Café, fare thee well to Cat, (until you come back).

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,




This past week was in great part about coffee. One of the world's most coveted resources, still picked by hand world round, fuels economies of developing nations and satisfies the caffeine cravings of the Western world. Coffea arabica, or café in Spanish is an important crop in Nicaragua, especially in the north where it is a cornerstone of the economy, Ometepe though is no slouch, producing its fair share, many tonnes which are organic. Bona Fide has some few dozens of producing plants, this year as part of our understorey planting strategy we have put in close to 150 plants of both Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta. We plan on another 50-100 more in the coming weeks. We hope to produce enough to meet our consumption needs as well as our anticipated comsumption growth plus sell some value added BF coffee to help support our work here in the community. The lovely foto of a sea of red and yellow flags shows the tight plantings and shady area that is needed for a shade grown coffee environment, you do not need a lot of space for many coffee plants. The wonderfully shaped cone like flower bud with the 'lily' pads in the background is Nelumbo nucifera or Sacred Water Lotus, a key image in the Buddhist faith, also medicinal and edible, actually every part can be eaten. The root especially is favoured in many styles of Asian cooking. This blossom is our first and will produce a lot of seeds to continue our research into this promising crop for both food, medicine and the ornamental trade here in Nicaragua. The stone spiral you spy in the following foto shows the finishing touches going in on my new shower, sure to be an outdoor experience bar none. Kudos to David, Norman, Vienel and Martin for their attention to detail and craftmanship. This kind of stonework is a skill we are building to take advantage of the profusion of stone all obver the island to stimulate jobs and local economy here on island thru the development of skills and private business with social conscience.

The final image is a gratuitous foto of my darling baby girl, Osa. Gets cuter everyday.

Last but not least one bit. Farewell (for now) to Cat McGill, our dynamic garden co-manager and baker w/o peer. Cat will be back in 5-6 weeks after a tour of the US, weddings and visits. Buen Viaje!!

Thanks Bona Fide friends and supports,

-Chris Shanks

Cocoa or Cacao or cacahuatl

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

Cacao or Cocoa, one of the most desired and traded substances in the world, always a shortage, always desire for more. Theobromine is the name of that game( it is the drug part of chocolate that brings us joy), Theo (god) broma (food) Theobroma, the latin genus of the chocolate tree means literally food of the gods. I think most of us can agree it was aptly named. The adjacent foto is NOT a BF image, not yet at least. As our close blog readers may already know BF has fruited cacao and the region we are in has a histroy of its use historically and up to the present. It was used as money here, the cacao bean, which is where chocolate comes from(beans inside of colored pods). The image I am using speaks again to two major major BF themes: diversity and abundance. BF sowed all the seeds we produced form our small cacao crop, we also planted 150 more trees from other sources to total close to 200 cacao trees planted. The quantity of these tasty and useful trees represents a major milestone: UNDERSTORY. BF's determined and agressive agro-reforestation program has hit the milestone of having canopy, vertical architectural space that allows for the utilization of understorey trees to be cultivated below the shade of the trees, above. Cacao is one such crop, so is coffee, there are many others like patchouli, vanilla, ginger, turmeric, taro, thai ginger, araza, kandis, to name a few. This last week was our first significant understorey planting. Thank you to Hector, Martha, Cat, Mark, Kirstie and Marcia for your planting skillz, thanks to the BF personnel for prepping the site!!

In this last week BF also had significant help from volunteers both international and abroad concerning upkeep at the community center, work done on the gardens and nursery and of course ongoing house construction by a crack team of ninjas for Chris' house (seperate but worth mentioning as it directly relates to my general health and happiness).

Thanks to all.

Thank you to all BF supporters for all your help and advice and presence over all these years.

Best,

Chris Shanks

Mangoes and Planting vetiver. Los Viejos (Baile)!!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

Been a while since I have had a chance to post, pido mil disculpas por eso, planting season is FULL ON and this means Chris is a super extra busy man, laying out agro-forests, landscapes and gardens at BF and all over Nicaragua for my business here. Well here we go. The first foto is one of a bunch of teens dressed as old men and women (it is all guys), It is ' La baile del Viejo y La Vieja' which consists of a lot of rump shaking and old man cane shaking to modern music, it is a hoot to watch and many folks gather for this display, we were lucky enough to catch a few dances (see Osa as she looks on, she is the pupppy) when we were setting up for the 3rd annual Tree exchange in town. The 'open field' foto is a before foto of our 1.5 acres of annual demonstration cultivation planted on contour, with water rentention measures such as stones and vetiver on contour as well as cover cropping, mulching, NO BURN, and crop rotation. This is a model system co-developed and peopled by our Escuela de Campo members. This year Nevis is in charge of this field and Aleida the new field system on the 'other land' as we call it. Happy smiling people foto with my ugly mug included features a portion of BF staff taking home fruit trees from the BF nursery and beyond as part of their 'perks package' as BF employees, employees have first pick from the nursery of plants for thie home gardens and land.





'The smiling kids and teenagers foto' that also features Katie and Paco shows the folks who drove up to the finca in order to help us bring trees down to town for the 3rd annual tree exchange. We do this exchange each year after the rains have fallen as an extension to the seed exchanges we have in May. This year was really cool as folks I first exchanged trees with are coming back to me and telling me how healthy and fruitful the grafted citrus and avocadoes are that they asked for 3 years ago, fruit treee success takes years as does the feedback, know it is coming, now they tell their friends, soon hopefully we will be working with A LOT MORE trees to SHARE!!!!

The last two fotos feature a recurring BF theme, ABUNDANCE. Our food safe is featured with a cornucopia of BF fruits, local fruits and very little else. SWEET.

The shameless mango pile foto speaks for itself. Do not worry, there is tons more out there. Literally, actually TONNES!!!!!

AWESOME,

Bring on the abundance and we will find a way to put it away for a rainy day and share our success with our friends here for a more diverse and fruitful approach to food security for our region and BEYOND!!!!

Be well all and thank you for your support,

CHRIS SHANKS