Letter to my home church: The Amesville-New England Parish

27 of April, 2024 Dear friends, It has been a busy year already in our work with the Green UBL team, and specifically with the community gardens. You may remember that we are working with two spaces, the first, called Rocoto Garden, was the pilot project started by Elena, a UBL student from Peru, in 2018. We are re-designing and enlarging slightly that garden with the help of a student from the National Costa Rican university (UCR), Raquel, who studies architecture. The UBL has developed a relationship with an Urban Organic Agriculture program at the UCR. Students in the program provide approximately 300 hours of community service with the gardening program. The other garden, Sunflowers garden is doing well, full of flowers and beautiful tomato vines, as well as herbs, mustard greens, purple cabbage, green peppers, and medicinal plants. The community members that are part of Sunflowers have planned three major activities in the past month. Today, we held our first workshop of the year, learning to do melt and pour soap, a system that allows for enriching a glycerin soap base with basil-infused olive oil, rosemary leaves. Aloe vera gel, all from the garden, as well as other ingredients that we purchased from a local craft store. Last Saturday around ten of us participated in an exchange with the Piedras Park community garden. This was one of the gardens where I had my first experiences with community garden projects here in Costa Rica, back in 2021. Finally, about a month ago, the Sunflowers garden folk had their first official event of the year, hosting folks from the Piedras Parque garden, as well as local community leaders, including the secretary of the local Scout troop. In all these activities, we have had wonderful participation from international volunteers as well as students from the UCR who are completing their community service with us, such as Raquel, Jonathan, Nikky and others. It has been a busy, but blessed time. Thank you for keeping track of our work! Know that you all are in our prayers. We love you all very much. In Christ, Mark, Jenny, Keila and Annika Photos:

Rocoto Garden: The original garden space is looking pretty bare, but that is because it will soon be re-designed and enlarged.

Girasoles Garden tomatoes: We have one 20-foot bed of tomatoes looking really good. Tomatoes are fragile in the tropics, however, so we won’t count our harvest until we’ve eaten it.

Girasoles Garden bed with mustard greens

Jenny grew this Jamaican Rose tea bush from seed and has harvested it already. It makes a delicious, zingy, bright red tea. Many of the members of the garden have had this tea as a juice, but it seems like this was the first time they had seen the bush. Hands-on, experiential continuing education!

A bit of one of our beautiful garden beds. We have been applying regenerative agriculture techniques, including regular applications of organic products such as worm compost tea. The techniques work!

One of the three groups that made melt and pour soap this morning

Each group had the chance to design three different recipes. This group used rose petals in one, rosemary leaves in another, and rehydration clay in a third

Last Saturday, April 20th, ten of us participated in a wonderful exchange with Piedras Park Community garden. The members of the Piedras garden each brought a dish that featured one or more of the crops that they produce, such as kale chips, Bok choy omelets, mustard green quiche, etc. Everything was delicious. Afterwards we shared ideas of what regenerative, organic agriculture means in practice.

Sunflowers Garden Volunteers: Noemi (left) and Linda (right) visiting the Piedras Park garden with the rest of us. The garden has already hosted four international volunteers and one international intern this year. Noemi is a student from Switzerland who is working with us for six months, doing her professional internship as part of her bachelor’s degree program. Linda is from western North Carolina and is her in Costa Rica for two months serving as a short-term volunteer from the Methodist church. She and her husband, Sam, work a little over half the time in the UBL library, but “sneak” off as often as they can to work with us. In February and the first week of March Sunflowers garden hosted two volunteers from Pennsylvania--Phyllis and Mark "Espocito"

During our first official activity of the year in March we did a round robin workshop, sharing different aspects of the garden with participants from the multiple organizations represented. Here, Guillermo (far right) is sharing his system for producing compost using wire baskets and well-chopped compost mixed with special leaves and good soil.

Wild Spaces: Mía, far right, our colleague from the Green UBL team, shared with participants the importance of creating spaces of wildness wherever possible. We have between 600 and 800 square yards of space that we try to minimize interventions. It is a wonder and a joy to see new plants appear each year as the space seems to by cycling through its own regeneration.

Jonathan, a Chemistry student from the University of Costa Rica, describes the three key “rules” for no-till regenerative agriculture with Ana Lorena, from the Piedras Park community garden.

Diogenes, the rescue cat, and Fiona, our Dominican "puppy", watching Keila as she decompresses after a long day at school.

Annika skating during oneo of her sixth grade events.