Trips and Delays

It's been three weeks since my last post, and I'm feeling guilty.  There's always stuff to write about but not always motivation to do so.

I had the opportunity over the 4th of July weekend to travel to Honduras and visit a farm that is closely connected to ECHO.  The farmer, Larry Smoak, has lived in Honduras since 1994 and practices many of the techniques that ECHO demonstrates on the global farm.  He has tweaked some of the concepts to fit the local conditions and adapted the methods to match local farmer practices.  One of his key demonstrations is a 3 acre plot on a steep mountainside that he has planted with rows of Inga and Gliricidia, two nitrogen fixing trees that provide erosion control, ground cover and free fertilizer.  The trees are coppiced yearly in May with the large branches used for charcoal and the small branches stacked on the uphill slope to provide additional erosion control.  Corn is planted immediately after coppicing (and a light weeding) to allow full sun during the long summer days.  3-4 months later, the trees have re-grown and almost completely shaded out the 4 meters in between rows where the corn was grown.  That shade prevents weeds from growing and the leaves falling continuously for the next 9 months fertilizes the ground and prepares it for the next growing season.

Larry took a survey of the local farmers a few years back and asked about crop yields in their lifetime.  As near as he can figure it, yields have decreased from 200:1 to 15:1 over the last 70 years.  The rubric measured was sacks of beans harvested against sacks of beans planted in a season.  As Larry sees it, this is due to more frequent slash and burn of the rainforest and subsequent loss of biomass and soil.  Before the population explosion of the last 100 years, a section of rainforest would be slashed and burned once every 30 years, which was sufficient time for it to recover.  Now farmers have smaller plots and more mouths to feed and so enter into a downward spiral of increased slash and burn frequency which leads to poorer soil on the next go-round which leads to more frequent field rotation.  While they do alternate between corn and beans (which add nitrogen back into the soil), practices of erosion control, soil cover, seed selection, and multi-use plants are not widespread.  If they were, soil fertility and yields would be on a shallow upward slope over time versus the marked downward trend Larry currently sees.

Larry's current trial is in its third year and he hopes to see dramatic yield increases by the fifth year.  During my visit I was able to see the first pile of coppiced wood and the transition stage between maturing corn and resprouting trees.  Larry showed a section of the demonstration where he had not coppiced and planted corn and showed how the shade provided by the nitrogen fixing trees prevents weeds from germinating.

I could write pages and pages on the things Larry is doing in Honduras but you really have to see it to understand (at least with my writing you do).  At one point during my visit I went running with Larry.  We went a nice easy four miles (ignore the part where the first half is all uphill).  Also ignore the fact that Larry runs a 2:19 marathon.  I was dying.

New experiences in the last three weeks:
1. Took an item to Antiques Roadshow to have it appraised.

2. Got my hair cut after two months (a new experience in the last 8 years)
3. Said goodbye to the first set of ECHO interns that I lived with (they say it only gets harder)

4. Found out my pilgrim geese will follow me around and help me weed (it's pretty awesome)

5. Lost one duck to a mystery illness
6. At more lychees and came to the conclusion that they have something akin to cocaine in them because you say you're going to stop and then you find yourself climbing up the tree for more and can't figure out how you got there.  Just one more....ok, just two more.  ok now I'm done, I'll just grab a few more for the road.  oh I'll just eat them here since they're in my hand...see how it goes?
7. Drank fresh passionfruit juice (did you know you can eat the seeds?)
8. Found out that new bamboo shoots come up the same diameter they'll be when fully grown (it's a beautiful thing to see)

9. Found out what a breadfruit tree looks like