The last few days have been hard work. Tuesday and Wednesday there were 10 trabajadores or workers clearing space for the smaller trees to get more sunlight. They finished yesterday, after a heroic final hour of cleaning a steep slope of trees. The week after next will begin the poda, and we expect this to take around two days to complete. Daniela Milagros Rivas Aybar, a student at the Zamorano School in Honduras, is interning for two months with Planting Empowerment and working with Liriano in the coordination of various aspects of the UNDP project. She, along with the students from MIT arrived to Nuevo Paraiso in the afternoon. We took them through the Adelante plantation and then headed out for Arimae.

After a hearty breakfast of canned tuna and fried plantains, we set out for the plantation. The task is two-fold: prune the lower branches of the teak trees and open up the understory to allow more sunlight to penetrate to the smaller trees. A couple of workers went ahead, opening up a path, and two followed behind, cutting off the branches with a saw. We made decent progress today, pruning around 100 teak trees. Here's a short clip on YouTube. The second part of the task is more difficult. Because the terrain is steep in some areas it may take longer than we anticpated to open up the vegetation for the smaller trees. They have reached the height where their canopy is starting to compete with the other vegetation for sunlight, and competition is fierce. The workers moved up and down the mountain along the rows of trees, chopping away with their machetes. Tomorrow is more of the same. Feels good to be a little scraped up.

We woke up early in Arimae to be out in the plantation Adelante plantation by 8AM. Spent the morning cutting vines off of the trees and surveying the plantation. Overall the trees look good, although there are empty spots in some of the rows. Some of the teak and mahogany has reached 20 feet, and the amarillo is also thriving. Learn more about these species or check out the photos. In the afternoon we went out with Liriano to survey the Friends and Family plantation. The native species trees will need fertilizing at the beginning of the rainy season, as their growth has been slower than predicted. The teak is growing fast, and averaging 3" in diameter. Tonight we drove to Nuevo Paraiso to wake up early and begin the work in the Friends and Family project.

The Friends and Family plantation looks good; teak was probably 25ft. tall. and easily 3" in diameter-very good growth compared to what we are seeing in monoculture teak plantations. View the photos. The almendro and mahogany are also growing well, and most have grown above the understory. This means that they are not competing with the surrounding vegetation for sunlight. Some of the larger trees-teak in particular, needs a poda, or pruning of the lower branches. This ensures that the main trunk grows straighter and faster, producing better wood. After visiting the Friends and Family plantation we went to the Adelante plantation. Here, the trees are off to a great start, and are larger at nearly two years than the FF trees were the same age. Photos of the Adelante plantation. This is owed to an improved maintenance schedule and application of fertilizer during the rainy season. We left Nuevo Paraiso around 5:30pm and arrived to Arimae around 6:30pm. Discussed potential projects with community leaders and the latest on the UNDP-GEF Small Grants Program project.

Employee Liriano pruning a teak tree

For those of you interested in seeing our partners and employees in action, check out our photos on Flickr. You'll also see some shots of the trees from November.

Our Panamanian partner Juan Cruz and his wife, Rosa, made me promise to bring them a CD of the interview I recorded back in March. They will get to watch it on my laptop, and then whenever Rosa's daughter visits from Panama City with her computer. She also requested dried fruit and other goodies that are impossible to get out in the countryside. I'll also be bringing photos for Gumer, one of our most dependable workers.

A lot is happening in January with Planting Empowerment. The UNDP-GEF Small Grants Project continues with a study of the carbon stock of Arimae's reserve. Construction of the tree nursery is nearly completed, and the community is busy collecting seeds from old growth trees to plant.

MIT is sending down a group of MBA students to assess commercial uses for the tree thinnings that we will begin to produce in a few years. Possible applications include biochar and selling firewood to the community.

Additionally, a couple tree owners will join us to tour the communities and see their trees growing.

Because of the increasing number of updates that we do monthly, we are migrating to a blog interface. Please be patient as there are bound to be glitches along the way. We will move older posts to an "Archives" page. Stay tuned for more information.

Over the past week we have been reorganizing and adding content to the website. Be sure to read up on the Tree Species we plant and learn how you can Purchase or Donate Trees.