Hi Readers,
I know we've lost many of you since we don't update this blog regularly. We've been at our site in San Bernardo, Ecuador for a year now. Our son, Louis, is now living in Ecuador too. He's teaching English at the IndoAmerica University and living with Miguel, our former foreign exchange son who lived a year with us in Glenwood City. The picture of Louis and me above is with our tennis partner, Nelson and his girlfriend on the court in Riobamba.
Below that is a group of young people who went out with Lucy and I to collect trash and recyclables on the streets of San Bernardo. The kids really got into it. Now if we could only motivate the adults!
The two bottom pics are of the composting toilet we built with funding from Farmer to Farmer. We are using it and really like it. After every time we go to the bathroom, we add a measure of wood shavings. As you can see, the composting takes place in the plastic barrel in which all the waste drops into. Obviously, when the barrel fills up, we take it out and replace it with an empty one. We got the idea after staying at a luxurious (by Ecuadorian standards) eco-lodge called the Black Sheep Inn: www.blacksheepinn.com Check them out!
The upper right picture is of a very sweet older Kichwa couple who have a great little farm and are very proud of it. This picture of them in their corn shows their pride and dignity.
The one year anniversary of our arrival in this Kichwa community is this week. We have learned to be comfortable here and look forward to one more year. Our garden is producing amazing red, Romano, and some head lettuce, swiss chard (a favorite of people here), cilantro, carrots, leeks, arugala, cabbage and brussel sprouts. Some WOOFERS from Alaska that we met here came out and stayed with us 4 days and helped to build a fence around the garden. What a big improvement to the garden to not have dogs fighting on top of the plants and it has kept the pig out too! We would love to have more of you visit in the upcoming year. Our service ends in April of 2010. Love, Craig and Lucy
