Do you remember when we started planting trees? 
It takes time and energy to prepare the soil for the seedling sacks. Here some group members are smashing dried manure to mix with dirt and sand to put in the sacks. 
Here is a volunteer group from a school in Port that came to help one day. 
The local school kids in the village helped plant these trees around our local market on May 1st 2007. 
Here is how some of the trees looked after about 2 months. 
Here is how they look today, about 2 1/2 yrs old. 
We lost several to hungry goats, dry weather, kids playing, and horses being tied up. We replant as needed and are able. Here is a 1 1/2 yr old mango tree. 
This tree will have beautiful red flowers and provide shade in the middle of the market. 
Here are some more of the leucaena (delin). These grow so fast, but are hard to get started because the goats love to eat them. 
 We haven't planted trees here; but, since people know that we are watching the trees that we have planted in the area, they have been letting these grow a bit. 
The government is building a new school in a corner of the market. This is needed and will be a great benefit for the older children in the village. They have asked us to plant trees on the mountain behind the school and around the school to provide shade. 
This is looking to the left of the photo above. There are some thorn bushes on these mountains, but not much else. If we planted here, there would be several hundred people that would see the planting techniques in practice as they come to the market each week. It's a great opportunity if is works out.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is Domoulin. We have been working in this area for several years. We did many rock walls and planted over 2000 trees. Some still remain, but the majority were eaten by goats, stolen (why would someone steal a planted tree???), or died from lack of water. We paid someone to water and watch the trees. When he caught loose goats, he would take them to a post (there are about 3-4 people in the village that have the authority to hold animals that are causing problems, like eating someone else's garden) and make the owner pay a fee. The fee was split between the guy that worked for us and the owner of the post. We have authorization from the mayor and other officials. It seemed like a good plan. I think that was our problem. "Good plans" usually fail here. After putting 6-7 animals on the post, the guy got threatened by one of the owners. He came to kill him and we decided that protecting the trees wasn't worth the death of our tree police guy and friend. We gave the area up and rarely planted trees again. We returned several times to fix the road with rock walls and sack barriers. If we wouldn't have continued doing that the road would have become impassable and it would be a mile walk back to our house. So, after the flood, the govt CNE people came and started fixing the road. They widened the road and buried most of the remaining trees and rock walls. Sad, I know. Honestly, I almost cried; but that's life, so get over it. At least it provided a passable road for a few yrs and gave a stable foundation for the new road. So after the pitty party, we decided to return to that mountain once again. This time on the other side of the road & on the other side of the mountain - the farthest posible point from people (in true missionary fashion) and, hopefully, goats. After we saw that the CNE crew were done around the mountain, we went and planted trees and vetiver in June. Here are a few photos from that day. 
Here is what it looks like currently. 
We are returning to this area on Saturday. We'll replace the plants that have died and plant new ones further on down the mountain. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is another area where we started working recently. A new road was built close to us by CNE. This is a huge need and they are doing a great work. The road passed up & down lots of mountains. Moving rock and dirt around makes the already fragile ground even more unstable. Some places have started to fall in and erode with heavy rains. 
CNE fixed the road again - tilting the angle of the road a bit to divert rain water, adding more stone, building a cement canal, and rock walls. To ensure this hard work remained, they ask us to plant trees and vetiver in the area. This is the third time that we went to this area. Dad dropped us off early Sat AM with all the trees. It helped so much to not have to lug the heavy buckets along the road. As you can see he dropped them off in groups along the road. Very helpful! Thanks Dad!! 
This is standing in the same spot and spanning over to the right. 
and further to the right. There is a huge ravine to the right. Yes, it is huge. Notice the guy standing on the the edge. This is going to be a challenge, but I think the group is excited about it. You should be excited too because you can be a part of planting trees in Haiti too. We need money to buy food to make lunch for them (about $40 will sponsor a day of planting) since these are volunteers from the community group. We also need grafting knives, grafting tape, and funds for seedling sacks and tools. 
This is looking straight down the side of the mountain at some of the vetiver and trees that we had planted about 3 weeks ago. 
Here it is from the other side looking back at the steeper part. 
This shot has the new road in the background. 
This tree that we planted is called "flamboyant". It was my mom's favorite tropical tree, but the hungry goats won't eat it.  
Here's how it looks with all the trees planted. They are still small, but will grow tall quickly and have beautiful red flowers. Imagine this area completly planted and blooming! : ) 
And what is that across the road???? 
Ohhh, it's a nice piece of ground for sale. Hmmmmm??? | 
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