Cory's trip north.

I don't reccomend this "garage"

The trip to Port Margot to get plants went well overall.

The first stage was going to Port au Prince to a mechanic to try to get a front wheel shake fixed that has been a problem even after all the wheels were rotated and later balanced last winter.

A long term mission employee set up an appointment with a mechanic for about 7am. We were on the road at 4:00am and arrived at 7:20.

Bananas Cory introduced damaged by wind but producing well

The mechanic shop turned out to be the open air parking lot at the small airline part of the airport, where we used to go for MAF flights to LaGonave.

 The mechanic was confident that the steering rods were too loose so those and a steering shock absorber were beat on with a big hammer to dissassemble them and sent with the employee to be replaced.

He returned about 12:30 with rod ends “rebuilt" and a new shock. Assembly wasn’t done until 1pm so it was a later start for Port Margot than we wanted.

Cacao die-back but recovering

The shake wasn’t improved so I set up a mechanic we know at Port Margot to look at the truck the next day.

We were limited to under about 45mph on the trip to avoid shaking and arrived at 9pm after traveling through rain in the northern mountains which also slowed the travel.

Kids' Club and literacy class are still going well.

We took a morning look around campus and a visit to the 3 other gardens.

Great tasting starfruit

The drought wasn’t as bad as I expected but there was significant damage to the cacao, breadfruit and some other local trees.

 The avocados and even some of the mango fruit were smaller than normal.

Bananas and cacao were making good recoveries due to recent rains.

Several of the peach palm planted in ‘15 were producing in the small garden.

Dry part of garden

Also a seedling star fruit we planted is probably the best I have ever tried.

In the afternoon we selected trees from the nursery for Delice, the village, Extollo, and a university near the Dominican Republic.

The mechanic came and checked out the steering and wheels, found one of the links hadn’t been tightened enough and lock pins missing so those things were corrected.

Some of the harvest: jack fruit, velvet apple, mango, egg fruit, star fruit

The shake at higher speeds was gone, just some very slight vibration but it may be from slightly loose universal joints in the steering shaft.

At least we could go about 55mph the next day with a smooth ride.

We left Port Margot at about 4:15 and at 10 met a couple from the University to give them their trees for the agriculture program.

 We bought some supplies at market and headed up the mountain at noon.

We arrived at Delice at about 2:30 and just had the truck unloaded and the trees in the nursery before rain started.

Selected trees

Glad to have left early and a dry drive up the mountain.

 There were some gullies and other bad spots in the road that would not have been fun in the rain.

Kris: Fritz and I did fine while Cory was gone focusing on school and Konsey editing.

One storm had me mopping up but thankfully not buckets and I could keep up with the three locations.

We were thankful he got back as fast as he did! Thank you for the prayers.

Eli's adjusting to his new job and Anna's preparing to return to Calvin for her second year.