Visit to south mountain area

Looking north at Lake Saumatre. 

Wednesday we hit the road at 4am and travelled southeast to the base of a mountain range near the Dominican Republic border. 

This area has the highest mountain peak in Haiti.

Pigeon pea and sweet potato garden with year-old leucaena trees.

About 8:20 we arrived at the home of a missionary who is working with farmers and pastors in the mountains up to about 6,000 feet altitude.

We rode up with him to see the mountain and some of the farmers in the area he works in.

He is leading training on Creation Care and Foundations for Farming, which is like Farming Gods Way. 

They are planting vetiver rows to reduce erosion and introducing some fruit trees, mostly from the Dominican Republic.

Most of the land and gardens are very steep, rocky hillsides, exposed to high winds. The environment is similar to the Delice area.

We sat in on a meeting of about 25 people in a church at the top of a long mountain ridge and listened to the main concerns the farmers had about soil infertility/dropping yields, drought, disease, deforestation, and free-range livestock damage/lack of government law enforcement.

Time to be off to our mission meetings, more another day.

Only a few small remnants of topsoil on this chalk hill but avocados grow well

Vetiver grass cut to mulch part of garden