It's All Starting to Come Together...

You'd think that after killer sunburns, strange illnesses, and almost two weeks of non-stop work, our Feed by Seed team would be nearing the end of our energy levels and sanity. Yet here we are, entering the homestretch of our journey in Nicaragua and growing ever stronger as individuals and as a team.

Today was a monumental day. First and foremost, the field was plowed and irrigation has been laid out! The long-awaited tiller has yet to arrive (still held in Nicaraguan Customs in Managua) so we had to resort to an alternative in order to prepare the research field for planting…namely, a somewhat old-fashioned but still highly effective alternative: plowing with a pair of oxen! Some good searching allowed us to find a local man with a pair of oxen and a plow willing to not only plow the field, but also perform the work today, on a national Nicaraguan holiday! We were definitely lucky. The holiday also meant no school for the ag. education team , but that only meant more team members to help in the field!

After about six hours of work (and the opportunity for each member of our group to try leading the oxen ourselves!), the field was finished and ready for the next step. This was fertilizing each row and spraying herbicide, a task that seems easy enough until you outside in the hot sun carrying buckets of fertilizer and tripping over mounds of dirt.

Finally the last task of the day was laying down the irrigation that will provide much-needed water to all of the crops. We are using a drip irrigation system which meant laying out rows of black tubing along the tops of each row, connected to a central water line, which will allow water to “drip” out of tubing onto each plant at a constant pressure. Unfortunately, we still were unable to complete planting today and will be waking up bright and early to start at 6 am tomorrow in order to complete the task.