in Leon to talk to them about giving a workshop at Bona Fide.

Be well all,

Bona Fide Team

Project Bona Fide Mentioned on NicaPOD

Many thanks to the kind folks over at NicaPOD (Nicaragua Picture of the Day) for including us on their site. We're always interested in and supportive of people putting out the good word on local Nicaraguan goods.