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