Permaculture course all wrapped up!!!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

Happy birthday to Eira, thanks to a wonderfully eager staff and a small error we ended up with 5 cakes to celebrate the birthday of our resident hobbit and do all wündergirl, Eira who is the volunteer coordinator as well as the community outreach coordinator. Kudos. Thanks to small errors that bring 5 cakes. No cake was wasted in the eating of this mistake. Pictured with Eira is of course the one of a kind, wünderkind himself, 1/2 my size, twice my brain power, our Permaculture interpreter extraordinaire, my ‘mini me,’ Tiny Man, AKA Cris Fallas of Costa Rica. People of Bona Fide, we salute you Cris.

Thanks to the early risers on the 2nd to last day of the course for your help in carrying the final piece of the playground puzzle to the community center grounds over 4 months later, a barel of excuses and a lot of blackouts our playground is complete. Thanks again to the Knorr family for your support.

Who is that man in the hole? Answer: Don Agustin Contreras, our local well digger. Along with two Bona Fide staff members we have been digging for over 3 weeks, we hit water almost a week ago and now we are very close to being able to set up our pumping system. Thanks to everyone for your support.

As the course finishes up we prepared for our design projects. You will see a foto of Lydia, a young mother from town who completed the design course, she is pictured above talking about her design project to the rest of the class, also pictured, Tiny man's back. Lydia is also the woman pictured in traditional dress doing folkloric dance for the talent show, also pictured is Ebbie Slow (6yrs), local resident and comedian.

Last but not least, my ugly mug as pictured from a Jackfruit tree(Artocarpus heterophyllus). I hardly ever post fotos of myself as I am usually taking the fotos and Michael and I love this one so why not. Gotta love jackfruit, biggest fruit on E-A-R-T-H. That is the kind of tree that can feed a lot of people, One mature tree can produce over a ton of fruit/seeds annually. WOW.

Best to all,

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

Permaculture Design course IDEAS, Sharing!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

It has been exactly 2 weeks since my last update. It has also been two weeks since our largest Permaculture course here at Bona Fide has begun. I see a pattern there. We are very fortunate to be sharing ideas, cultures, making friends and extending networks with people from: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Canada and the good ole US of A. We are 32 folks, from 8 countries, all walks of lives, youths eager to learn and more seasoned folks eager to share, we all have a lot to offer. We are especially honored to be hosting 2 Mayan youths from SE Guatemala. These two gentleman and their travel companion and staff member, Karyn Stein come from the Asociacion Ak' Tenamit (New Town). We salute you.

As the course begins to wrap up and 5 design groups are eagerly sharing ideas and putting it all on paper we are ready for a bit of a rest before the next step. But no rest for thr WICKED (HA!!), as we will host a whole slew of course participants as BF volunteers, crank out a bunch of cool projects, finish the 'Love Shack' and hopefully get some worms into their new home we built for them.

Is that what it looks like??, red luscious and juicy, YES it is!! Bona Fide's first organic tomato produced in out tomato culture experiment being conducted by the Escuela de Campo staff and Chris. So far so good. Eggplants coming soon. Go team Garden.


Now what? What's that? Egg fruit or otherwise known as canistel, sapote amarillo or sapote mico or AKA Pouteria campechiana. An excellent fruit introduced to Nicaragua in pre-Colombian times and a hopeful one for BF food security and research work to work with and reintroduce into the local diet. High in bete carotene and vitamin A, can be made into savoury pies or blended with whole milk. YUM!

And this? Crazy looking red fruit with cerebral cortex looking yellow food matter. ACKEE!!
Blighia sapida, from west Africa, brought over by African folks who were stolen from their countries, cooked with salted codfish in Jamaica and favoured above almost all foods, perfectly drought hardy to our climate and potentially poisonous if not eaten at the right time. WOW.

Last but most definitely not least NEVIS AND MARIA IN THE HOUSE!! (or classrooom that is) Both Nevis and Maria have been participating in the PErmaculture design course as occasional students and TEACHERS, each one sharing the finding of their research projects with the class, Nevis spoke about soil fertility, the role of essential macro and micro nutrients in the soil and how to rectify deficiencies organically. Maria spoke abour intregrated pest management as a transitional system to all one to convert to organic methods w/o loss of production. Nice work! Aleida will be presenting sometime this week as well on her work with medicinal plants.

Best to all,

Chris

Trips ABROAD, Black Gold, Pizza, Chocolate!!!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

Since my last blog update we have been very busy both on and off the farm. The ‘Escuela de Campo’ group of 3 local students and their 3 counterparts from abroad traveled off island on their first field trip of 2009. The group traveled north through Jinotepe up to the Masatepe region where they visited Campos Azules one of the INTA national experimental stations for Nicaragua. The group received a tour of the site, the experiments being conducted, methods being employed, as well as techniques for post harvest handling. Afterwards the group traveled to the nursery and farm of Juan Jose, the nurseryman who traveled to Ometepe in December to teach the ‘Escuela de Campo’ a grafting workshop. The group stayed in San Marcos for the night and then visited ‘Rancho Evenecer,’ an integrated animal, worm compost, biogas, and horticulture site in the town of Ninquinomo.

Whilst folks were traveling off island, folks on island were busy whittling away at the many pre-course tasks for preparation for the 2009 Permacultue Design Course held at Bona Fide. Thanks to Tom, Jonah, Joe Kablino for helping us get ready. We expect 28 students from 6 countries. 6 Nicaraguans will be attending 5 under full scholarship plus one gentleman from Guatemala as well. Our course is structured so that full tuition students help pay for scholarships with their course fee. The course will be translated simultaneously from English to Spanish and Spanish to English by ‘Tiny Man.’ From Costa Rica.

What are those folks doing to our beloved bread oven!! DESTRUCTION AND CHAOS!! Well knocking it down after almost 5 years of loyal service was fun, a bit sad but it was time to move on, all good things come to an end as they say. We are building the better mousetrap so to speak, doubling the size of the oven and building a large 1meter by 2 meter prep table to boot, a nice opportunity to expand and have more capacity to make PIZZA!!. Talk about professional capacity building strategies, this one is made of mud.

Speaking of mud, or more to the point soil, the bones of life, the foundation of food, black gold, the web of life, terroir. Well Bona Fide is going into the business of black gold, David, Norman, and Vienel just finished the details on a worm compost bin that will be used to build fertility in the nursery and the garden. We are excited about changing our banana peels into worm castings, the most coveted and well balanced type of soil additive more or less known to soil science.

The namesake of the town of Granada, (Spanish for Pomegranate) fruiting at Bona Fide for the first time. The first fruits are only tennis ball sized but they are a great start. I love surprises.

Bona Fide chocolate? Yes. I just rode 2 plus hours on my motorcycle with 65 pounds of chocolate. Why? Many reasons. To make it short, $$$$ and therapy. Don’t ask about the latter. Funds raised from the sale of this chocolate will be dedicated to scholarship for two students from ‘Escuela de Campo’ for their university schooling. Further donations always accepted OR just eat your way to donating by buying chocolate. Thanks to the folks at El Castillo Chocolate Company for expediting our order and giving us a good price.

Hey, last but not least whatsoever. KUDOS to Nevis and Jackie and all other volunteer support on the garden. Best it has ever looked in the last 3 years.

Best to all,

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