Projects
Ramon’s Report #1 Bioregionalism EducationSummer Session, 2009 May 6 & 8, 2009 – English(Click here for Spanish/Español) Photos below We started a new school year of Bioregional Education. This time there are three educational institutions: Colegio Vicente Hurtado, with Fabiola Coello as the teacher and Lissette Moncayo as assistant; Colegio Fanny de Baird, with Paola Divito as the teacher and Roberto Rodriguez as the assistant; […]
April 20-May 5, 2009 Rain! The weather on the coast of Ecuador, like many coastal regions, is determined almost entirely by the oceans. Our Pacific Ocean currents are Humboldt and El Niño. Recent increased activity in the El Niño current, associated with the rainy season (January-April/May), has produced some beautiful rains during the past two weeks. This was after what had been assumed by many to […]
April 1-16, 2009 Summary: Volunteers Aaron and Maggie help Jaime and I take care of the tasks at hand. The major undertaking completed in the past two weeks has been preparation and planting of seedbeds. First, a truckload of river sand (salt-free) was acquired to mix with other compost ingredients. We had to go south beyond the town of Charapoto to find river sand in a […]
March 6-31, 2009 Summary: Another action-packed month passes by. Volunteers disperse and continue with their travels; and as their numbers dwindle, the rainy season seems to be petering out. The transition out of the rainy season means that changing the workload to adapt to the shift in weather. In total this year, eleven revegetation sites have been successfully planted with over 2,200 native trees in the […]
March 25, 2009 Hi, Things are going very well. Multiple really, really nice light but substantial rains this past week. Volunteers have died down from 15+ to 4, which feels like nothing in comparison. Things will remain relatively light on this front for another month or two and then pick up again come May/June. I’m looking forward to having a little breather. The summer months […]
February 1-March 9, 2009 Summary: So much to cover, and it all happened in one month!? 10th anniversary of the Eco-city. Tree planting. Myriads of volunteers. Rains. Ridiculously fast growing weeds. Land visits and field trips. I’m going to stick to the field work, since Peter has covered a lot of the Bahia happenings in his Dispatches. I will also rely on photos to show more of […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador The high-pitched enthusiasm of Carnaval is building and an interviewer/photographer team from Taiwan’s Spirit magazine has arrived to report on Eco-Bahia, requesting a tour by me through Bosque en Medio de las Ruinas “wild park.” We were graced with a rainless day to climb down the steps at the farthest entrance accompanied by Patricio Tamariz (who had arranged for the Taiwanese visit), Clay and several Planet […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador Planet Drum’s plans to build a Bioregional Sustainability Institute (BSI) on property that was acquired for that purpose three years ago just took a great step toward. Jaeson Schultz, our land partner in the original purchase of sixty hectares of undeveloped land, is here for a few months and joined Clay and I on an exploratory visit accompanied by Mark Hebard and […]
Mark HebardVolunteer and HenchpersonFebruary 18, 2009 [Mark has been aiding and abetting Planet Drum’s activities from San Francisco for the past six years. He traveled with Peter Berg to Bahia this February.] The last two days in Ecuador have been strenuous and inspiring. Yesterday Peter and I traveled with all the volunteers by ferry across the bay to San Vicente and then by bus up […]
Bahia de Caraquez, Ecuador It is a particularly hard winter of blizzards this year in the Northern Hemisphere and a hot summer marked by forest fires in the Southern, but in Ecuador where sharply defined seasons elsewhere are equatorially ambiguous it is the time of rain at night and, if there is no blanket of gray overcast, baking sun during the day. Downpours range from […]