By Casey Callais 7/8/2016 — The Seeds of Learning office in Managua has seen rain nearly every day for the last two weeks. El Jicarito, only about 15 miles north as the crow flies, has been lucky to receive a few light showers here and there. Supposedly it has to do with the local effect of global climate change – with fewer trees around to draw the rain the land doesn’t receive what it needs to grow more trees, or something along those lines. Regardless of what the reason may be, the community has certainly taken advantage of the dry spell to move serious amounts of dirt.

A local farmer heard our plea for heavy machinery and offered the use of his tractor to till the bad clay and then scrape it off with the box blade. That’s exactly what we needed to remove the top 8″ or so which will be replaced and built up with material selecto. He has been hard at work for the last week doing a job he suspected would take only two days. Of course with any project there are unforeseen delays. First the stabilizer arm snapped and then the drag link assembly started giving problems. But it was nothing a few experienced Nica tractor technicians hadn’t seen before. A few spot welds here and there and she was back on the field, tilling and scraping.

We have one week to go before the group from Sonoma Valley arrive to lend a helping hand. They will be the second group to work on the project and we will see how much work we can get done (the Jesuit HS group set the bar high). We hope to have the rest of the post holes dug out, filled in and perhaps we will even get to the foundations of the building itself.

Fingers crossed the rains fall everywhere but on top of our school!

We will be posting regular updates about the project as construction continues. In the meantime we are offering an amazing deal for people who are interested in this project. Donate to help buy whiteboards, desks, computers, etc. and receive Knitknot’s architectural plans, Precision Structural Engineering’s structural design (compliant with the 2012 International Building Code), Seeds of Learning’s complete construction report AND a 2-hour phone call with the Seeds of Learning team. This is ideal for anyone who is interested in building their own super adobe project and the money goes to cover school supplies and resources.