Category Archives: Agriculture

Busy, busy, busy

”]It feels like there´s hardly time to breathe so much has been going on… jobless and busier than ever. We received an injection of hope this morning when the local government representative visited an awaiting masse of community members at our request this morning to promise justice and action for the absurdity that has been our ¨road project¨ up until now; so there is renewed anticipation that the stretch of mud hole we live on will soon become a passable road (a good one for prayer).  [corruption + incompetence = mosquitoes]

Rodrigo, a visionary Panamanian agronomist, has a pet toucan that is free to come and go as it pleases (no clipped wings). It used its freedom to repeatedly attack me.

We recently helped form an excursion for several indigenous leaders to visit farms in the Chiriqui province for ideas and inspiration. In conjunction with MBMSI missionaries  and local church leaders, we are forming a proposal for an agricultural project that will accompany our recently submitted water and latrine project proposals to benefit communities that were devastated by flooding this past winter. We visited coffee nurseries and farms, a hydroponics operation, and stayed at a working aquaponics farm courtesy of DeadWheat International Foundation. Many thanks to them for their help and generosity in this educational excursion.  And thanks to YWAM for hosting us afterwards; your work is an inspiration, too!

a coffee farm in Chiriqui

 

Mayeli, 8, helps me nail some siding on the house

In between all the meetings, proposal writing, and community activities, we´re trying to find time to finish our house… with the help of our neighbors of course. Your words of encouragement are always much appreciated. Dios te bendiga!

and, of course, the star of our show.

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The amazing, marvelous, unprecedented, … and ancient contraption you’ve all been waiting for !!! (and a picture of Kalea)

Neighbor Esteban and grandson Erick put the machine to the test while Luris, Colleen, Kalea, and a host of others not shown look on.

“There must be some reason that no-one has ever introduced corn-shellers into rural latin america,” my dad said. I agreed. Shelling corn by hand, or beating the grains off with a stick with all the cobs in a net bag, the traditional way, is a lot of work. And, after all, corn-shellers have long since become relics in the U.S., but I figured it was worth a try. I’m excited to say that we were wrong. We hastily built a box and debuted the corn-sheller recently when I heard that my neighbor had spent the whole morning shelling corn by hand with his little old wife… and still had three massive sacks left to go. Less than an hour later, he was all done. So now people flock to our home wanting to view this marvelous contraption, invite us to parties, and humbly beseech us to consider renting the machine out for others to use. Their mouths gape open when we tell them that our machine could be over 100 years old. Obviously, this is just the beginning. Can you get hold of an old corn-sheller to send us? I promise it will no longer collect dust.

The Zuluagas, us, and a couple of girls that paraded Kalea around day in and day out.

We were treated to a wonderful weekend of teaching by Dr. David Hormachea from Chile at a retreat this past weekend. Thank you to Einer and Girlesa Zuluaga for taking us along.

Kalea seems to enjoy the sights and sounds of Catrigandi.

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Black Gold! the real deal.

El Dorado, the elusive city of gold in South America, has been discovered! More precisely, the anthropologists and archaeologists have confirmed that a thriving civilization thrived a long time ago in a land previously thought to be unthriveable. What was their secret?… Pyromaniacy, of course. They knew how to make and use charcoal.

 Ok. Here it is in a tiny nutshell (skip this section if you suffer from history-induced narcolepsy). 500 years ago Spanish conquistadores heard tale of a people that rolled their chief in gold and washed him in a sacred lake. This gave rise to the legend of El Dorado, the city of gold, and the lustful search was on.

orellana

where is my goofy metal hat?

A capable young man named Francisco de Orellana was sent down the Amazon via the headwaters below the recently conquered Incan empire, becoming the first European to visit that area. He was almost dead when he started with 50 other starving men (they had crossed jungle for 6 weeks), and they almost died, repeatedly. He did not die and made it back to Spain eventually where he impressed the queen with tales of gold, spices, and a thriving civilization. Naturally, she told him to go exploit it.

orellana bust

I love my hat!

He tried and died and was immortally petrified. Some other dude went to the same area, returned to Spain, and said that Francisco was a big liar; there were just a few huts and some starving indians. So it remained that way until around the 1950s when some scientifically inclined folks started poking around in the Amazon soil and found some intriguing stuff. It was largely ignored for years because it did not suit some other scientists who puffed up and said, “Not possible!” because it contradicted their PhD thesis. It is now accepted that an enormous civilization did in fact exist right where ‘ole Franky had said, with earthworks on par with the pyramids and an unrivaled agriculture based on a man-made soil. Moreover, it was there continuously from the time of Christ and does not show the stratification typical of other societies that were established and re-established due to war. So where did they go? Apparently, Francisco’s parting handshake (or maybe just a distant cough) was all it took to introduce disease for which the natives had no immunity, and the jungle swallowed them and their handiwork up as quickly as it is capable of today… except for the amazingly fertile soil they created, which persists and is used by the smattering of locals to grow their food.

Recently, the term biochar was coined to represent charcoal as a soil additive. What does it do for the soil, you say? A lot. And more importantly, how is it made? A lot of ways. The jury is still out, but there is already a lot of information out there and major institutions such as the USDA, Cornell, and UGA are a few of the folks on the biochar train here in the U.S. If you’re interested, the International Biochar Initiative is a good place to start researching. There are also a lot of backyard operations for the home garden and orchard.

 There are a lot of techy stainless steel contraptions out there, but, obviously, we’re looking for the most appropriate way to apply this age-old practice in rural Panama. In the spirit of “burn to learn,” we constructed a pit to make a little charcoal in Mountain Rest, SC. With the minimal application of science and forethought, this is what evolved:

step 1

Step 1: dig a pit (on an incline) making an inlet on the lower end (we used a cinder block) and a chimney at the upper end (all we could find was 2" steel pipe). That's Nick of BarnabasX

step 2

Step 2: build a little fire (for the burn to function in TLUD mode, we could’ve built the fire at the chimney end, but putting it at the inlet may have more potential to capture the gases (wood vinegar). We’re learning, remember.

step 3

Step 3: Pack wood into the pit.

step 4

Step 4: Cover the pit, seal, insulate, and wait. (We had some old roofing and insulation laying around. The colliers of old Pennsylvania used leaves and dirt back in the day with a little different methodology. We're thinking rocks, banana leaves, and dirt for Panama). We ran out of time and patience, so we didn't get a complete char... but we learned.

step 5

Step 5: Seal the inlet and chimney to stop the burn and allow to cool.

step 6

Step 6: Harvest the char!

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