The farm Selva Negra contains approximately 12 kilometers of roads. These roads are necessary for the many activities occurring throughout the farm. They take you to the hydropower plant, to the compost bins, the vermiculture area, the citrus trees, the cattle pastures and the fishponds. But primarily they are necessary for the collection of the day's coffee picking. The wear and tear on the roads are amazing, although they do not have heavy traffic, the biggest damage is done by rainfall and erosion. The quantity of rain that needs to be deviated in the rainy season is amazing. It has destroyed many roads and we're constantly fixing and re-fixing our work.

This dry season weĠre trying a new method that we're very proud of. A foreman from our construction crew spent some time working with a big transportation company fixing the highways in Nicaragua. We're learning from his experiences and implementing professional road construction methods.

Here you see one of our new areas with a large ditch for water runoff. The ditches are of a cobblestone style, with individual stones placed with mortar between them. Large channels are also being made to deviate the water around another section of road. The window available when it is dry enough to complete this work is from March through May. Therefore this work is rather time constrained as we are racing to completion before the rains come.