These two weeks just flew by… I will be back home before I know it! It’ll be nice but there is so much more to do here. I made it my goal to climb a volcano of some sort, so that is happening. Here is what happened lately.
This week I helped plant some trees at the school in Paraiso. We planted two moringa stakes and 3 tree spinach. We planted them on the sunny side of the school to help shade the wall of the classrooms and kind of taught the students about trees and what they can do for creating micro-climates. It still amazes me how you can take a six food branch of a lot of different trees here, cut off the leaves and just stick them in the ground. So easy, so efficient, lets plant 500 more… Well it wasn’t that easy. We were supposed to plant 12 trees but what they didn’t tell us was that the school was built on top of a swamp kind of and was sitting on top of 2m of compacted gravel and clay…. The first shovel actually broke trying to dig through it. So eventually we got 5 holes dug and planted what we could in kind of the bare minimum amount of compost. The kids were great helpers and even brought us milk and cookies during their snack time. I wasn’t too worried about the trees in the short term but the lack of organic matter in the soil could lead to nitrogen deficiencies in the not too distant future so I came up with a bit of a solution. We got the kids to make a ring of rocks and we made a thick mulch bed around each one to help soften the ground and make more soil. The mulch shades the ground and holds moisture while also creating a place for mold and bacteria to establish. This environment attracts all sorts of insects and worms that will decompose the leaves and burrow through the gravel and clay below, aerating it, softening it and improving the ability for it to absorb water. The burrowing organisms will also slowly help till small bits of organic matter into the clay and gravel. Any time you can shade the ground from the scorching sun with living or dead mulch, its health will constantly improve. We are going to do a few more plantings at schools.
My cabin mates from Michigan returned from their travels looking weary but happy and quite a bit more tanned. They also brought a friend from France that they met in their travels. She just studied a term of international law on exchange in Mexico. It was great to have a big crew together to celebrate Canada day because I was the only Canadian for miles haha. We treated ourselves and ate at a restaurant and then partied the night away, we even ended up at a bar with karaoke at one point. It was quite a night in comparison to the 4th of July a few days later. The girl from France definitely knew how to salsa and you could tell she had been helping my Michigan friends learn haha.
I bought myself a bike to make getting to the beach easier but it got a flat tire on its maiden voyage to the beach with another intern. I will have to get it fixed because it saved a lot of time. It was actually kind of ironic that we got bikes to be able to travel faster and then both got flat tires that day… Luckily there was a bar to get some refreshments at on the way home 😉
I have been learning to take care of some milk goats that I am looking after while my one boss goes on a trip. They are great animals but very stubborn, it takes a bit of convincing to get them onto the milk stand. It’s kind of nice having a morning routine feeding and milking every other day but when the last goat steps in your bucket and ruins the whole thing, its a little frustrating. The dogs sure got a treat though. Next time, all the goats are getting their back legs tied when they are milked. I don’t care how nicely they walk up to the stand, plus they don’t even notice being tied as long as there is food in front of them and I still have milk to make an omelette.
There’s been a lot of watering by hand lately. The Veranillo (aka little summer) seems to have stretched a couple weeks longer than it should have. The heat is stressful for all forms of life here. Its sad to see bugs and lizards and stuff falling out of the trees dying from it. It is all part of the circle of life I suppose but everyone here says its like the weather in the dry season and that the wet season has gotten much less consistently wet over the past few years. There is often this dry stretch and then more rain than any of the watershed can handle in the fall. It is pretty apparent that changes in climate patterns will affect a lot of humanity. Some areas, like this wet/dry tropical forest, with already extreme climates are likely to be affected even more.
Here’s a couple critters as usual :0 😉 A giant grass hopper that was too fat to jump and a cool moth with transparent patches on its wings.
Picture Up Top: I went with my friends to a new beach whose name escapes me but it was just as beautiful as the rest. The waves were strong and there was a side current in the water. We just swam around and laid in the water and it was probably one of the most fun afternoons yet.
Ps. I know this post is more than a little late and I am actually almost done writing up week 9+10 too woops! Time is flying by here in Paraiso.
Cheers,
W
Farming In The Rain 
What an amazing adventure!!!
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