Dear Tommy & Leona,

Greetings from the forest! Things are going so well down here! Our newly constructed - and ever-improving - Seed Center is absolutely fabulous. Its the perfect location. Now you can get off the bus, walk for five minutes through the jungle, climb a steep hill, and you arrive at our tropical paradise. At night you hear only the sounds of the jungle -- we even had some monkeys pass through recently!

Construction has been a big theme this spring. At the Seed Center we now have a central meeting area with rooms upstairs for long-term visitors, a small kitchen, plus an attached dorm for volunteers. Rainfall provides fresh drinking water, and bathing choices are the beautiful creek or an outdoor shower from the water tank. We have a small garden established, and are busy surrounding the place with planting beds for the forest trees. Word is starting to spread, and and we are constantly receiving requests for more native forest seeds. We have distributed over 8,000 seeds and plants in the first half of 2008. We've really hit an important issue!

The research from this season is showing very promising results for direct seeding of large-seeded species -- seed predation rates were very low (less than 5%), germination high (over 90% for 3 of 4 species), and survival to 8 weeks averages 81% across species. We have identified over 200 species representing 126 genera and 52 plant families in our plant collections in the surrounding forest, and many more yet to be discovered. Tropical biodiversity no joke in these parts!

I recently posted the project on the WWOOF website (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) and we have had a tremendous response. Now we have new volunteers coming every week, and they have become an essential part of our work. Upcoming projects include the creating a ceremonial area, composting toilet (also ceremonial!), a sign for the road, and terracing, along with our ongoing work collecting seeds in the primary forest and planting trees in the deforested areas. We continue to look for just the right land to buy that can serve as a permanent seed source and protected conservation area.

No letter to you would be complete without expressing my deep appreciation for your support of our work - everything that is happening here has been made possible by your generosity and dedication, for which I am deeply grateful.

Erica- seedsdream.org