Rains, garden work, and coffee

 

One more coat of sealant

September tends to bring more rain up here in the mountains and we've even had a few mornings wrapped up in cloudy mists.

Most afternoons this month the guys hurried down to their homes in the village trying to beat the rains.

 Nothing like a few hours of continuous mopping up from leaky walls to motivate us to pull out the partial gallons of sealant and once again start painting around the rocks by the kitchen, trying to get them water proof to protect our nice plywood cupboards.

The guys continued work on the yard behind the house; moving rocks, building short rock walls, removing piles of gravel or dirt left from the house construction, and finally planting in the newly uncovered good topsoil.

Happy to find good topsoil after hauling out much gravel

They also weeded some of the corn today.

With only a couple of months or so left before dry season, some of the work is winding down.

So the guys are only working part time now for us. 

Fortunately for them a neighbor down the road has some work digging gravel.

Coffee plant, need more than 1,000

After waiting a year, and continuing to ask, we finally received not only coffee seeds to plant but also 37 baby coffee plants! 

We were told that this type of coffee is 'old coffee' probably left  from the days when the plantation produced coffee. 

So while the few coffee plants in the village have ripe beans, we will try to get seeds planted so trees are ready for planting at the beginning of next rainy season, hopefully on the new property once it is surrounded by a fence. 

A newer coffee variety started producing in two years in the neighbors garden. This old variety is a larger tree and will take longer, but will likely prove much more profitable.

Squash

Rutabega

Recent harvest

Coffee, avocado (which we are also planting) and tomato

Cabbage doing great!

Garden Update by Cory. Lots of photos!

Sahara dust June 23

Still on the dry side here due to the Sahara dust.

We had one good rain last week and mostly sunny days so the gardens and trees continue to grow very well.

The local corn looks good but the beans are spotty from the drought.

They also suffer from leaf diseases at this altitude even with the sunnier than normal weather.

Some of the beans are close to harvest time and they should bring a good price.

Hawaiian super sweet corn on pile of dirt with sweet potato
Our workers said "This isn't like our corn"

Our workers told me last week that prices jumped so much in the market for the main foods that some of the village merchants returned without buying because they didn't have enough money.


During the first and thickest wave of dust our solar panels only gave about 70% mid-day but there are fewer clouds so we have plenty of electricity.

Decent yield for small plants

The dust looks thick down to sea level.

While most of the fruit trees will need a few years to fruit, it is good to be harvesting zucchini, chayote, broccoli, turnips, mulberries, strawberries.

Tomatoes are almost ready.

I thought our sweet corn was doomed due to being planted before the rainy season on a dirt pile which was hard to water (so I neglected them a bit) during the extended dry season.

Despite being very small plants they produced fairly well.

Trees with squash are still growing well

Lightning strike fried bushes on hillside lower than our house!

Grape tomato and broccoli

Bok Choy, mustard and turnips.

Big sweet mustard and 1/2 inch tall tiny leaf lettuce same age

Corn and bean garden next to our property

View toward the village

I doubt star fruit will do well in many areas on the mountain top since they don't do well with wind but it is worth a try and I have planted some in sheltered spots.

Star fruit in back yard, north Haiti a few years ago

It was so popular we never could produce enough trees in the nursery.

The trees looked like this several times per year and often still had blooms while ripening fruit.