Something from nothing!

Friday I gained a new respect for this awesome planet that God has created and for the perseverance of the Haitian farmer.  One of the important cash crops here in the mountains is onions, and early January is the time to prepare your fields for planting. 

Hi 'hoe', hi 'hoe', it's off to work we go!

These are my /zonyons/, planted from sets, not seeds.
Maybe next year.

 From prior trips, I knew where most of the seedling gardens were planted and really was wondering what they were going to do.  Let me first set up the process involved in growing ‘zonyons’.  When we thought of planting onions at home is was buying onion sets and planting and never really thinking about where the sets came from.  Well, as hard as this may be to imagine, they come from seeds!  And that’s where we will start here is planting seeds and then transplanting them in about 6 weeks into larger ‘jardens’ higher in the mountains.  We’ll fill you in on why the mountains when we get a chance to help them transplant.  Right now I want to talk about planting ‘zonyon gren’ (onion seeds).  The reason for my skepticism was the seedling jardens were all in the bottom land along the river.  They do this for a couple reasons.  First, the soil down there is some better than the soil higher up, but mostly because there is water in the river.  If you think back a few posts, you’ll remember that hurricane Sandy did her very best to wash away everything along the river, roads, gardens & trees, and replace it with a generous covering of rock.  It didn't seem to me that there would be any place to build new gardens.  I’d asked a friend, ‘Tinonm’, if I could help him ‘fe te’ (work ground) for his jarden.  When we arrived at the site, I was still wondering if there were any places to build new gardens.  The spot he was working was up on the bank from the river in an area the flood waters hadn’t reached.  It was hard to tell though, because the whole area was covered with a ‘generous covering of rock’.  They had been here the previous day and cleared most of the vegetation leaving a pretty steep slope.  They had worked it in some places and he pointed to a spot and showed me he wanted me to start throwing rocks from the ‘tilled’ area off to the sides.  It looked to me like and endless job with not a lot of potential!  But, as we worked, you threw off the big ones, shoveled off the smaller ones and the soil (I almost called it ‘dirt’ but I’m not sure if it would qualify) started to appear.  As we worked, we built small terraces 4-6’ wide that were becoming planting beds as you finish graded the beds with a rake.  I wish I had before and after pics but I hadn't taken a camera, but in just a few hours what appeared to be wasteland had been transformed into seedbeds awaiting seed.  The area is barely ¼ acre and there’s probably a 25’ change is elevation front to back.  On this little space, they will plant enough seed to eventually produce over 100 ‘gwo saks’ (large sacks like 100# seed bags) of mature onions.  They will plant the seed next week and then the hours will then be spent hauling water up from the river.  These beds will be watered twice daily with a watering can with water carried up 5 gallons at a time.  As we worked Tinonm asked me if we grew zonyons like this back home.  I just smiled and shook my head.  I can only imagine what he would think if he could see me bring the Troy Built out of the barn and prepare my ‘jarden’ to receive onion sets.  I’m sure he’d just smile and shake his head!  I’ll post some  pics as we plant and things grow.

"Bondye konnen!" (God knows!) our friend Charlot