Plant 30,000 native trees Costa Rican owned farms

Our community tree planting Initiative in Costa Rica focuses on local subsistence farmers planting bio diverse trees on their own widespread deforested cattle farms. These farms typically suffer from bad soil and the owners can no longer raise profitable cattle. We have created a solution that works for everyone. Locals make money by producing and planting trees with in deforested areas near the Equator where benefits are compounded for all of us.  

Healthy trees need fertile soil to develop robust, root balls.  Fermenting fruit  material mixed into the compost inoculates the trees naturally. We nourish our baby trees in the nursery with specially prepared soil for a full year before we plant them so that they can survive the first hard couple of years out in the cow pasture. Community members fill the medium sized tree bags with bokosha soil produced by our women's group, ladies like Daney pictured here. 

Daney is 58 years old and has 13 children. She lives in a rustic house and earns extra money producing fertile bokosha soil for our tree nurseries. More and more, our fertile dirt production has gathered momentum and folks around town are buying it up!  Cleaning up the riversides by removing cow poop prevents nitrogen overload in the whole watershed leading to the nearby Pacific ocean 13 kms downstream. 

The link between the dirt and the trees reveals the magic of Nature. And creates a space where we humans can participate! The trees make the dirt by dropping branches, piling up with leaves and fermenting fruit and animal feces dropping from nests and canopies. Add the shade and dappled sunlight, cooler temperatures and cover, and magic dirt appears. The dirt makes the tender young trees grow by giving them a chance to develop a root ball and get nourishment from “topsoil” during the first challenging years. Round and round they go, the dirt and the trees. We all need each other to survive.

At Community Carbon Trees - Costa Rica, we have a regular environmental education program that reinforces our community tree planting work and gives people a chance to put their hands in the good earth and help out producing the trees. It is a fabulous opportunity to reach children and adults alike through play work in our highly biodiverse community nurseries. Everyone feels so good after our Kid's Nature Days and it is a chance to integrate our community of foreigners and Costa Ricans into one big happy team working together for the local forest so important to the bigger picture of climate change. 

Sunday, June 8, 2014, ACCT Kid's Nature Day, we invited the local beekeeper Harold Mena Ramirez and his son to share with us all kinds of information about bee culture including all about the 50 different Costa Rican native bees, especially the tiny medincal ones. Everyone loved hearing how the bees make honey and how apiculturists like Harold collect the honey and the bee pollen full of vitamins and amino acids.  Two different families already hired Harold to come to their farms and relocate hives of medicinal bees instead of the folks destroying the hives.  Harold to the bee rescue! 

As most of us are aware, bees and other pollinators like bats, moths, lizards, hummingbirds and even wasps, are critical to our food production. We plant so many blooming trees that produce gorgeous flowerscritical to feed the bees all year long, especially in the tropical summer months. It is so much fun to see people come alive when they learn they can attract pollinators of all kinds through planting native fruit trees and other fine hardwoods.  Having fun while learning and creating dignified jobs for local small farmers is what Community Carbon Trees Costa Rica does with every tree we plant!

Thank you for your continued support of our community reforestation work. While environmental education may be the EXTRA voluntary part of our work, it is certainly an important focus for us as it creates even more long term positive impact for forest conservation and reforestation with both young and old alike. We love Trees! And Bees!!  Thank you Harold!