Clay Plager-Unger
Clay Plager-Unger is the former director of Planet Drum Foundation's Eco-Ecuador project.
May 26-June 6, 2008 Summary: Many volunteers depart as their time runs up, leaving us with few hands. The paperwork piles remain high, ranging from visas to Bioregionalism Education. Jaime keeps things in the field under control. On Monday the Planet Drum volunteers took a tour of Rio Muchacho Farm to get to see dry tropical forest permaculture in action. I on the other hand […]
May 12-23, 2008 Summary: A good volunteer force and enough rain to keep us from full-time watering allow us to make some real progress on site maintenance and in the greenhouse. On Monday we split into groups. I take some of the volunteers to water the trees at La Cruz and then take a neighborhood tour, collecting discarded three-liter bottles along the way. Jaime heads out […]
April 28-May 12, 2008 Note: Click on photos for larger picture Summary: It rains over the weekend! New volunteers are showing up and we get to put off watering for another week. On Monday I spent a final day editing the Bioregionalismo booklet. Jaime went with Sam to the greenhouse and they planted more Pechiche seeds, transplanted more Jaboncillo, Pechiche and Cabo de H seedlings, prepared another couple seed […]
April 16-25, 2008 It’s been a relatively quiet couple of weeks. The single volunteer Sara was replaced by Sam. Fortunately the workload hasn’t required more hands. As May approaches our numbers will be bolstered by some new arrivals. On Wednesday the 16th of April the finishing touches on the Astillero site were completed. Each tree has a nicely shaped bowl around the base for watering and […]
March 31-April 15, 2008 Hello again. It’s been awhile since I’ve written a report. Starting now, reports will be available on a bi-weekly basis. As always there’s been a lot going on. Every day is a new adventure at Planet Drum Ecuador. The biggest recent change has unquestionably been the weather. By all accounts the rainy season is ending and the long dry season is beginning. There is still an occasional […]
January 19, 2009-January 31, 2009 Summary: Light rains marked the commencement of the rainy season and we mobilized with tree planting at sites that were waiting with trails and holes already prepared. A new volunteer has joined the planting effort and more are on the way. Email is being flooded with prospective volunteers. And Clay and Jaeson paid a visit to the Planet Drum Bioregional Institute […]
January 21-25, 2008 After a relaxing weekend at our good friend Ramon’s cabin on the beach, we get back into the swing of things on Monday by continuing to plant trees at the Don Pepe revegetation site. Jaime arranged for the landowner at the La Granja site to send a truck to the greenhouse to pick up trees. The truck was loaded up with 270 […]
I presented the Mandato (See Attachment Below) prioritizing changes to make a better eco-city at the first Eco-Amigos meeting of 2008. The meeting appears to have been a bit of a rebirth. At the session we elected a Coordinator and Vice-Coordinator, Ronald and Cheo respectively. I want to add an official post for a kid to get in there as well. There’s a lot of […]
January 14-18, 2008 There is an overload of tree planting. With a strong force of volunteers, we tackled some of the biggest sites Planet Drum has ever planted. The reward of collecting seeds, germinating, seed bed work, transplanting in the greenhouse, weeding, watering, and tending to trees exploded into fruition. On Monday, the Bosque Encantado site was completed. 270 trees were successfully put in the […]
December 29, 2008-January 16, 2009 Summary: House repairs continued. Stakes for tree markers are cut and painted. A new site at Bosque Encantado is created. Completed house repairs include (but are not limited to): hiring a contractor to repaint the front of the house, refinishing the Planet Drum sign, repairing the sign’s metal hanger that was in danger of falling to the sidewalk below, overhauling a […]