Happy New YEAR!!!! Feliz año nuevo!!!

Greetings all,

2009 is in the house. Here at Bona Fide we are really looking forward to delving into creative projects and growth for this year.

Holiday celebrations were excellent, Bona Fide staff and volunteers participated in a holiday gathering of folk from 10 nations where we ate a mountain of local foods, drank cold beer and sang Spanish Christmas songs into the wee hours. Thanks to all who participated and to all the abundance we shared.

The last 2 weeks have been fairly quiet with many folks going on short vacations and respites before the busy 2009 winter schedule of courses and hosting groups begins. Tom and Eira fell in love with the magic of the Laguna de Apoyo and I managed to drag myself away from working on my house long enough to get out to a beach for lots of swimming and a much needed recharge of ocean salts, beachfires, and good friends. We said good bye for a spell to a few long term volunteers who will return soon and bid good bye to Natasha who helped us so much down at the 'El Centro.' community center.

I wanted to share a few images of BF life here with folks:

Please enjoy my recently finished circular wood floor over a 6000 gallon water catchment/cooling element cistern.

OUR FIRST CACAO HARVEST has begun, we may only get a dozen pods or so but our original dreams and visions of ORGANIC BF cacao are becoming real before our eyes. THANKS to all the local folks/volunteers who have maintained these systems so that now we can all enjoy their fruits.

Corn and other grains are featured again this week as we learn little by little about the struggles and trucos of preserving grain in the monsoon tropics. Kudos to all helping keep our corn free from buggies!

And finally a solo image of bamboo, one of our most mature clumps, well maintained and ready to be sustainably harvested for building material for our natural building research.


Hope 2009 is great for EVERYONE,

Chris Shanks
Co-director, Project Bona Fide