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.