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