BLog update a long time coming…

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

We are a bit behind on the blog these days due to high winds. High winds and waving trees contribute to spotty internet connections and loss of connections equals inability to update the blog. Nevertheless we will persist. Much is happening here on the farm, late February saw the first visit of my mother, Candace Shanks who has been a contributor to BF’s work via supporting fundraising efforts, awareness, organizing, and not the least hauling dozens of bilingual children’s books to the Balgue’s library at the community center, YEAH MOM!!!

This week’s features are Sapotaceae family DIVERSITY. The three exotic looking fruits in the posted fotos are 3 botanically distinct pecies. Trick is that only 2 of them seem to be known to general science and fruit species diversity. Seems that we may have a distinct sub species of Pouteria zapota or perhaps a different species occurring in the Masatepe region of Nicaragua not far from the colonial town of Granada. Go DIVERSITY!!!

We are all TIED UP here, that is in the ‘love shack’ that is to say that volunteers and interns have been working diligently on the new staff housing facility lovingly dubbed the ‘Love Shack’ as it is being built by our resident English couple, Tom and Eira. This building is built with bamboo from the farm, all the wood is from the farm and the thatch that will make up the roof was locally obtained. It is going to be a beautiful building. Congrats to all who helped with this effort of harvesting, drying, splitting, and cutting up a lot of bamboo PLUS tying all these bamboo members together with thousands of feet of tarred twine. NICE WORK. Pictured in the ‘Da shack’ is Shane and Jonah and pictured sawing is Sally, our new community support intern.

The last two fotos illustrate BF agricultural research and food systems development efforts. The curiously looking tomato like fruit is related to tomato but is actually a botanically distinct species. In efforts to grow tomatoes organically in a challenging climate and soil that seems especially hostile to the nightshade family save hot peppers (they are native here!!) we have been conducting trials of 8 varieties of tropically adapted tomatoes as well as 3 botanically distinct species. So far so good, we think we will have made some selections in the next month. Last but not least is the featured foto of one of our dozens of cinnamon trees that flower this time of year. Flowers bring seeds and seeds bring sharing of this valuable spice for both food and medicine.

Cheers to all.

Best to all,

Chris Shanks

Co-Director Project Bona Fide

Chris@projectbonafide.com

Permaculture course all wrapped up!!!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

Happy birthday to Eira, thanks to a wonderfully eager staff and a small error we ended up with 5 cakes to celebrate the birthday of our resident hobbit and do all wündergirl, Eira who is the volunteer coordinator as well as the community outreach coordinator. Kudos. Thanks to small errors that bring 5 cakes. No cake was wasted in the eating of this mistake. Pictured with Eira is of course the one of a kind, wünderkind himself, 1/2 my size, twice my brain power, our Permaculture interpreter extraordinaire, my ‘mini me,’ Tiny Man, AKA Cris Fallas of Costa Rica. People of Bona Fide, we salute you Cris.

Thanks to the early risers on the 2nd to last day of the course for your help in carrying the final piece of the playground puzzle to the community center grounds over 4 months later, a barel of excuses and a lot of blackouts our playground is complete. Thanks again to the Knorr family for your support.

Who is that man in the hole? Answer: Don Agustin Contreras, our local well digger. Along with two Bona Fide staff members we have been digging for over 3 weeks, we hit water almost a week ago and now we are very close to being able to set up our pumping system. Thanks to everyone for your support.

As the course finishes up we prepared for our design projects. You will see a foto of Lydia, a young mother from town who completed the design course, she is pictured above talking about her design project to the rest of the class, also pictured, Tiny man’s back. Lydia is also the woman pictured in traditional dress doing folkloric dance for the talent show, also pictured is Ebbie Slow (6yrs), local resident and comedian.

Last but not least, my ugly mug as pictured from a Jackfruit tree(Artocarpus heterophyllus). I hardly ever post fotos of myself as I am usually taking the fotos and Michael and I love this one so why not. Gotta love jackfruit, biggest fruit on E-A-R-T-H. That is the kind of tree that can feed a lot of people, One mature tree can produce over a ton of fruit/seeds annually. WOW.

Best to all,

Chris Shanks
Co-Director Project Bona Fide
Chris@projectbonafide.com

Permaculture Design course IDEAS, Sharing!

Greetings Bona Fide friends and supporters,

It has been exactly 2 weeks since my last update. It has also been two weeks since our largest Permaculture course here at Bona Fide has begun. I see a pattern there. We are very fortunate to be sharing ideas, cultures, making friends and extending networks with people from: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Canada and the good ole US of A. We are 32 folks, from 8 countries, all walks of lives, youths eager to learn and more seasoned folks eager to share, we all have a lot to offer. We are especially honored to be hosting 2 Mayan youths from SE Guatemala. These two gentleman and their travel companion and staff member, Karyn Stein come from the Asociacion Ak’ Tenamit (New Town). We salute you.

As the course begins to wrap up and 5 design groups are eagerly sharing ideas and putting it all on paper we are ready for a bit of a rest before the next step. But no rest for thr WICKED (HA!!), as we will host a whole slew of course participants as BF volunteers, crank out a bunch of cool projects, finish the ‘Love Shack’ and hopefully get some worms into their new home we built for them.

Is that what it looks like??, red luscious and juicy, YES it is!! Bona Fide’s first organic tomato produced in out tomato culture experiment being conducted by the Escuela de Campo staff and Chris. So far so good. Eggplants coming soon. Go team Garden.

Now what? What’s that? Egg fruit or otherwise known as canistel, sapote amarillo or sapote mico or AKA Pouteria campechiana. An excellent fruit introduced to Nicaragua in pre-Colombian times and a hopeful one for BF food security and research work to work with and reintroduce into the local diet. High in bete carotene and vitamin A, can be made into savoury pies or blended with whole milk. YUM!

And this? Crazy looking red fruit with cerebral cortex looking yellow food matter. ACKEE!!
Blighia sapida, from west Africa, brought over by African folks who were stolen from their countries, cooked with salted codfish in Jamaica and favoured above almost all foods, perfectly drought hardy to our climate and potentially poisonous if not eaten at the right time. WOW.

Last but most definitely not least NEVIS AND MARIA IN THE HOUSE!! (or classrooom that is) Both Nevis and Maria have been participating in the PErmaculture design course as occasional students and TEACHERS, each one sharing the finding of their research projects with the class, Nevis spoke about soil fertility, the role of essential macro and micro nutrients in the soil and how to rectify deficiencies organically. Maria spoke abour intregrated pest management as a transitional system to all one to convert to organic methods w/o loss of production. Nice work! Aleida will be presenting sometime this week as well on her work with medicinal plants.

Best to all,

Chris