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.

Tree Planting Trip

Earlier this week, we  loaded up the truck with an assortment of trees, plants, and cuttings.

Then we bumped our way two hours east, out to The Children of the Promise Campus where we introduced my folks to friends and made some new friends.

Cory looked over the campus to decide where the different trees could be placed depending on the size of the tree and how much flooding it may need to tolerate.

Wednesday morning we played with some of the children, talked to various house parents/staff about the types of fruits or trees they preferred around the homes, and Cory placed the potted trees/plants around the grounds.

Following lunch, Cory directed the planting and watering of the trees, including: egg fruit, malay apple, mango, mulberry, starfruit, face roselle, chaya, edible hibiscus, aloe, miracle fruit, bilimbi, biriba, black sapote, jack fruit, dragon fruit, and Barbados cherry.

Ma'afala breadfruit in background to the right of the gentleman.

Cory, Dad, and a staff member also made a delivery to a local Pastor of some trees and plants. Because they happened to be leaving the COTP campus at shift change, they also gave a ride to some of the staff going their direction.

The church/school yard had a good size breadfruit that Cory brought a few years ago and people are asking for more to plant.

The photo is a 4 acre field that the pastor bought to plant and help the community. the former owner had planted one of the new breadfruit and a few local fruit trees. It is good to see the new varieties growing well and starting to produce.

Back at COTP we enjoyed our time learning about the staff and ministry.

After a few more chats and planting on Thursday morning we packed up and headed further east to see the Trou de Nord Wesleyan church and drop off the remaining fruit trees.

Since the phase-one dedication that my family attended a couple of years ago, the church building continues with most of the windows containing nice iron work.

Additional buildings in the church yard include the start of a parsonage and completed bathroom. The banana plants and garden on the property look productive.

Although Pastor Rigo could not meet with us, he reported that the church family now includes 200 new families in need of Konsey books.

Brother Eli met with us and told us that between 600-700 people attend weekly services and occasionally the church is full.

Turning the truck back west to head home, we did stop for one more agricultural visit at Helping Haitian Angels.

Parsonage under construction

Cory and the guys planted some trees at their location almost a year ago and this Wednesday received an email about giving some advice about planting a large garden including fruit trees.

So we stopped in to see how the first trees fared and talk a bit about the new plans. Last year's trees suffered during the dry season due to staff leaving but many of the trees were recovering from the past few months of abundant rain.

 Cory will continue to advise by emails and phone calls and hopefully get them some additional trees to bless the children and families.

We enjoyed some hamburgers and hot dogs in Cap Haitian on our ride back home.

We pray that the trees and plants will grow big and strong and be a blessing to many people as they produce fruit, and seeds for planting.

Trip planning...& trees for sale.

It looks like early next week we will be making a trip to Southern Haiti where the hurricane destroyed the fruit trees and gardens.

Will try to post a few details and a list of prayer requests before we leave.

This week Cory's guys started digging breadfruit root cuttings of the quick bearing Ma'afala variety to build up a good supply to ship or deliver to Southern Haiti. The existing breadfruit variety in the damaged area will sprout many root suckers for regrowing or transplanting so there shouldn't be a need for that variety.

Cory checked what types of coconuts would be strongest in high winds, disease resistant and produce well. He was surprised to find that the strange mutant looking short coconut trees near our favorite beach must be 'Fiji Dwarf' coconuts, one of the top recommended varieties now in Florida due to high disease resistance. He plans to start buying coconuts to use as seeds for new trees. We've also started to save more seeds from various fruits now in season to send south.

For some places the complete destruction will allow for improvement on what was once there. Maybe the trees and corps will be more diverse as the areas get replanted.

A good lesson that both missions and homeschool taught me and remind me of often... to take the time to occasionally check out what is working and what is not and adjust procedure as needed.

This week Cory and I created a new section in the plant nursery for 'sales' .

As more people learn about Cory's trees they tend to drop in to pick up a few trees without notice. Cory and the guys try to head across the river about once a week to check the gardens there and work on them....leaving the non-plant expert here to sell trees.

Last time a man didn't really care that he could be buying a black sapote or and egg fruit, [Cory thinks maybe he got an avocado as one is now missing from that area].

Yes, I do know and recognize some of the trees....but Cory has lots of trees in the nursery and when they are little some have very similar leaves...if you are not an expert on rare tropical fruits.

another nursery area

Another issue we're hoping this helps with is that before when people came for plants, because different trees were scattered here and there-they would see other trees they wanted to buy but some trees Cory has plans for or are experimental and he's not ready to distribute them.

Now with a nice area with trees for sale I can sell without worrying about letting some special tree of Cory's go accidentally. The trees are organized by row and I hold a list of names so I don't sell the wrong type of tree.

Trees in a plastic bag 25 Haitian gouds or 50 for a tree in a plastic pot. Grafted trees cost more. Return the pot for a 25 goud refund. We may add a 50 goud section for rarer trees or decorative plants that Cory doesn't like to spend as much time on. [64.76 goud to a USA dollar-as of this morning.]

So currently selling: egg fruit, black sapote, malay apple, breadfruit, starfruit, mulberry, bilimbi, jackfruit, grafted mangoes, cupuasu and biriba. Grafted avocados in a month or two.

Tree planting trip and garden update by Cory

peach palm by our house

Tuesday Cory and the guys went to plant about 40 trees on a 1.5 acre garden near the new industrial complex and banana plantation.

The garden is owned by a relative of a pastor and at least one mission employee.

We have had good rains and even Cap Haitian had rain the night before but the garden area is more arid and hadn't had a good rain for a week or more. 

The garden had sweet potato, pigeon pea, and bananas, along with wilted 6" tall corn and shorter beans.

The soil is deep and mango trees in the area are thriving.

We planted mangoes (Florida varieties and a Florida/Haitian mango seedling) egg fruit (canistel) jack fruit, starfruit, and a few of several other fruit species to see how well they grow in this area, and a couple bamboo and South American mahogany.

Wednesday we checked the 3 gardens across the river. All doing well and no more livestock damage although a calf had briefly been in the big garden earlier that morning or the night before.

We hear the calf owner has it back but we haven't heard if he paid the fine. They are out working during the day so it isn't easy to get news.

Mesquite trees next to the garden. Looks like LaGonave

Rice coming up in our big garden

Women's conference completed.

Getting trees

Cory loaded our pickup truck at 4am with 10 passengers and a heap of luggage to head to Limbée so that the ladies on the national committee could catch the bus heading south.

They were very grateful for the ride as well as the help given during the conference.

They shared food, like pumpkin soup (Sunday breakfast),  throughout the week with us in gratitude.

Pumpkin soup beats most American breakfasts!

Or maybe because I've been pointing to Cory's skinny body as being healthier than being over weight, they are trying to put some pounds on him! ha...not that easy, even though he likes all the food.

We were just a handful of people short of 400 blood pressure checks during the week.

Cory sold about 75 fruit trees with star fruit and malay apples being favorites.

Papers about chaya and chaya branches were also handed out to plant as a vegetable bush.

We greatly appreciate the chance to see leaders working very hard to advance the Lord's kingdom.

All 25 of the northern district churches sent representatives to the conference.

Only one afternoon saw heavy rains and the tarps didn't blow away, allowing the new church site to serve as the main meeting site.

Leaders brining in offering with song and praise!

Tomorrow, the district pastors and national church committee members will come to campus for the last week of conferences for 2016.

We were able to share 6 buckets of starfruit at the conference despite some theft by several groups of thieves.

 Twice this weekend during the day, some of the guys stealing starfruits from the nursery attempted to take the trail camera but a loud keychain alarm attached to it scared them off and notified Cory.

Praying for them to get their lives on track. It will be interesting to see if the photographed people will be receptive to dealing with this in a positive way or if it will be up to the Lord to deal with them if we can't.

Police type options are very limited in a revenge culture where we don't even have local police.

Kris was able to message with Eli a bit on Saturday. He's busy experiencing and learning a lot. Both classes are hard...no easy over-seas fluff.

Still need a roof!

 Keep praying. Eli blogged 'first week down' followed by 'sad' his thoughts on visiting the Sacksenhausen concentration camp here.

They are in Berlin, more than 5 hours by train from the recent attacks in Germany. 

Anna finished up her second week of school and played one afternoon with some of the younger children attending the conference. 

Women's conference day 1...

Eli: After settling in and seeing some of the sites this weekend the students started classes on Monday. Today's blog from a professor "Between our 3-4 hours in engineering class every day and the 2-3 hours of German class and all the homework to do (and grade), our group is very busy."


Church on Sunday and to think 2 weeks prior he was home-worship with no electricity, sitting on wooden benches that he helped his grandparents build, and singing accapella. [In the second picture Eli's sitting on the far left of the picture in an orange shirt.


Very thrilled to see Mme. Fanny able to return to work yesterday after many months off for health reasons.

Her doctor repeated all her tests and things have greatly improved. Celebrating and praising the Lord with her. The lab for her blood improved x4 and is in a normal range!

Many arrived after the rain, on motorcycles
 or open trucks, wet and with wet luggage

Women's conference started yesterday, following a lot of campus preparations and clean up. Cory headed to Limbée about 4 ish to pick up some of the women on the national committee, and thankfully returned before a huge thunderstorm hit, dumping over 3 inches of rain on campus.

We picked about 65 pounds of star fruit to share with the ladies on Monday and more remain on the four trees in our back yard.

Still loosing some to boys who come even in broad daylight to steal the fruit. Praying for them to learn how dangerous this can be before they get in real trouble and that they turn their lives around now.

Three bunches of bananas walked from lower campus in recent nights as well.

First full day of women's conference today and we were shocked to learn they expected around 600 women! Two years ago about 200 attended. Printed and cut more blood pressure cards...will see how many we can fit in before Saturday night.

 Best is to just have a couple in line waiting, as too many waiting means more talking and harder hearing.

Children's program

 So for one hour this morning Kris did blood pressures for the ladies working in the kitchen-sending one directly to clinic and telling two to go tomorrow.

In the afternoon before a meeting Cory joined Kris in front of the big guest house for a second hour of checking pressures and all three of us checked later in the day for a couple hours.

Singing fills the air as they sing praise songs...we checked about 165 blood pressures today. Hoping the 600 number is including children!

Helping Haitian Angels

Cory, Gener and Yvon brought a few dozen fruit trees on Wednesday to plant at the Helping Haitian Angels orphanage, about 15 miles east of Cap Haitian.

A strong breeze comes in off the nearby sea most of the time and the climate is closer to semi-arid LaGonave than rainy Port Margot.

It has been a few weeks since the last good rain so it was a pleasant surprise to find the soil was good and deep, relatively easy to dig, and still moist.

Most of the trees planted are drought resistant, like mango, egg fruit and avocado. Since the soil is deep, other species will also probably do well.

A few each were planted of starfruit, jackfruit, black sapote, everbearing mulberry, peanut butter fruit, and a few others to see how well they grow.

A few kids helped plant the last few trees, and then carried water for each tree.

A second trip will probably be made soon to finish planting the area.

We pray that the future fruit will be a blessing to the children and spread to surrounding farmland.

Link to the Christian orphanage website:

http://www.helpinghaitianangels.org/

Roots-good and not so good.

With Anna's ankle still recovering we did not attend the volleyball games on Saturday, so a quiet weekend for us.

One thing that Cory and I worked on a couple days last week consisted of repotting some trees.

The bags used to plant the trees in ended up being biodegradable.

While this may work for plants and trees that only need to be in the bag a very short time, it did not work for slow growing star fruit trees.

Some of the egg fruits and black sapote trees also needed to be transferred.

Cory plans to have the guys try to sell some more trees either by the gate or at the market soon.

 Mulberry trees near the other trees also complicated things as their aggressive roots entered the bags.

A few of the very small, struggling trees we planted into plastic pots, knowing they will take a while to grow strong.

Why not plant all the trees in pots?

Because they are more expensive and not everyone can bring pots back so it is better have some to sell or give away in bags.