In early October, we incorporated a new nursery for breadfruit trees into our program in St George near Saint Louis de Sud. Agronomist Jean Nerva has a desire to grow these trees for all the villages in the region. Thanks to an organization called Trees that Feed we are now connected to ample education on how to produce all kinds of nutritious products with the breadfruit. In December, we hope to learn how to dry large amounts of it for flour production.
Jardin Botanique des Cayes Visit
We are taking time this week to invest in the future biodiversity of our project. Our team took a trip to the Botanical Gardens of Les Cayes to research and create a database of all the trees that we could grow in Haiti’s forest.
Soon, the Botanical Gardens will be providing a robust seed bank for all of Haiti along with training on how to reproduce each tree. We’ve been working closely with the owner and botanist William Cinea to put in place a long-term reforestation program that will increase our current levels of biodiversity by three times our current numbers.
New Motorcycle In Use
We’re excited about our new motorcycle. Below you can see images of plants being loaded to be transportated to local homes and farmers.
Growing Breadfruit Trees
The breadfruit tree can be grown by sticking a piece of living root in the ground horizontally and watering it. After several weeks, new trees sprout from the root. Our team will separate the new sprouts and put them in recycled cement bags leftover from earthquake reconstruction.
In December there will be a large harvest of breadfruit and people will have more than they can eat. This year, we plan to educate the communities on how to dry the surplus breadfruit to preserve it. Once dried there are many highly nutritious products that can be made. We look forward to updating you in the weeks to come!
New Home For Wood
Wood and his family built the wood frame and door themselves. Now they sleep on a mat made of scrap fabrics bundled up together on a cement floor. They're thankful to be in a dry, secure room away from rain and bugs.
New Motorcycle!
We are happy to announce the motorcycle fundraiser was a success! Before the earthquake, $1000 was donated specifically for the motorcycle! Now that the nursery is running again, we went ahead with the purchase. Also, thanks to a few new monthly donations, we are able to hire a full-time driver to make daily deliveries of trees and water to areas that are being reforested.
Thank you to everyone who made this possible!
Wood is about to make his first delivery to the mountain above the water spring. He is excited to now be working directly with farmers growing the trees because he gets to help evaluate their situation and bring them what they need.
Two Thousand Avocado Seeds Growing
Two thousand avocado seeds have been planted since September 1st. We also have a variety of other trees especially 1000 Fwenn native hardwoods that survived the earthquake and can now be planted anytime it rains.
Agronomist Remy’s Home
This is Agronomist Remy’s home. He and all of our core team received metal roofing and cement for flooring so they could build a shelter and come back to work. They could not be more thankful for this aid.
Back On The Job
Here you see Wood, our nursery worker, back on the job for the first time since the Earthquake. Wood’s job is to arrange the filled bags in lines and build support for them with wire and stakes. He also counts the bags to make sure everyone knows how many more bags they must fill before going home for the day.
Planting Avocado Seeds
Our workers are planting avocado seeds while also filling the bags with dry dirt. Once all 2,000 bags are filled, we'll hire one worker to care for and water them over four months.
It costs about $900 to run the nursery for four months with 2,000 trees. If we had another $300 we could grow twice as many trees and bring the costs down per tree quite significantly.
People of all ages in the local villages have been asked to collect avocado seeds. It’s a great way to give everyone some paid work. The going rate for avocado seeds is 10 cents.
Since it isn't easy to know if the seeds come from a good avocado, we ask everyone to bring the seeds with the meat still on them. This helps us see if it's from a good tree, and then we're able to accept their seeds and pay.
The local people are very happy to see some new activity at the nursery.
