It has been just over one week since I landed in Nagua.  I head for home in just over 2 weeks so my time here is short.  After reading the passion fruit document I feel like I know just enough to understand the process we are embarking on to prepare the land for the planting. The land we are using is part of a 27 acre property purchased a few years ago, and will be the main Ministry HQ for Every Day Ministries Canada or as they are known here Ministerios de Cada Dia.  Their plan is to build a ministry center for teaching and conferences, build accommodations for ministry teams from Canada and for ministry center events, develop a fruit orchard that will make a profit to help with costs and some additional buildings to house staff and act as a storage/warehouse for the agriculture operations. Grand plans to be sure but it makes sense to me as I sit and listen to all of the things that have been going on for the past decade or more since the Thomas family first arrived. This team is building homes and churches, training pastors, mentoring families around the area and having a facility like this will be able to bring most of their infrastructure together in one place.   To see the range of impacts this team is having go to www.everydayministries.ca and check out what they are doing to empower and equip the people of Nagua. if you go to the website and want to help out financially with any of the projects there is a way to do that.  

Some of the Chinola (passion fruit in spanish) parked under a tree to keep them cool

Back to the Passion fruit.  These plants grow on vines and an orchard of grapes they need to be set in rows with trellisses to support the vines and allow them to climb and produce fruit with enough sunlight and open air for easy picking and care for the plants.  The plot we are preparing is on virgin pasture land with a handful of cashew trees.  Job one after marking the boundaries of the 50 metre by 50 metre plot was to cut away any branches around the perimeter or on trees in the plot below 8 feet to allow the tractor to get in and break up the ground.  So armed with a machete, bow saw, two axes,(freshly sharpened) and a 6 ft step ladder i traipsed around in the plot and sawed, hacked, chopped and pulled out every shrub tree or offending branch in my path.  Paqual, the security man on the property came out and helped and we got 95 % of it done on monday.  At the end of the day this is what the fenceline boundary looked like.

This is the south west boundary of the plot along a fenceline

On Tuesday I went back with a hired chainsaw operator to tackle some large branches and the one nasty, gnarly old tree with about one thousand intertwined, mostly dead branches.  While my hired gun worked on the big nasty, I hauled and dragged by hand the branches removed the previous day.  Myphone was in in my back pocket and by the end of the day I had walked 10 km. Those were hard calories to burn.  This day there was a volunteer crew finishing a cement pad that will be the house and storage building and when they finished the pad they agreed to help me finish the branch removal.  In 30 minutes we finished the last of it.  The land is almost ready for the discers, except for a couple of roots and a handful of low branches to be dealt with in the next couple of days.

the remaining "nasty and gnarly" just before
 the chainsaw man got after it

Day one I got two nasty wasp stings which left me a little skittish on day 2.  I got through day 2 with only one mysterious bite and most of the skin off my legs maimed from the branches. Careful use of the polysporin helped in that regard.
Once the land is prepared we will plant the passion fruit seedlings ans get the trellises in place.  More on this next time.

the same tree with the offending parts removed
 and all the branches along the fenceline gone

    








Thanks to the work crew for their willingness to help me out.  In five days a work team from Langley B.C. will come for a week.  I am looking forward to working and observing them while they tackle some tasks here in Nagua.

From Dominican Republic,

Rick