Roberta's Forest Blog — Let's Get Planting

Butterfly on Lantana flowers

The last week of September, the week before the beautiful October full moon, was LRFF’s time to maintain the newly reforested areas. We now have enough reforested properties to fill an entire week with the maintenance of them.

Daniel, Omar, Juan and two other local workers from Quebrada Azul did all of the cleaning. Oh, but wait, our very excellent, new “local” volunteer, Rusty Holzheimer, was there everyday working right alongside all of the paid help.

Rusty Holzheimer

The first place to clean was Niko Panna’s property in Sabalito. We reforested this in piece on June 5th, Environment Day (see “Dia del Arbol blog from last July). The crew finished this before quitting time at 2 pm. Rusty and Daniel chopped with machetes the whole day.

Sabalito trees after they have been maintained. Look at how they have grown!!

After finishing the Sabalito property they went to Niko Panna’s property in Rio Piedras. We planted this on June 12th, two days before Arbor Day (Dia del Arbol, again). This is a very extensive property, steep and so has a very large surface area. The upper back portion still didn’t need cleaning because the grass hasn’t grown much yet, but the rest of the trees we had planted were in need of maintenance. The crew worked the following day, Tuesday, and finished before quitting time again.

The crew cleaning the Rio Piedras property

To detour a bit, Daniel and Rusty went to look at David Alvarez’s future biological corridor site on Tuesday while the rest of the crew finished cleaning the Rio Piedras property. This new, reforested biological corridor will be replacing the project that we had listed on the Global Giving website. It’s a long story and I won’t recount it here, just go to our project page at www.GlobalGiving.com/3558 and read the new “Progress Report” that we posted. This new corridor will connect two patches of primary forest on David’s property. David is already participating in the REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) carbon project we have developed with the help of Global Climate Strategies (www.globalclimatestrategies.com ) with the existing forests he owns.

The left side of David’s future corridor. The forest is just beginning at left here.

The right side of the future corridor.

The topographer will come in a few weeks to measure the area, exactly, so that we can build the fences. The property is in Aguacate de Arenal, the north side of the Arenal Lake reservoir. This area receives much more rain that we do on the southwestern side and so we are hoping to get it planted this year before the dry season sets in. Isn’t it beautiful? To know that we will be helping the wildlife to cross unseen from one forest to the other is enough, but when you add into the mix the hope and sense of accomplishment that EVERYONE who is a part of LRFF feels, that makes it almost unbearably great.

On Tuesday afternoon the crew went down to the Kiki Corridor and cleaned around all of the trees that we planted last year to create it (see “Mother Earth’s Little Helpers, June 2008 blog). They finished on Wednesday and did some maintenance on the reforested areas here at La Reserva.

On Thursday the crew went to the Tronadora High School property (see “A Warm and Fuzzy Story” August 2009 blog). After finishing they all came back to Cinco Esquinas, at the crossroads near La Reserva preserve to install 2 new, signs that were handmade by our super talented, artist friend, Eduardo Gomez. They didn’t have the camera along so I will have to include photos of the new signs in a future blog. I did find a photo of Eduardo though at a planting day in June.

Eduardo Gomez, artist

Some excellent news came to the LRFF this past week when the national satellite provider of Internet service, Reico S.A. ( www.reicocr.com ), agreed to donate high speed Internet service to us at our headquarters. It won’t be long now and we will be able to communicate more frequently with all of you and answer your letters on the spot. This will be such a great addition to our work. Imagine trying to keep up with our work in the absence of an Internet connection at the office. We have been working this way for the entire 5 years since our start.

After downloading all of the great photos that Daniel took during the week of maintaining it our trusty old camera gave us photoless for the time being. We will be back in business by the end of the month, though, when our old camera is returned repaired or we have a new one. The October full moon was magical, closing out the week of maintenance.

October 4, 2009

Look at the love that surrounds each and every one of us. Come on everybody and keep heart. You continue to support us and…….

LET’S GET PLANTING!!