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