Week 7+8: Business as Usual

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

Week 6:The halfway point

This past week marks the half way point. I always find this an interesting position to be in on a journey. It makes me think of everything that happened thus far and how at least that much can/will happen in the last part of the journey. It is also kind of uprising how quickly this halfway point came. Looking back a lot has happened and the landscape is completely different, with all the trees leafed out and the fields full of knee to shoulder high hay. I noticed that every week when I made the trip into Santa Cruz, things were a little more green. Right now I am not sure they can get any more green but I have started the constant battle of cutting back weeds and vines from my beans I planted to eat. I even had to trim back some trees around the plots so that the light could get in. Some of the bananas and trees have put on almost 6 feet of growth since I got here. I have no doubt that if you sat still for too long here, the forest would send out tendrils and grow right over you.

The weather has been kind of inconsistent lately. There are days when the normally constant wind doesn’t blow at all and not a drop of rain falls. Some days we get just a little shower and the good rains are spaced by about 4 days. The locals are all saying the hot days are kind of like the weather they get in the summer but no one predicted the veranillo (little summer) I talked about last week would last this long. There have been quite a few days when irrigation was needed to save the wilting little trees.

On thing that was awesome this past week is that ROW hit a pretty big milestone with creating a protected area of the Nandamojo river. A large section of the river is now fenced off and protected from humans and livestock. This will allow a natural buffer zone to help reduce erosion and pollution while also providing secure habitat for wildlife. next steps are finishing the reforestation of it and trying to get more land owners to actually protect the legally protected area near the river.

One of the parcela owners already planted all 150+ trees we delivered to him a couple weeks ago and had some more room so we gave him about 80 more. With the rate most trees grow here it will be an impressive stand with underbrush species moving in in just a couple years.

I spent a Friday up in the little mountain town of La Florida working with a group of high school students from a nearby city doing research projects on the water systems. We sampled two rivers and some of the local wells to compare their content of markers of human activity like nitrates and phosphates. One group compared how much silt was in the water to the presence of macro-invertebrates like snails and shrimp and worms. It was pretty cool working with a group of older students. There were definitely a few of them with a promising spark for environmental stewardship and that was great to see. We also dropped off a bunch of sacks of vetiver the next morning for the students to help some landowners plant.

I have been experimenting with soil preparation methods and planted a bunch of taro this week into little prepared holes or huecos as they call them. It was kind of like a little nest for each plant. I mixed in a shovel full of ash and charcoal and compost into each hole. The ash helps neutralize the acidic soil and the charcoal helps add drainage and prevent compaction. Charcoal also provides lots of surface area for beneficial bacteria and fungi to live and can act kind of like a sponge for water and nutrients. The taro should love the extra moisture from the slope here as they can be grown under a foot or so of water.

(this is where I kind of run out of stuff I did to talk about and segue into whats been on my mind this summer: the environment and food systems/ people)

The bananas that are currently there are some dwarf cavendish bananas and havent really taken well to being under water sometimes. I learned that most of the farmers around here have given up on this type of banana because although they are one of the main commercial bananas, they are prone to disease and pests.  They were bred for their propensity to produce fruit with the help of chemical spray in high input systems, not to be vigorous on their own. Also, with the massive monocultures that are most banana production farms, there have been some really nasty fungi and diseases that have developed and are becoming almost unstoppable. The cavendish group will likely be wiped out in the next decade or so. We are really starting to see the effects of massive monocultures and the over use of pesticides and fungicides on our food systems. I watched the movie Interstellar on the plane ride over hear and it is a pretty cool movie. There isn’t a lot of substance to it but it paints an interesting picture of modern agriculture. The movie is set hundreds of years in the future and all the monocultured crops have failed to an unstoppable blight except corn. When corn starts to be affected by the blight as well the remaining humans have to search for another planet to colonize. It is definitely far fetched but really brings to light the issue of our constant battle with pests and plant diseases. Many of these organism reproduce and evolve at a rate much faster than we could ever hope to keep up with. It is not a sustainable system in that sense and in combination with its effects on eroding our topsoils, it is doomed to collapse. We have been inflating the system, pushing the boundaries in profit and scale just like we do with ever other industry. The only problem is food production is more than an industry, people rely on it to keep them alive.

A lot of research surrounding diet and food production has has me thinking a lot about planning a more sustainable and local diet for the coming school year. There is also something about living in a culture like this where meat products aren’t as cheap or readily available at home that makes me really think about what I normally eat. My diet here is really heavy on beans and even in an active setting like my placement here, meat three or four meals a week it is more than enough to keep me healthy and fed. I want to utilize more alternative proteins like beans and other pulses at home that have a smaller environmental footprint than meat. I can easily use them to have some meatless meals and they would make a nutritious and healthy addition to my diet. I also found that a lot of beans and even chick peas are grown and sold right in Canada which makes it even better.

I was invited to help my boss and his wife butcher ducks in exchange for the meat from one duck. Butchering an animal of any sort wasn’t something I had done in a while and I thought it would be a good sort of sobering experience. Plus, the sound of fresh, free range duck sounded pretty enticing to the carnivore in me. All in all it was a good experience and gave me kind of a refresher on the cost of the meat we eat and gave me some perspective. It gave me a point of sustainability to go off of and really realize how inhumanely a lot of meat is raised. These animals had a good life and were raised with enough space but a lot of the birds we eat don’t get that chance. I always try to source from local, non-factory farms, but the price can be a huge deterrence. I think now I am better prepared to make the decision to eat meat more responsibly even if the price tags suggest otherwise. I grew up in an extended family of beef producers that raise beef responsibly so I know how it works and I know the right people to support are out there if you look.

On a lighter note the critters this week were cool! I found another giant caterpillar (like as big as my hand) and a stick bug this week. He/she was missing one front leg but was still really cool. When they walk they sway like a twig in the wind. I tried to keep it around with a piece of cucumber which it nibbled a couple times but it wanted to be back outside so i put it in the bean patch. It is probably munching my beans now…

Cheers,

W

 

 

 

 

 

 

Week 4+5:Tiny Turtles and A Touch of Tainted Food

Well, I can finally cross something off my summer bucket list! I have always wanted to hold a baby sea turtle and help release it into the sea and I figured this summer would be a great time. I just happened to be down at the beach with my friends at the perfect time to participate in a release. There was a large school group visiting Verdiazul (the sea turtle conservation place at Junquillal) and there was also a bunch of freshly hatched turtles. I am not sure what species they were but mine was super cute and I named it Sophie. It was amazingly strong for its size and having just hatched minutes before. They gave everyone who wanted to participate a plastic glove so we didn’t accidentally transmit anything to the hatchlings and lined us up along the beach with the surf just about reaching our toes. We all knelt down so we didn’t accidentally step on any and they handed everyone each a tiny turtle. On the count of 3 we all let them go. About 75 little turtles all made the race into the ocean. They all had a really strong instinct to make it to the water and through the surf, only going off track sometimes to get around a rock or a large hole dug by a crab. It was crazy to see them swim right out into the waves that are so large that they were tossing me around only minutes before. Apparently they ride the under toes out past where the waves break and then they are good to go. It also helps that most sea turtles can hold their breath for over an hour. I cant help but wonder if that might be less for a newly hatched turtle, they’re so tiny!

The next bit was pretty uneventful because I got food poisoning from some old(er) pesto I think… It took me a full week to recover fully, i am feeling great now though. If you ever travel, take re-hydration salts of some sort with you. They sell them as vitamin C packed cold remedies usually. They are cheap and they can actually save your life if you get sick or dehydrated.

 

Because that week was kind of dampened by having to stay home, I decided to include week 5 as well. (This is also great because I don’t have to feel like I am behind a week anymore haha)

I used a lot of my down time between being sick and sleeping a lot to read some really interesting books on climate and food production. One of these was Plan B 3.0 by Lester Brown. I thought this book did a really great job of giving perspective to environmental issues and how humans come into play. The whole first half of the book is issues with the environment and the last half is solutions and current progress being made. I liked this because a lot of literature on climate change and/or the environment have a pretty grim tale to tell these days. It was nice to be able to skip over some of the doom and gloom I have already read and read more about solutions.

Many of the food systems of today are terrible for the environment. For example, some things like tomatoes in the grocery store are often shipped all the way from South America or Africa. This happens even in the heart of summer when they could literally be growing in your backyard or in a local farmers field or greenhouse. This type of system takes a lot of energy for transport and cooling and results in a lot of wasted food, food that the world could definitely use. I spent a lot of time learning about systems of food production like hydroponics (growing plants in nutrient rich water) and aquaponics (using fish to produce the nutrient water for the plants) that could help bring food closer to the consumer.  These ideas are nothing new but I really think that this is part of the solution to the current food shortages worldwide and could help remedy nutrient deprived diets of the west. I am seriously considering getting involved in the urban food production industry as a career.  I think my new program plan of getting a biology minor alongside my biochem major will help me to learn a lot of relevant information when it comes to the science of food production. I am also hoping to take some environmental science courses too so that I can really orient myself within the current environmental scene. Things like rooftop greenhouses could help bring more nutritious food closer to where it is consuming, minimizing waste and reducing the cost. Over 50% of the worlds population lives in larger cities. This means that for the first time in human history, we are a majorly urban species and the one thing we forgot to design into our utopic urban landscapes was food.

One really cool project I got to work on this week was an erosion control workshop with students in the nearby town of Rio Seco. It was fun to work with the kids to teach them about taking care of their soils and land. It will take including as many future doers and thinkers as possible to help restore the planet to a functional state. We planted a couple hundred vetiver grass plants along the back edge of their communities soccer field which was built half cut into the hillside. the bank had been slowly eroding and threatened to undermine the street above it. It will need some more stabilization but the line of vetiver at the footing is a great start to holding up the bank. Click here to see a video about it!

I started working a lot alongside the single mother who works here while the students from Michigan were gone (They are still out and about travelling… I think they are coming back). She only speaks Spanish so I’ve had a lot of practice lately which is great but can be really mentally exhausting.  I can really see myself improving though and it is very rewarding. If I keep working hard I can definitely reach my goal of fluency in the next 7 weeks.

Lately I have been in charge of getting together tree deliveries early in the morning for river planting projects. We delivered around 300 trees in one week! There is also a process of starting to check on older planting projects to see how much trees they still need and if they took care of their last saplings. Its kind of like a reward system. You take care of your trees and your more likely to get more free stuff from Restoring Our Watershed. All of the farmers want to get involved once they see their neighbors doing it because it is of no cost to them. I think they kind of get a little competitive and the results are great so far. Everyone should compete to take better care of their land if that’s what it takes to save the watershed.

I haven’t had to water in weeks and the rains seem to be keeping a lot of the larger bugs in hiding which is totally ok with me. There are still so many caterpillars and I found a cool hawk moth as well. It was dead but that allowed me to get a good photo of it. Lots of the caterpillars I posted including this one are types of hornworms. Hornworms are the larval form of hawk moths or as some people know them, hummingbird moths. they are the ones that kind of look like a hummingbird because their wings move so fast and some of them (like this one) even have the same coloration and a little fake feathery tail. So cool!

Cheers,

-W

 

Week 3-Watching Grass Grow and Rain Fall

It seems that no matter the weather here, when you work you are bound to get soaked. Whether its sunny and you sweat or its raining and you’re  from the rain and your sweat… This week was even more rainy than the last!!! It is really relaxing after a long day to fall asleep to the sound of rain (luckily the tin roof is insulated so it kind of muffles the downpours). Sometimes when it rains hard enough, the water splashes off the roof and in through the vents in the heat riser and into the kitchen area/ my bedroom. Its usually just a nice fine mist but I learned its enough to soak a book left open all day on the top of your bunk bed.

Towards the end of the week we entered into what they call a temporal here. Its a period of sustained rain and cloudiness that comes in from the eastern side of the country I am told. Since Thursday, we have been getting about 2″ (5cm) of rain per day. Its been really nice to not have to water a bunch and it has been a really good break from the heat. The mornings are still a little bit sunny and we have gotten a good amount of work done without getting rained out.

We used these breaks in the rain, as well as the couple sunny days leading up to the temporal, to plant literally thousands of vetiver grass plants. You take a big pry bar,  or a large stick deftly creatively sharpened with your machete, and jam holes in the hillside just big enough to hold a little group of vetiver grass ripped off a larger chunk of vetiver grass . You then jam the grass into each hole and step on the side of the hole to squish the roots in there. Then you wait…and wait… and wait. It’s actually pretty impressive how fast the stuff starts to grow once the roots take. All of the bundles are trimmed back before planting to about 8″ tall to prevent too much water loss from the leaves and promote root growth. Once they start growing you can quickly see how fast the new leaves grow up past the cut marks. The rains were perfect timing because they will help it get established before even bigger downpours come to wash away the hills. A lot of these plantings are used as test sites for larger scale planting at projects in the community and in the high lands. They also serve as a demo for people interested in getting help with their erosion problems.

The cabina here that I share with the two interns from Michigan is a pretty cool little place. There is no glass in the windows, only screens. The kitchen has a two burner gas range (pretty much a BBQ grill) and even a little island. It opens up into a dining room with a bookshelf stocked full of cool books on climate and soil science as well as gardening autobiographies and plant propagation manuals. I have been working through pretty much every title on the shelf. Some of the climate change books are a little too fatalist for me, they can keep their negative attitudes about making a difference. The whole building is designed to prevent water waste. the kitchen sing drains into a grow bed to the west of the house and the shower, laundry sink, and bathroom sink drain into stands of bananas. The roof also doesn’t have gutters but instead drains into grow beds with peppers and different shrubs.  When it really starts to rain these beds are designed to let water flow further from the house and out into the bigger planting plots.

It was pretty amazing to celebrate my 21st birthday on the beach here in Costa Rica. We grabbed ice cream, some fresh baked cinnamon buns from the bakery and a few beers and headed to Playa Blanca. Tide was high so the waves were big but we still got a good amount of swimming and snorkeling done. We each had a couple drinks and then bused back into town to have dinner. I think a persons birthday should be about celebrating life and I’d say that’s exactly what we did. There’s no need for too much planning or gifts. All you need is friends, good food, and some good laughs. It was weird not being surrounded by the familiar friendly faces and my family. It was great to get messages from a lot of my friends back home and to end the day with a phone call home.

Now for a critter update. The dozens of different butterflies that were here last week left us thousands of caterpillars or gusanos as they are called in Spanish. The phrase ‘no me gustan los gusanos’–‘I do not like the caterpillars’  and the phrase ‘ahhh uno gusano esta en mi pelo, ayudame’–‘there is a caterpillar in my hair, help me’, were used countless times. There is nothing like the hardships of a caterpillar plague to bring about a shared disdain and bring the group closer together. My only real problem with them is they stripped bare some of the tree spinach trees which were feeding us… not cool. Here are a few photos of some of the different ones I found. Every time I turn around I find a different one and it is really cool to see how much some of them change as they grow and molt. If I didn’t look at them every day I would deny that its even the same kind of caterpillar that started out looking like bird poop and now looks like a little snake (likely some sort of swallowtail). I have no clue what species most of them are (except I think the orange spiky one is a gulf fritillary because it was hosting on a passion fruit vine). I also found a cool translucent swallowtail of some sort! The diversity here is amazing.

These black ones are over 4 inches long!

^these are the ones that start out looking like bird poop and then look more and more like snakes as they grow. The full grown ones are kind of blue and grey and have big eye-like markings on them. They host on the citrus trees.

I also caught a baby iguana this week, here he/she is chilling in my hand. Definitely a highlight. Please ignore the dirty scruff, It is really hard to shave without a mirror or hot water.

Sorry for the delay on the post but it was a pretty slow week so I had to think about what to write about and I wanted to include my birthday too! A lot of the projects that were planned get postponed or moved due to weather or people not being ready. The lifestyle here is very laid back and relaxed and there isn’t as much of a sense of urgency to get work done. It is really interesting but hard to get used to when I am used to what it is like back home. Some more cool stuff has happened since I started writing this but I will include that in the post for this week… Which is next post…This is getting confusing.

PS. This posts cover image is a really cool, very invasive tree that lives here. I have yet to actually identify it but it reseeds everywhere and everybody tells me ‘no es nativo’ (it is not native). It does have the benefit of being absolutely stunning. Imagine a 35 foot tall tree with a canopy at least that wide completely covered in fiery orange and red flowers. And imagine a whole hillside covered in them.

Cheers,

-W

Week 2- Laundry, Trees and a Bathroom Scorpion

After another great week in Costa Rica, I learned you can only wear clothes so many times before you can’t stand to put them back on. When you go to pull a work shirt over your head and you almost pass out from the lack of fresh air, its time to do laundry. Now, I have never done my laundry by hand before and it seemed like a simple process…but you never really know how much mud and grime a sock is holding or sand is in your cargo pants until you actually go to wash them. I  can honestly say that I now have much more respect for my washing machine that sometimes makes things smell weird, at least the clothes come out clean. I also learned that it was a mistake to bring anything resembling white to Costa Rica. If it didn’t have mud on it, I somehow made sure to rub all the mud in the wash basin, or from another piece of clothing that appeared clean, onto it. Another tricky thing here is drying on the line. If there is 95% humidity, nothing is going to dry no matter how hot it is. I had a few things that weren’t washed during the dry spell that had to be washed a second time because they kinda got musty.

One of the projects I worked on this week was cleaning up, weeding and organizing the nursery stock. We potted up around 150 baby cashew trees that just sprouted last week into bags. They will live through their first dry season here and then will be ready to be planted out. Cashew trees are super drought tolerant and allow for a almost fail proof crop here. They require little input once established and can be a great way to produce extra cash from reforested sections of your property. There are locals who buy the raw cashews for a pretty high price, roast them, and then ship out. Cashews have this really tough outer shell on them which is full of oils that burn your skin and make you itchy so working with the seedlings was a little bit tricky.

 

A baby cashew sprout showing the old seed husk still attached and some of the larger ones potted up.

One day, a local farmer named Tonyo came by and picked out about 50 native tree saplings from the nursery for reforesting his land along the river. He also picked out a few non- native fruits and edible trees to plant closer to his home. He had a few starfruits and a Moringa tree or two which is a really cool tree that has super nutritious edible leaves. We have been eating a lot of it. Its really good sauteed with garlic and onions.

Like a lot of people here, Tonyo only has a motorcycle to drive so we delivered the trees. Matt, my boss from Restoring Our Watershed, arranged for me to stay at Tonyos farm with him for the rest of the work day and walk along the river conducting a census of the trees there. I also did a brief assessment of the state the river bank was in and also made note of where each species of tree was found in relation to the river bed once established. This will help us better map out plantings along the river in the future. By putting the trees closest to the river that remain healthy there once mature and the ones who only exist in mature form further from the river, we can hopefully maximize their success. Tonyo was great to work with and the whole day was a lot of fun. He told me about all the different crops that his family used to grow  un-irrigated and laughed at how ridiculous it would be to even attempt most of them now even with irrigation.  It was kind of a full-immersion crash course in speaking Spanish,  talking about trees in Spanish, and farming… in Spanish. Tonyo though my big green mud boots were ridiculous because the river is bone dry but I told him they were to protect me from snakes and he thought that made sense because farmers get bit often.

Its funny that Tonyo is the one working to better reforest his buffer along the river because of the 5 properties we walked along the river, his forest stand was undoubtedly the healthiest with trees of all different ages and established underbrush. His section of the river bank was also the least eroded. He had 33 species of trees alone, only a couple of which non-natives which have naturalized everywhere here anyways.  The next best land owners had 21 species of mostly mature trees and little underbrush and the worst had only 10 species not counting the invasive, non-native teak  escaped from his plantation that actually promotes erosion. Teak trees are native to India, Northern Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and the Phillipines. They  are quite beautiful trees that have these massive (sometimes 16 inches across) leaves that are fuzzy. These giant leaves are made to catch mist and fine rain from the air and make it fall to the plants roots below. In downpours, especially on land that isn’t flat and has no under-story growth (like in the plantations), the drops are collected and water is funneled downwards in streams that wash away the soil. Imagine this as the equivalent of having 20 or 30 rain gutters strapped to each tree without any sort of elbow or concrete pad like you have on the ones one your home preventing the water from digging down into the soil.

Now about the rain… I know last week I had said the rains had started and that wasn’t a lie but I definitely would have said something different if I could tell the future. After those couple days of minimal rain, things started to grow. However, there was almost 5 full days of drought to follow. These days were hot. Temperatures peaked at 45/46  degrees Celsius and I sweated through all my relatively clean laundry. The only thing the bit of rain we got before hand helped with was push the humidity higher, to the point where your sweat wont evaporate to cool you and it pours off of you when you are just sitting still. It was kinda like being in a sauna that you can’t leave but I imagine It was kind of like one of those sweat cleanses you can do to get rid of toxins in your body. I got used to it after a couple days.  A lot of the trees returned to a sort of withered state and we had to water like crazy to keep our freshly sprouted bean and corn crops alive. There was even an entire bed of established basil that died and had to be dug out because it missed a single watering.

I am going to risk it again though and say I think the rains have actually started. Thursday we got a downpour that was significant enough to not have to water and when we were digging holes for new banana pups (or hijos as they call them here which means kids), we found moisture a couple feet down. Friday night  we got about and 8th of an inch in a couple hours. There was also a good shower Saturday morning. This really changed things. The temperature has cooled down and I noticed a lot of the trees are pushing out flowers and new shoots which means the ground is saturated. We also noticed that our holding tank for our septic field kind of overflowed (ewww) which means that the ground is pretty wet.

It is amazing how fast things are starting to grow. Some of the banana plants have grown three feet since I got here and some basil cuttings I took grew inch long roots in just 4 days! some basil we direct seeded also came up in 4 days and is now about the size plants would be at a month old back home, let alone 7 days from sowing. I planted some squash up on a sunny hillside to see how they do. The idea is that the fruits will be able to rest up off the moist ground on wood piles we put on contour to help catch rain and prevent erosion. This will also keep them away from the ants… hopefully.

Oh yeah! I almost forgot the bathroom scorpion. There is a large tailless whip scorpion that has taken up residence in our detached bathroom. I named her Betty ( I know she is female because when we fist found her she was carrying young ) and she is not to be messed with. Partially because she is scary and partially because she is harmless and I would tear a strip off of anyone who killed/tied to kill her. Tailless whip scorpions are actually an archaic type of spider, showing up in the fossil record from before dinosaurs. They are nocturnal so she hides under the sink whenever the light is on. They don’t have fangs, only two little tiny front claws but they do move super fast and she probably has a leg span of 6 or 7 inches which is hopefully as big as she will get. Below is a picture of Betty all cozy under the sink and also a butterfly I found to detraumatize you if Betty scares you. There are so many butterflies coming down from the highlands now that the moisture has brought some flowers for them. You can see hundreds of them out the window when the sun is out. ( and I guess I’ll throw in a giant cricket too because it’s cool)

P.S. The featured image at the top is a photo of a storm rolling in over Playa Junquillal as the sun sets. My new friends from Michigan and I go there often because we befriended the volunteers and workers at the Sea Turtle hatchery, I have yet to see any hatch but I will be sure to post about it!

Cheers,

-W

The Journey begins

This past week has been a blast and has flown by. Its hard to choose what all to include but here it goes!
First off, the trip went very well. I got on the late night flight to Toronto and when I arrived I got a pass to an airport lounge. It was nice to have a hot shower before changing into cooler clothes and having a nice full breakfast. I’d say it was 18 bucks well spent. After that I found the couple from Michigan State University that was also flying out of Toronto and travelling to El Centro Verde. I didn’t know until the day before I left that we were travelling together and It was really great to have them there. They’re both environmental science students and we got along right away. The flight to Liberia was smooth and all my luggage arrived with me.
I know I had said the trip to El Centro Verde would be the most difficult part of my journey but it worked out great because as a group of three we were able to split a taxi and skip all the bus transfers with luggage. It saved us about three hours and the cab driver was super nice and even stopped and got coconuts to drink at a fruit stand. They were super refreshing and kind of exactly what you would expect on a tropical voyage.

The first couple days were a huge adjustment to the heat. The rains hadn’t quite started yet when we arrived so it was blistering and dry. It’s hit 40 degrees Celsius almost every day I have been here. On the third day we got the first rain of the year.It wasn’t much and all dried up in the sun the next day but it helped cool it down. We have now had a couple really good downpours and things are turning green quickly. Everything grows so fast here. Some beans we planted came up on the third day after planting them and then grew about 4 inches the next day! I am excited to see how the rains continue to bring the land to life. We also planted some coco-yams which are a tropical root crop and will be planting corn soon. The mango season is a little late but some are starting to ripen and they are so tasty right now. At the market a mango is only about 40 cents! We bought a whole big bag of them and they were all gone in just a couple days.

I have had a lot of opportunity to practice my Spanish here which is awesome.
The two regular employees of la finca (the farm) are both locals who only speak Spanish.
There has been a lot of hand waving and ridiculous charade-type games but my Spanish is quickly coming back and I am learning a lot. I knew actually speaking and living in Spanish would be different than just reading and writing it but I didn’t quite expect how much brain power it would take. The one student from Michigan is pretty great at conversational Spanish but sometimes needs help on the grammar. We help each other out and have both learned a lot from each other. Combined we probably have almost the entire working Spanish vocabulary haha. The other Michigan student didn’t speak any Spanish before coming but is learning pretty well. I find helping him is really helpful for my learning. Having to translate for him or explain how a sentence i structured in Spanish really forces me to better understand it myself. I have no doubt I will be fluent by the end of the summer.

The food so far has been pretty good. Many variations on rice and beans and a sort of Italian pasta with chick peas. I even attempted to make English muffins in a skillet and they turned out pretty great!

]The couple from Michigan are both vegetarians so I didn’t get any meat when we went into Santa Cruz. I also didn’t think the meat would make the hour bus trip in 35 degree weather. After a few days of vegetarianism, I decided a time when im working lots in the heat probably wasn’t the best time to try it. I bought a chicken from a local guy that delivers meat. Although I am no stranger to raising animals for meat, it was a bit different having to order an animal to be killed and brought to you. It really made me consider the cost of eating meat so often when protein can be found in many other forms but sources of fats are hard to come by here.

I made some really good chicken soup with lemon grass from the parts of a chicken that I wouldn’t normally eat and that don’t come with the chicken back home.
It worked out well and it made me feel like I was making better use of every part of the animal I could.
Tom, the guy in charge here at El Centro Verde, drove us up into the hills (mountains) that drain into Paraiso and showed us why there are issues with flooding and drought here. Due to development and the clear cutting of forests, most of the land has desertified. The topsoil has dried up and either been blown or washed away. There is also frequent fires and this further reduces the permeability of the land and its ability to absorb moisture for the dry season. A lot of the river beds are so dry, they are used for roads most of the year. There is evidence everywhere of areas that used to be full time lakes that are now the only placed that are green in the dry season and are used as pasture land.

Today I attended my first event with Restoring Our Watershed where the director did a presentation on planting vetiver grass on contour lines to decrease erosion and recharge the ground water. It is a really useful, non-invasive grass from India that is used to control erosion in tropical/sub-tropical climates all around the world. Its roots can go as deep as five meters and also spread out laterally. It can also be used as a fodder crop and is extremely drought tolerant. It was super interesting to see how much more actively involved in the workshop the women of the household were than the men. I was told that it was great and they noticed this quite often. They tend to be the ones that make sure the land gets taken care of to help out their families in the long run.

After the presentation we then took a bunch of the stuff and planted it on a drainage slope at the back of the eco-centers property. This will serve as a demo plot for people who are interested and will also allow the center to start propagating their own vetiver to distribute. about 12 people from 5 different families participated and each family was given two big sacks of vetiver starts to use on their farms or properties. Even the people who live in the small towns in this area usually have a ravine or drainage slope of some sort in their yard and have issues with erosion in the wet season.

Tom also took us to try surfing at Playa Negra. It’s an amazing beach and I had so much fun (trying) surfing that I forgot to reapply sunscreen and sun burnt almost my whole body just a bit. It has since faded and is fine but I will definitely be more careful next time. I have also been to two other beaches here, Playa Junquillal (Hoon-key-al) and Playa Blanca. They are all gorgeous. The way the workday is structured, 6am-10:30am and then again late afternoon when it clouds in and thinks about raining.This allows for a good nap or a trip to the beach quite often which is almost impossible to complain about.

 

Here’s a little snapshot of Playa Junquillal. I need to take better pictures of the beaches, this doesn’t quite do it justice. I am always busy in the water or distracted by all the shells and things that wash up on the beach.
Last but not least, the photos of the critters I promised last week. I found a lot of cool animals and a lot of bugs that like to bite me and are not in the least bit repelled by bug spray. The first thing I had the pleasure of seeing was some monkeys in the trees and I thought they were the coolest thing ever. That feeling died though when the next morning at 4:30 am  I learned that these are howler monkeys and they like to roost right outside my cabina… I knew what howler monkey were but nothing can prepare you for your first encounter with them. They are just little monkeys but they are known to produce one of the loudest vocalizations of all animals and it definitely scared me up and out of bed and into my clothes before I even realized what was happening.I will try to get a good picture of some at some point this summer, but right now I am mad that they scared me so much.

After the rains I found 5 or 6 baby praying mantis’ and a couple baby stick insects. This one was on my laundry after it dried all day. The stick bugs were too small to get a proper picture of but they will soon be giants and I will definitely snap some photos.

Here is a baby gecko I found in a nest moving some mulch straw. The bigger geckos are too fast to catch and kind of mean but this little guy (or gal) was too young to know to run away.

There is also this giant toad that comes out at night or during the rain and eats the dog food out of the dogs dish. That is a 6″ board it is sitting beside.

Later days,

W

 

The Pre-trip Prose

A journey begins with the first step. As cliche as that sounds, I have learned a lot of cliche things are pretty much as close to the infallible truth as you can get. In fact, the first step is not only the beginning, but arguably the most important step of a journey. Until it is taken, you’re not really on a journey at all, you’re really only thinking about it. I am still in this pensive state and I have two more days until I take the first real, tangible step. Right now it still seems so surreal yet its so close I can almost taste it.

For me, my first step is also likely my biggest challenge. It involves a car ride, a plane, another plane, a taxi, a bus and another bus… But at least I can get that all out of the way in one go. From then on it should be smooth sailing (*Knocks on wood).

I’ve been home from school for the past week visiting my friends, parents and other family. It’s calving season so I got to check cows with dad and see all the baby bovines running around. About half of the heard has calved (all 16? of them). Dad also enlisted me to help pick straw bales and roll up some hoses that were used during pumping season.

I had done most of my shopping before I got home seeing as I am from a small town and there aren’t a lot of options here but still had a few things to get. I got a big pack of sunscreen and some probiotics from Costco and now I am ready to go!  I even glued new velcro on my favourite sandals, thats how prepared I am.

The weather has been really warm here and all the sunshine makes my green thumbs itch. I’ve been working in the greenhouse to alleviate this. Mom did a great job starting plants this year. I planted some planters for my mother and a bunch for my aunt’s hobby farm for one of my cousins weddings for a little extra pocket money.

It’s been great having time to rest and sleep-in and have some home cooked meals. Life at school is kind of full throttle most of the time. I’ve had time to think about the summer to come and I so excited (and a little bit nervous). This will be the first trip entirely on my own, where every face is new and most people speak a different language than my native tongue. We will see how far two semesters of Spanish, pestering my Peruvian friend, and a Spanish visual encyclopedia can get me.

I want to get the most I can out of this summer so I want to go in with a plan, but at the same time I don’t want to over plan. I don’t want to go in with huge expectations only to have them not met. Instead, I decided my plan is keep an open mind and learn as much as I can. I am going in with the intent to be as reflective  as possible on my experience as it is happening. I will be keeping a log book of everything I learn and a detailed journal to remember the experience and to reflect on later. I know I’ll have plenty of opportunity to practice my Spanish and that is exciting.

A lot of what happens this summer depends on what I put into it. How hard I push myself and how I eager I am. That being said a lot of what happens also depends on the rain. Wet weather means more erosion prevention projects to stop what is left of the topsoil and river banks from eroding. Whereas drier weather (which is still feet of rain), means more working on water catchment systems and utilizing water harvesting/saving planting techniques.

One thing I am really excited for and that I know I will be involved with in some capacity is helping to develop a strategy plan for revitalizing the Nandamojo river basin. Restoring Our Watershed, the NGO I am interning with, recently partnered with a drone service to produce an arial map of the main channel of the river. It’s a pretty cool use of technology and will allow better discussions with the community to occur and will help make the right reforestation decisions more clear.

^^ A piece of the arial map from Restoring Our Watershed’s Facebook page. You can see how dry and barren the land is in the dry season.

Soon enough, I’ll take that first real step. All my planning, prepping ,and packing will quickly become something a lot more tangible. A lot less of my imagination thinking up all the possibilities, a lot more sunshine and dirt under my fingernails. Stay tuned for the next post on my arrival and my first impressions and hopefully some cool plants/critters. My mother has requested I don’t touch the snakes so sorry in advance if I let any serpent enthusiasts down this summer.

Happy Planting/whatever normal people do,

-W

PS. If you are interested and you haven’t already, a great place to start would be the History Of The Watershed page.