Education and RAIN at BF

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

This last week and half saw a visit from ten students from the University of Vermont who completed a 3 credit course on agroforestry at BF. Instructors Chris Shanks and Mike Blazewicz were on hand to utilize the living classroom that Finca Bona Fide has become. We were fortunate to have the rains fall during the course and we were able to do some plantings as well as see cover crops we planted spring up. The processes observed between dry and wet season was informative for the students as was the different ages and concentrations of different trials systems on the farm. BF was happy to work with local restaurants and local lodging options to spread out the funds we brought to the island and we enjoyed the hospitality of Doña Coco and Doña Inez in their tropical homegarden systems. Bona Fide is excited to work with the University of Vermont further and to offer up more courses to expand our educational offerings as part of the vision for our work.

The beginning of the wet season has been early this year, it actually began to green up in mid April which is abnormal to say the least. Rain for the last week has been key to putting all winter wet season plans into action. Seeds are sprouting everywhere and volunteers are busy rescuing seedlings and getting them potted up for plantings. We have already planted pejibaye or peach palm to replace those damaged or killed by rats in the dry season, one of our main cover crops, pigeon pea has been sowed in the dry times and now it has already sprouted, literally many thousands of pigeon pea are growing all around the farm, at this time of the year, the growth is fast and daily. Amazing to see.


Best to all,

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

2009 Bona Fide Seed Exchange

On Sunday, May 11, the annual “Intercambio de Semillas” – Bona Fide Seed Exchange – took place on the streets of Balgue. With the help of countless hands, from Javier hauling a truckload of plants from the farm to town in his vintage 80s Toyota 4x4 to the grandmotherly Doña Ines blasting Nica pop to attract people in the heat of the afternoon, everything went off well. Key to the show were Nevis, Maria and Aleyda of Escuela de Campo, who prepared numerous treelings, seedling medicinal plants, and packets of seeds to exchange for bags of rice, mangos, cacao beans, and most interesting of all, a freshly caught fish!

Every year the seed exchange offers us a direct opportunity to share some of the research and work we are doing on the farm with local communities. Posters and flyers placed in key towns on the island advertise the event – though quite a few of the people who come are those simply walking down the street who stop by to see what is going on. From the nursery, we share both locally popular fruits like nispero and mamey, as well as new varieties that are doing well on the farm and hold potential to be good food resources and opportunities to improve plant diversity in the area, like jackfruit and pitanga. As many people are unfamiliar with these plants, we explain to them how they are grown and how their fruits can be used – for example in juices, which are extraordinarily popular in the hot days of summer. From the garden, we share a variety of legumes that grow easily here and add nitrogen to depleted soils, in addition to different herbs and vegetables that we have grown and collected seeds from. And from the medicinal garden, we share plants that broaden the selection of natural remedies available and can be used to combat common illnesses.

While we hope eventually to attract crowds of people eager to discover the latest varieties of plants and trees coming from Bona Fide, the highlights of last Sunday came in small doses. Watching a 12-year-old girl come in search of a specific plant and then go down the line of trees and name almost every one of them – something not even I could do at the beginning of the day – is inspiring. Or seeing the delighted smile as a gentleman walked off with four trees he had come specifically seeking in a bucket on his shoulder. Or best of all, spending the day managing the various exchanges while out of the corner of one’s eye catching continuous glimpses of the breadfruit tree Doña Ines traded for three years ago, now rising above the roof of her house and producing fruit that, she happily explains, is “ricissimo” – absolutely delicious!

This blog contribution was written by Catherine McGill our garden co-manager and attache to the Escuela de Campo. Thanks to Cat for all her hard work. Much appreciated.

New additions to BF!!!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

Well I have been back in Nicaragua for about one and half weeks, and yes the internet world is SLOW again. Everything else though is moving quickly. Whilst I was away our diligent crew of interns and volunteers under the careful tutelage of David Ortiz finished our new bread/pizza oven with a tiled finish to the pizza prep table, we re-used broken tiles from my house construction to eliminate building waste. This project was carried out as an exercise in design/build of bread ovens with natural materials to a high end finish, my for profit venture, Living Ssytems Solutions provided the funding in hopes that the skills gained by local folks and the showpiece space of having the oven at BF will attract future clients and create more well paid local employment on the island. Well at the very least we will eat lots of pizza with our friends. Same can be said for the worm bin which is the zinc roofed long narrow structure featured in another foto in this week's update. We just put over 3 pounds of worms in there and Nevis made a bed of dried manure and finished compost. Those wormies are happy!! We are hoping to use the black gold produced by our new friends to take the food gardens and medicinal production to another level. Nice work all!

One of the last two fotos feature the final tile roofing of my porch on my soon to complete home at BF and hopefully a new sense of peace to come along with it as I finally move into my new digs after living, camping, and sleeping all over the farm for over 7 years. Yeah seven. The small thatch structure with a black plastic finish is our new mini solar barn for wood drying and storage, no more moist wood winters for BF!! Congrats to Hector, our new local project leader and volunteer MC. Same to be said for Martha Fuchs our current volunteer coordinator who helped Hector knock out this new much needed additions.

Well folks new additions to our growing project. Come eat pizza and we will throw the scraps to the wormies. One big cycle. Sweet.

Best to all and thanks for your support,

Chris Shanks
Co-director, Project Bona Fide

Updates, Collecting and More!!

Greetings Project Bona Fide Friends and Supporters,

One important development in communications in Nicaragua as of a week or so ago. If you are calling Nicaragua for whatever reason (hopefully to send us love) you must now dial an '8' before the 7 digit mobile number and a '2' before whichever land line number you call. Just so you know.

Since my last post I have traveled down to Florida to spend time with my family. In my 4 days here I have visited 3 botanical institutions: The Fairchild Botanical Garden, The Montgomery Botanical Garden, and The Fruit and Spice Park of Homestead FL. I have been collecting plant material for ex-situ conservation and newcrops/food systems development for Bona Fide at 2 of these sites for over half a decade. My visit to the Montgomery Botanical Garden (http://www.montgomerybotanical.org) was my first. The MBG is invite only, it is a former estate which is now a NGO dedicated in great part to the preservation of palms and cycads. they have the largest collection of cycads in the entire world, a huge part of the worlds genetics for cycads as well as the safeguards for the continuance of these species is being caried out by MBG and its allies. I was fortunate enough to spend a half day with the Manager of Collections, Chad Husby PHD. Chad was extremely gracious and I thank him wholeheartedly for his time and energy. This visit has begun what we hope is a long collaboration with MBG and other allied institutions. This newfound affiliation is a great 'leg up' for Bona Fide in terms of our work in ex-situ conservation and Newcrops development.

The evolving Bona Fide website. The BF website has grown in the last few weeks and we thank Matthew Homeijer, our web ninja wizard for his time and creative energy to make this happen. Mat is a busy man working in the big city, NYC. He is also a father of a very rambunctious 2 year old, Silas. We have named Silas our 'manager' for website updates, his picture is featured this week. Usually we do the updates while he naps.

Other photos features: the yummy looking fruit is a Pakistani Mulberry, a cultivar of Morus nigra that can have fruits up to 4" long. They taste amazing. Not really a lowland tropical fruit but for the tropics at elevation, the sub tropics and other climates they are incredible. Traditionally in Pakistan and Afghanistan they were dried for eating whilst traveling. The photo of seed drying shows the spoils from collecting in the last 3 days. The aerial shot is a view of MBG and its grounds which is 120 acres.

Hope everyone is well, thanks for your support,

Chris Shanks