Week back at Fauche!

Costa Rica peach palm from seed collected spring of '14

On June 2 we headed back home only to leave again on the 3rd to visit some friends and have family time. From the top of the mountain to the bottom...I shed 3 layers of long sleeve t-shirts/hoodie.

Fachue is hot and steamy! Summer weather is upon us as we pray for a calm hurricane season of June through November.

On the way back home on Sunday afternoon we picked up a friend of Anna's who's spending the week with us.  The girls shadowed Dr. Winik the dentist on Monday [Anna found out that she doesn't do well with teeth pulling] and a Haitian doctor on a few cases.

Cory has been busy with the yard, and getting ready to install a fence to protect the garden side of the mission campus. While we were gone the district made good progress on a security wall on the street side of campus.

More peach palm and other fruit trees

I've mostly worked on office and paperwork but did take some time to pull weeds in the nursery. Today I started working on physical therapy advice to translate into Creole and add to the Konsey book.

A wall or fence is needed to improve security enough so that night watchmen can be hired to help the clinic watchman.

Today Cory walked to the gardens beyond the river.

Peanut plants baking in the sun

Sadly the peanut crop in the sandy river bed is drying up (those that didn't get washed away earlier), and most of the area gardens are starting to suffer from a few weeks without rain after a very wet spring. July and August are usually the driest months here.

Peach palms are growing but turn yellow in the strong summer sun.  Those in partial shade from bigger trees are still green but even the ones in good, moist soil look yellow this time of year. Once they get big they turn dark green.

The Fauche mangos are between crops but we are enjoying velvet apples from a tree Cory planted. They aren't very sweet or flavorful but the tree is productive and the fruit is unique and plesant to eat. The texture seems somewhere between very ripe apple and baked potato.

Velvet apple

Tomorrow Cory needs to go to Limbe and will get more planting material for Delice.

Garden & Peach Palm Update-Cory

Gardens are growing well with plenty of rain and sunny days.  About 14" of rain in the past two weeks.

 Recent peach palm harvest, 24 pound bunch of fruit. This tree, planted in 2010, had about 120 pounds of fruit during the past 12 months. The fruit is oily so an orange, vitamin-rich layer of oil floats after boiling but the fruit is still starchy and dry, good in soup or with mayonnaise.

Costa Rica, April 2014 at CATIE

 Planting the garden rented from a family in our church, February 2015. About 525 total planted on mission campus, the rental garden and two purchased gardens.

Same garden this week. Peach palms from Costa Rica. The garden has been regularly planted to mostly corn and beans, also some sugar cane and bananas, so it is regularly weeded by the owner. Looks like some of the palms could start fruiting in about a year.