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 sacks of compost from the Depto. de Higiene. The 16 rice sacks will be just as much appreciated as the compost was! That day we had help from Marc Beck, the tourist who went with Peter Berg to El Bosque.
We visited El Toro to look for road access on the other side of the gorge, but there was none past the driveway to a farm, and on the other side of the farm was another steep-sided gorge. We may be able to use the top of the main gorge and part of the slope as a test patch. The land on that side belongs to a Gutierrez from Bahia. The first site we had decided on last time belongs to Rita’s family.
I got a tour of the site on land beside the Cherry Farm – only about 2 hectares of it is plantable, and he has cows roaming all over it. The owner suggested that we plant only along the fence line and make a parallel fence to protect the trees. I don’t know if that is worth it since it seems like a landscaping job now.
We watered all the new sites, Dairy Farm and Cherry Tree twice. Endara site didn’t get much water because the cistern was empty but luckily we had a bottle left over from Dairy Farm to use. The two watering pipes that had been installed at the top if the hill in El Bosque were missing, and the water leakage continues, but not as strongly as before – great for us!
Volunteer David is now working on figuring out tree survival rates for the whole project from the maps we have drawn with the dead trees crossed out. Volunteer Stephanie got her tree ID signs laminated, and Briana finished the office curtain hemming. We finished hulling the seca seeds and continued on algarrobo. I got some more information from Marcelo Luque on when to collect seeds of certain species. It seems like a lot will be falling in the next couple months before the wet season.
The new boat club Puerto Amistad had an “inauguration” this weekend, but it wasn’t that rip roaring of a time. David, the Genesis volunteers and I went to a friend’s farm (Baron) in Rambuche this weekend, and collected some guasmo seeds there.
I checked on the Green Accords article that Peter Berg and I were interviewed about at El Diario newspaper a couple times but no luck yet.
Hope all is well,
Heather
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