During the heavy windstorm in November, Mausi's granddaughter, Raquel, found the hummingbird nest she'd been monitoring dangling from the tree branch. She went into full animal rescue mode and took them into her care. Every morning, her adopted animals would wake her, and she fed them sugar water and provided them with flying lessons by flapping her arms in front of them.
These tiny birds went from having only a couple of feathers and being completely helpless to a full recovery under her care. They flew off when released after approximately two weeks. This amazing story doesn't end there, the very resourceful Raquel walking in her grandparent's footsteps wrote a book and drew multiple images to document her experience.
Picking coffee is not an easy job, yet it is a family job. Normally the entire family unit will pick coffee at the same time in order to collect more and get a larger salary. Since this means that mom and dad will both be picking, all little youngsters will also be brought along. This is not the safest of environments for all kids and it also creates a more stressful environment for the parents. Could you imagine taking your two year old to the office and getting any work done? Therefore, we've established a childcare on the premises. The kids of the pickers are cared for while their parents are picking coffee. They get breakfast and lunch, they also play, watch TV and get some schooling.
We had a very successful visit from the Rainforest Alliance last year during our review. While most requests from the review were minor, we'd like to mention a couple of changes that we've found to be very useful. One of the best changes has been the ecological garbage bags. These are a kind of organic recyclable garbage bags. It is an inexpensive yet very useful idea, it gives the workers the opportunity of throwing their garbage as they are on the roads, and they also pick up garbage left by others. They are collected once or twice a week and recycle it on compost. Also, the pride of the workers after the review was so exciting that we wanted to place the rules and regulations in a way that all workers could see and inspect at their leisure. We've found that the more that is explained, the more ownership everyone takes and accepts. The pride within our personnel is evident by the hard work they put forth in maintaining the farm clean and healthy.
Back in the Summer 2006 Newsletter we spoke about the construction of our new worker's kitchen, this has been a very slow work in progress, since at the farm all construction takes a break during the harvest. We've now completed the kitchen, and it has been a wonderful addition to the farm. It is a wonderful open and clean space where we can finally accommodate the workers and their needs. We would also like to thank Mr. Jorgi for his organization's wonderful generosity; they funded the purchase of a new tortilla machine for the kitchen. We had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Jorgi thanks to Cesar Ros, our Spain buyer, who brought Mr Jorgi on one of his visits to the estate. Tortillas are a major dietary staple in Nicaragua, and the quantity required to feed the personnel became a tremendous burden on the cooks, who used to perform this task by hand.
Students from William and Mary College in Williamsport, Virginia paid us a visit in March. They spent their Spring Break in Nicaragua doing various works, among them the construction of a library at our children's school. They built bookshelves and filled them with books that they donated.
They also gave the children English classes; the children and the college students both enjoyed the lessons very much. We plan on following in their footprints and continue filling the bookshelves of the children's school as well as developing a similar library for our adult education programs.
