New additions to BF!!!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

Well I have been back in Nicaragua for about one and half weeks, and yes the internet world is SLOW again. Everything else though is moving quickly. Whilst I was away our diligent crew of interns and volunteers under the careful tutelage of David Ortiz finished our new bread/pizza oven with a tiled finish to the pizza prep table, we re-used broken tiles from my house construction to eliminate building waste. This project was carried out as an exercise in design/build of bread ovens with natural materials to a high end finish, my for profit venture, Living Ssytems Solutions provided the funding in hopes that the skills gained by local folks and the showpiece space of having the oven at BF will attract future clients and create more well paid local employment on the island. Well at the very least we will eat lots of pizza with our friends. Same can be said for the worm bin which is the zinc roofed long narrow structure featured in another foto in this week’s update. We just put over 3 pounds of worms in there and Nevis made a bed of dried manure and finished compost. Those wormies are happy!! We are hoping to use the black gold produced by our new friends to take the food gardens and medicinal production to another level. Nice work all!

One of the last two fotos feature the final tile roofing of my porch on my soon to complete home at BF and hopefully a new sense of peace to come along with it as I finally move into my new digs after living, camping, and sleeping all over the farm for over 7 years. Yeah seven. The small thatch structure with a black plastic finish is our new mini solar barn for wood drying and storage, no more moist wood winters for BF!! Congrats to Hector, our new local project leader and volunteer MC. Same to be said for Martha Fuchs our current volunteer coordinator who helped Hector knock out this new much needed additions.

Well folks new additions to our growing project. Come eat pizza and we will throw the scraps to the wormies. One big cycle. Sweet.

Best to all and thanks for your support,

Chris Shanks
Co-director, Project Bona Fide

Updates, Collecting and More!!

Greetings Project Bona Fide Friends and Supporters,

One important development in communications in Nicaragua as of a week or so ago. If you are calling Nicaragua for whatever reason (hopefully to send us love) you must now dial an ‘8’ before the 7 digit mobile number and a ‘2’ before whichever land line number you call. Just so you know.

Since my last post I have traveled down to Florida to spend time with my family. In my 4 days here I have visited 3 botanical institutions: The Fairchild Botanical Garden, The Montgomery Botanical Garden, and The Fruit and Spice Park of Homestead FL. I have been collecting plant material for ex-situ conservation and newcrops/food systems development for Bona Fide at 2 of these sites for over half a decade. My visit to the Montgomery Botanical Garden (http://www.montgomerybotanical.org) was my first. The MBG is invite only, it is a former estate which is now a NGO dedicated in great part to the preservation of palms and cycads. they have the largest collection of cycads in the entire world, a huge part of the worlds genetics for cycads as well as the safeguards for the continuance of these species is being caried out by MBG and its allies. I was fortunate enough to spend a half day with the Manager of Collections, Chad Husby PHD. Chad was extremely gracious and I thank him wholeheartedly for his time and energy. This visit has begun what we hope is a long collaboration with MBG and other allied institutions. This newfound affiliation is a great ‘leg up’ for Bona Fide in terms of our work in ex-situ conservation and Newcrops development.

The evolving Bona Fide website. The BF website has grown in the last few weeks and we thank Matthew Homeijer, our web ninja wizard for his time and creative energy to make this happen. Mat is a busy man working in the big city, NYC. He is also a father of a very rambunctious 2 year old, Silas. We have named Silas our ‘manager’ for website updates, his picture is featured this week. Usually we do the updates while he naps.

Other photos features: the yummy looking fruit is a Pakistani Mulberry, a cultivar of Morus nigra that can have fruits up to 4″ long. They taste amazing. Not really a lowland tropical fruit but for the tropics at elevation, the sub tropics and other climates they are incredible. Traditionally in Pakistan and Afghanistan they were dried for eating whilst traveling. The photo of seed drying shows the spoils from collecting in the last 3 days. The aerial shot is a view of MBG and its grounds which is 120 acres.

Hope everyone is well, thanks for your support,

Chris Shanks

Community Center Fence, RAIN, and thanks.

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

I write you from a balmy New York city, having sated myself on temperate spring flowering displays in both the Brookyln botanical garden and the NYBG in the Bronx. Both amazing, two great days full of trees and learning. I have spent the last 2 weeks on the east coast seeing family, meeting with Michael Judd our co-director and strategically planning BF’s direction for the rest of the year and the coming year. Bona Fide’s website has some new faces, with a brand new ‘Escuela de Campo’ page and updated FAQ pages plus a new FAQ page and NEW intern pages. Please check them out. Our web NINJA master, Mat Homeijer has been busting his butt between a full time job, childcare, life, and helping BF. THANKS MAT!!

Now a big thanks also to The University of Vermont’s Service Learning Program or CUPS for the GRANT we received to fund and maintain a native timber coppice system for polewood and firewood production. This is a first step of many of Bona Fide’s foray intoo thr grant world and larger co-operation with other organizations. Many thanks to Michael Blazewicz for co-authoring the grant with yours truly. THANKS MIKE!

RAIN. Yes RAIN. It is the driest period of the dry season yet we received signifcant showers last week for durations of one half hour or more. This coming wet season could be very interesting. We shall see.

The Community fence project at our community center is slowly shaping up with Vienel, an assistant mason from Chris’ team leading a group of community volunteers in erecting the fence. Vienel has been working for over 6 weeks on forming and curing the nearly 60 (8 foot) concrete posts with various community supporters, now we are putting them in the ground
. We hope to have the fencing in in a few weeks and to begin planting the garden, shade trees for the playground and medicinal plants for the community when the rain becomes steady in about 3 weeks.

Best to all and thanks for your support,

Chris Shanks
Co-Director, Project Bona Fide