Garden update and floods - by Cory

Thursday I brought 1,650 Konsey books to Limbe to meet a TapTap truck for transport to Port au Prince. They were purchased at-cost by veterinarian Dr. Kelly for distribution with goats in far SW Haiti where the hurricane hit hardest.

We only have a few dozen copies of Konsey II left and soon will be out of Kids Konsey so it is time to reprint.

We would like to print at least 5,000 of each book if funding allows. We have about $5000 in the book project fund and total cost would be about $12,000.

Here is a link to help fund the book project: http://www.globalpartnersonline.org/projects/creole-health-book-project

Friday we brought three wheel barrows of trees (about 35) to plant at the big new garden. 1 1/3" rain fell the night before so it was at least a 30 minute muddy hike on the trails to the garden.

No livestock damage the last few weeks and with the fall rains, growth is rapid. The sharecropper's rice is about knee high.

I continue to be impressed by how much time and energy it takes to produce about a half or 3/4 acre of "upland" rice (and other crops) with only hand tools. Weeds and grasses grow as fast as the rice since there is no flooding to hinder the weeds.

We planted mostly rambutan, egg-fruit and jackfruit. This week I hoped to finish planting and also to get at least a few dozen of the "super tree" cacao(chocolate) from the big USDA project nursery to grow under peach palm. Payback for providing a few dozen bamboo poles for part of the nursery shade structure, loaning our wheelbarrow a few days to transport potting soil and also providing some of the potting soil for areas of campus where charcoal has been made.

The cacao nursery is planting some our biriba seeds and carambola/starfruit seedlings and other fruit trees now in the sacks that cacao didn't germinate.

We had 25" of rain here at Fauche from Saturday night to Tuesday night so planting waits. Some of the peanut gardens in the floodplain were washed out but the rain was spread out enough that it looks like at least half remain.

Port Margot

Flood damage is severe in Cap Haitian. They received even more rain than we did, with 10" the first night when we had 5".  We were told that flooding in the Port Margot valley near the sea reached the roof of at least one house. Rain was heavy in all of North Haiti along the coast at least from Port d Paix to the Dominican border.