Our piles are composting really fast now due to the above-ground method and doing smaller piles so they get more aeration.

July 16-22, 2005

The two brothers who were here short term left midway through the week, and the two Canadian girls, Jenny and Elisabeth, moved in. They will be here a month, till mid-August. They are friends of a past volunteer. Now we have 5 people in the house including me. Carley leaves at the end of the month and Jackie in mid-August. We have more volunteers lined up to come starting mid-August.

This week in the greenhouse we finished repairing the outside seedbed which we had worked on last week, and began repairing the one under the moyuyo tree. We continued transplanting from baggies to bottles, and started taking out the compoyo seedlings which had come up. We moved finished compost from one of the piles for storage under the tarp. Our piles are composting really fast now due to the above-ground method and doing smaller piles so they get more aeration. I watered the few trees that needed it on the lower slope of the Universidad Catolica site. We received 102 cedro amargo trees from a greenhouse near Canoa. They had so many they didn’t know what to do with them all and were looking to give them away. Afranio from the Depto. de Riesgo was our link to the trees and the municipio provided the transport to get them to our greenhouse. I helped them offload theirs at the Fanca greenhouse too. I collected some barbasco and algarrobo seeds for sowing last weekend from the Machalilla area. Below is the greenhouse inventory on July 19th (before we received the extra cedros):

algarrobo                      13

colorado                      102

cedro                           135

ceibo                           120

guachapeli                    114

jaboncillo                        4

guayacan                      152

mamey colorado             15

samango                       132

We watered all three km 8 sites, and El Bosque. We got help in El Bosque from a kid who happened to be wandering around in there.

We also constructed a fence at the Dairy Farm going across a ditch near the entrance. It was the only non-fenced area that we had planted.

We’ve been continuing on the house improvements – getting things fixed and organized. There is now a hammock hanging in the patio area in the back – a prize from cleaning out the bodega last week! 

Heather