Heather Crawford, Field Project Manager Planet Drum Foundation  Report August 1-7, 2005 Well, this week the house went from being full to empty as we had the three Canadians leave on one day. Now it’s just Jackie and me until David gets here next week, which is Jackie’s last. She has been sick with a stomach virus type thing and wasn’t able to work for a […]

October 31 to November 7, 2005   Everything is fine in the greenhouse, and the sites— all the regular ones got watered, including Inter-Americano, which still looks good. When I went to water El Bosque, an Ecuadorian friend and four kids from Maria Auxiliadora came to help. The fiestas in Bahia consisted of parades, street concerts and parties in the clubs at night. There was also […]

October 24-30, 2005 I have circulated the strategic plan you left, which some of the volunteers were interested in seeing. It is good for them to have a better understanding of what Planet Drum is all about. This was a greenhouse intense week, as we did a lot of maintenance to prevent further dog break-ins, such as putting up more stakes, lining the walls with […]

October 17 to 23, 2005 For the first time since the dry season started we had a reasonable rain in Bahia on Wednesday! The dogs have found new ways to break into the greenhouse so we have reinforced the walls again. What we thought were Zapote de Perro seeds coming up were actually weeds, but now the real seeds have started to come up, although […]

October 10-16, 2005 The greenhouse inventory below was taken on October 10th (bags and bottles only; not seedbeds). The numbers may not be exact, but they give us an idea nonetheless. Algarrobo                     9 Aguia                           3 Cascol                        10 Colorado                     83 Cedro                        223 Ceibo                        117 Ebano                          11 Guachapeli                 102 Jaboncillo                      5 Guayacan                    221 Samango                     103 Seca                              1 TOTAL                        888 We did some minor repairs to the greenhouse […]

October 3-9, 2005 I’m a bit sick—got some dirt in my eye in the greenhouse which caused an infection which I am treating now. I finally bought Blas’ surfboard (he wanted a new one) and so am practising more regularly. I also got attacked by a bees nest at Cherry Tree. It was one I had seen before but forgot was there, low to the ground […]

September 19 to 25, 2005  We went to the greenhouse 3 times again this week, and sowed more algarrobo seeds. Ramon’s dad, from whose land we got the seca seeds, said that those seeds may take months to sprout. I trimmed up the muyuyo tree where it was getting in the way around the outside seeds beds in front of the greenhouse. We emptied the […]

September 12-18, 2005  We’ve begun watering the greenhouse three times a week, and have already seen improvements, especially with the samangos, perhaps because they are not native to the dry tropical forest, and do better in transition zones (according to Dario of Rio Muchacho). We prepared more seed beds and sowed seca (soaked for different lengths of time as an experiment), barbasco and guachapeli seeds. […]

September 5 – 11, 2005 We have been going into rainy season prep mode by preparing seeds (hulling, soaking) and sowing in the greenhouse. This week we hulled some more of our barbaso-algarrobo-seca store, and sowed zapote de perro and algarrobo. We mixed some more sand and compost into the seed beds before sowing, as it seemed that the soil was getting too compacted with […]

August 29 to September 4, 2005    This week two new volunteers arrived – Briana and Stephanie, which puts us to 4 people living in the house.  Both speak Spanish. We were able to retire one of the compost piles at the greenhouse and move it over into the storage area. We also repaired the fence around the compost area, and put up a new section. […]