1 YEAR anniversary and JACKfruit!!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

WELCOME HOME!!

This week that has passed saw Michael Judd, Bona Fide co-Director and US based fundraiser and administrator and family (Chris and Carolyn Judd) plus Lady Eve arrive at BF, traveling lightly (just under 500, yes F-I-V-E hundred pounds of luggage) Not all swimsuits and towels either, on the contrary Michael arranged for yet another donation of much needed vitamins and medicines for the Café Infantil nutrition program and lugged them from Maryland to here on Ometepe. Many thanks to these valiant folks especially Chris and Carolyn who not only have made numerous visits to the island and this year in the ‘El Centro’ community center gave its first quilting workshop over a 5 day period, but also work very hard in the US to support BF fundraising efforts. Kudos to all four of you for making the journey.















HAPPY ONE YEAR birthday to our community center. If you take a moment to view the before and after fotos of the center you will see a dramatic change in the exterior but the exterior is just where it begins as one would see inside the building a library on the second floor where before it was vacant and littered with refuse, one would be able to use the internet, charge educational tools/computers, and work on the center with power tools thanks to the complete wiring of the building as well as its grid connection where before there was no light or power. Much has changed both inside and outside of the building with the addition of the playground, holding of numerous classes in English, environmental education, extra help in mathematics as well as art and music PLUS library hours for the public. Much has passed in just one year and there is A LOT to go in the development of the site. Thanks to EVERYONE from volunteers and interns to local supporters and educators as well as Eira Kedward, TALICA, the Knorr family, West Vancouver High School and everyone else…W/O you all we would still be sanding the first boards on the second floor paint job. Thanks again.

Big Change BIG BOAT




I just crossed Lake Nicaragua yesterday on the new ferry, El Rey de Cocibolca (King of Lake Nicaragua). This ferry, imported from Holland is serving the new port of San Jose del Sur and will run 2x daily. Besided carrying up to 16 cars/light trucks and up to 1000 people it is owned and operated by the local government and NOT a private business like the Ferry in Moyagalpa. It is also cheaper. I highly recommend it to folks coming to the island as you will be supporting local government, spending less money and you will also be 10km closer to the Maderas side if you are headed to Bona Fide or Totoco or Zopilote or the playa or Merida. Save money, save gas, buy local. Sweet.

What is this crazy yellow fruit that looks like an alien creature recently eviscerated?

Well actually its Jackfruit/Jaquero (Artocarpus heterophyllus) Bona Fide currently has 6 trees (of about 80 and counting) fruiting at 4.5 years of age which is better than average, selections for breeding/fruit quality are already being made, featured in the two fruit fotos are from the first named variety on the farm, ‘La Hannita’ in honor of long time friend and supporter of the farm. Eating jackfruit is fun, the fruit tastes like Juicy Fruit gum, the seed lightly boiled and peeled tastes like garbanzo bean, great for soups, stews and such. Guess what? You can make hummus out of it. YES. HUMMUS. Well it may not sound like a lot since you can buy it just about anywhere in the USA, Canada, or Western Europe but here hummus is as scarce sub zero temps, well not anymore. WHO knows what crazy fun tasty recipes we will come up with with all these new fruits, nuts, veggies, seeds and leaves we grow. Nice. Very nice.


Where is this beautiful beach?



The gratuitous shot of the Nicaraguan Pacific coast is actually about planting seeds, garden seeds for the record. Chris via his business, Living Systems Solutions is in negotiations with the eco-resort community of Aqua SA to aid them in working with local farmers near the coast to begin a subscription farming/CSA venture for the promotion of organic agriculture and local employment. The BF farm school, Escuela de Campo will be involved in training locals on the coast in nursery development and garden design and implementation. These jobs will be paid positions that will show the students at our school the value of their skills.

Best to all,

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

First Bona Fide group of 2009 and SEEDS!!!!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

2009 has started with a BANG!!, well more like a wet thump, the sound of water hyacinth being plopped into a 5 gallon bucket and hauled off to mulch our perennial food gardens, medicinal herb collection OR our beautiful annual garden of delights!! (better known as vegetables). Thanks to Dawson College of Montreal, Quebec for helping out on the farm and going on an extensive tour of the finca and the community Center in this last week. Congrats to Tom on leading his first tour of BF. Nice one.

*The water hyacinth (Eichornia crassipes) featured in the group foto of folks wallowing in the agua (with the pond featured and smiling faces) was started from just a few plants 5 months ago, this particular species multiplies itself by orders of magnitude to fill closed bodies of water with nitrogen and protein rich organic material that is fit for mulch, forage, cordage, or as a water filter/clarifier.

Well last week and into this week has found me, (Chris) and Jackie Pitts on a whirlwind tour of Costa Rica reaching out to agricultural institutions, private collectors, and relying on the generosity and acumen of fruit and vegetable vendors throughout Costa Rica. We have gone coast to coast, spent a day in San Jose combing the markets, braved poison dart frogs (see ominous red frog foto) (actual size 1.25cm or 1/2") as well as actually ominous spiny palms (see foto, OUCH-OUCH, I still have scars, that is Salak palm (Salacca edulis) by the way as is the reptilian brown looking fruit featured in the other fotos) to collect fruit, nut, herb, timber, multi-use, and biopesticide tree seeds for our nursery which serves Bona Fide, the local community, and sells trees to expats to support its work. We have managed to purchase, trade, collect, and otherwise obtain seeds from CR to expand our nursery, visit our friends down here in the 'Rich Coast' and make new ones.

Please enjoy also the foto of a nutmeg seed (part you grind up and cook or bake with is inside the brown nut) and Mace( a spice), the brown seed with the red 'web' is actually fresh seed of the nutmeg tree with the 'aril' or 'fruit' of the nut making up the actual spice called Mace. Cool huh??

Thanks to all who shared their knowledge, seeds, and love for plants with us and thanks to Jackie for being a humorous and knowledgeable travel companion.

Best to all,

Chris Shanks
Co-Director, Project Bona Fide

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

Tomatoes_and_rice

Hey all,

Greetings from BF land down under here on the 11th parallel. This week saw the start of our tropic tomato experiment co-ordinated with the Escuela de Campo, Chris' research and our crack cadre of interns. Our hunger for fresh organic tomatoes, and cracking the nut of organic cultivation here in the tropics continues, meanwhile we will sate ourselves on hot chiles and dreams of gazpacho...

This week also ushers in DRYING TIME for our organic rice harvest, looks like we will have about 250 pounds of rice from the farm for the farm. We also harvested about 40 pounds of BF coffee this last week. We will choose the best coffee berries and sow this in the nursery to start an shade grown coffee effort here for home scale consumption on the farm.

Congrats to Tom, Amory, Norman and all other involved in erecting our long term volunteer housing, or the 'Love Shack' as we have dubbed it. All the wood is from BF land, sustainably harvested and processed here mostly with hand tools. The bamboo roof and thatch is also from BF or locally sources. Nice work gents.

Hope everyone celebrates a great holiday with friends and family,

Chris Shanks

First Workshop of the 3rd EdC Season

Greetings all,

This past week saw the beginning of the third year of the Escuela de Campo, founded by Andrea Calfuquir and staffed with great folks like Mai Kobaiyashi, Katherine Young, and Hannah Roessler over the last two years. This season we have a new crop of interns and a mixed crop (in terms of experience) of EDC students from the village, both from years past and new to the work. Nevis is in his third year and he is leading the garden team, putting volunteers to work and co-ordinating with Jackie Pitts. Maria will head up the nursery with Ashley Carter as well. Karen and Aleida will be the medicinal plants and preparation team and all three groups will meet weekly to do group work, have meetings, and share experiences. Just this last Saturday we had Juan Jose Calero from the Masatepe region of Nicaragua come out and teach a group of close to 20 folks a workshop on plant propagation and grafting. The workshop was open to the general public and was well attended.

The garden is shaping up nicely and we are gearing up for our 4th season gardening here, learning daily and reaping the harvest. We will post some green garden shots next week!

Last Monday we managed to get the 3rd part of the playground in, our new swing-set, we are just awaiting the slide and in true Nica style what was promised weeks ago is still in the 'manaña' stage of delivery (you have to come here and live this place to understand this)
Thanks to David Ortiz and Vienel and Hector for the help with installation.

Well, we are gearing up for the holidays here, bulls to catch, drunk people to step over, and LOTS of fireworks, HURRAH!.

Be well all,

Chris

Library opening at 'El Centro' in Balgue

These last few weeks have seen a lot of growth and improvement at the community center. On Tuesday, December 2nd we had a 'soft opening' of our 2nd floor library space. Thanks to Eira, Natasha, Sue Ellen, Patricia, amongst others the community center got an interior sprucing up. Tom, Amory, and Chris built shelves and we all got the books on them. A NEW FACE TO THE community center, thanks to Marta, Maximillian, and a whole gang of local children, we have a new face to the community center, we loved our first initial paint job but we think this mural says a lot more about us, we have been seeing tourists stopping to take photos of late so it seems we have done it well. Congrats to all!!!

We now have regular library hours, local volunteer help, classes offered by local educators and computer classes we well.
The playground that was envisioned by Heather and Ken Knorr is slowly but surely being installed, we now have a swingset, monkey bars, and see saws, we are awaiting a slide, hopefully before the navidad festivities. The farm is busy now, with all interns present and we are getting ready for a new year of learning and cultural exchange.

Be well,

Chris Shanks

Getting our playground on!