Gifting Konparet and Trees

On May 2 and 3 we gave out trees and konparets to schools Ecole Mixte Frere Bobo de la Hatte, and Ecole Ket Colombier. It's been hard trying to find the perfect material to keep them sanitary, so we wrapped them in paper. This is our easiest option for avoiding environmental waste, and not adding plastic waste into the environment, especially since there aren’t any landfills. We’re always open to more suggestions and ideas? Maybe a compostable paper?

Thanks to Trees that Feed Foundation for providing the funds we needed to produce and distribute konparets to over 750 students and adults along with cacao and cashew trees. Our local Doctor Yvra Oreste and volunteer THTP motivator spoke to the children and parents about the importance of agroforestry in maintaining year-round nutrition.

Our motorcycle is doing well and working hard. We’re working hard to regularly distribue trees to schools this week.

Haitian Agriculture and Labor Day: Trees For Children

May 1st is Agriculture and Labor Day in Haiti. And on this day, it’s tradition to give children trees. Families visitied local public school in La Sikri to celebrate and talk about all the natural products that are part of Haiti’s rich history.

We gave out over 300 trees today, and most were cacao and cashew because they’re in the season. Several local professionals and agronomists gave speeches about improving life quality through agroforestry. And they also discussed their future vision for the environment and agriculture in the region.

Planting Stakes For La Hatte

On a nearby mountain are Acacia trees. Although they are considered invasive, they’re actually valuable because they grow fast and make great fuel for cooking. The Acacia tree also essentially becomes a placeholder and is prioritized for use, allowing other trees that offer fruits and crops to stay alive and avoid being cut down. Acacia trees also make great stakes for marking and supporting newly planted seedlings.

We cut these branches and turned them into 3 feet long stakes. Then our team painted them different colors so we could differentiate between each tree. Each of these colored stakes is being planted next to a new seedling of cacao, breadnut, or kenep fruit. We’re planting nearly 400 trees on Tisonson's land, and the colored stakes will allow us to track and prove tree survival. In combination with the stake color, the tree's size and species will provide enough data to improve the location services of our tree tracking service. Now we can determine each tree's growth over time along with its carn absorption data.

Enel's Breakfast: Bannann

Banana trees are really popular in Haiti and eating boiled green bananas with a tomato-onion (tomat-zonyon) sauce is a breakfast staple. The banana (bannan) trees do not live long but they grow fast, providing plenty of leaves for enriching the soil. The large leaves also offer shade for seedling trees like the hundreds of cacao seedlings we are about to plant. Cacao seedlings love the shade!

Open For Services

The sign reads: Here we grind breadfruit, peanuts, toasted corn, and cacao.

Whenever someone is available to run the mill, our nursery team places this sign outside for anyone who is in need of a mill. Our nursery caretaker, Rosnie is currently in training to manage the mill when Enel runs errands. We don’t charge for grinding breadfruit or cacao because we want to encourage the protection and growth of these high-value trees. But any other product costs 50 cents per ground mamit. The extra income will support our nursery team and the costs to keep supplies in stock.

Fresh Cacao Seeds

The ripe cacao fruit must be torn open and the seeds need to be dug out immediately before planting. If the seeds become too dry, they won’t sprout. Most of the ripe cacao that falls to the ground is perfect for collecting seeds to plant but we are competing with mice and insects who often get to them first.

Today, we sent a team member out to a few villages to ask for a few ripe fruits that had good seeds. We're excited to get more cacao seeds planted and turned into seedlings.

Planting More Cacao

In a recent newsletter, we showed how valuable cacao is. Here, we're planting cacao seeds to start the communities investment in a cash crop with a high return. These seeds will be ready for planting in early April.

A New Mill!

Our Nursery Manager, Enel, searched the streets of Les Cayes until he found a brand new mill for the nursery. It's up and running at home in LaSikri.

We primarily plan to use the mill to produce breadfruit flour, increasing the demand for breadfruit trees in the region. We'll also be able to grind cacao and increase interest in planting cacao trees, which we know has a lot of value once fully grown. Through increasing our production, we'll be expanding on one of THTP missions, which allows communities to produce a variety of crops from their trees.

We also realize that the mill can be used as a source of additional income. We were asked to grind large amounts of peanuts and corn in the first few days. We're charging 50 cents per large can, and that income is being recorded for the community to see and then grow more trees.

Investing In Cacao

We're paying $6 for about eight big cacao pods, but a simple google search shows four to six pods cost $89! Cacao has great value but also requires an investment. Since it's shade-grown, cacao is great for biodiversity because other trees are needed to promote healthy growth. We're able to surround our cacao seedlings with indigenous shade from our long list of tree varieties.

Cacao's growth reinforces the importance of not cutting trees, and that nature depends on its neighbors.

Many online companies are selling cacao at very high prices. One day, our region will benefit greatly from these exports.

Spring Planting Underway

All the recent donations these past few months have helped us prepare just in time for the spring rains. We were able to save enough money to make a major planting of cacao, cashew, and some native forest tree seeds. We also have a variety of citrus going into bags throughout this week.