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 trees and sent to the site.
Darline on the slopes where we are planting.
On Tuesday, the planting of the trees taken to La Granja commenced.
Ramon fills holes with portions of Tierramonte mulch to help the trees grow in the nutrient poor soil.
Ramon joined us with one of the favorite Bioregionalism students, Lissete, to help with the planting.
Lissette plants a Cedro tree.
With all the volunteers and the extra help, much progress was made. Wednesday the volunteers went to the greenhouse to transplant a seed bed of Ebono and a large batch of Amarillo. That night it rained heavily.
Trudging through the slippery mud two groups of volunteers set out to plant trees on Thursday. One group finished the planting at the La Granja site, the other returned to Don Pepe. The hill is so steep and slippery that carrying trees to the top of the site is nearly impossible.
Most of the day was spent tending to the recently planted trees, clearing weeds, propping up weak trunks, and cleaning off dead leaves and branches. The site will have to be finished another day when the ground is drier.
On Friday the rains continued. All of the volunteers have coincidentally taken a long-weekend to various costal destinations such as Porto Lopez and Mompiche. I held down the fort and spend the morning tending to some landowner relations business.
I had set up a meeting with Don Eduardo, director of El Nuevo Globo, to go to his land and talk with some of the members of the community about land usage and some problems we’ve had with them planting crops in our sites. Cheo came along for the ride and we happened to run into Don Eduardo at the entrance to the watershed.
It was raining and he and his driver were wondering if they’d be able to drive in or not. He cracked a joke about how Cheo and I were both in sandals. We were able to drive in and then found the woman who previously claimed that we needed to have an ordinance to be able to build the fence we constructed for the ‘Nuevo Globo’ 2008 revegetation site, as well as the fellow who just planted corn for the second year in a row amidst the young trees at the Maria Dolores site (2007)
Fortunately none of the trees were harmed. Then Eduardo laid it out for the residents explaining that it was his land they were using (or claiming to have governance over) and that they had been using it without asking him permission. The entire neighborhood there is constructed on his land and was a donation to the people. There had been previous problems with some residents abusing his generosity. We are meeting again next week to determine how to handle the issue of the baby corn that has been planted at the Maria Dolores site, but there shouldn’t be any more conflicts in the future. It was one of those times where things come together and several problems get resolved at once. Also it was amazing to see Don Eduardo’s deep passion for the projects we are doing on his land
Pásalo bien,
Clay
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