Pictures: Geer Sell family from Memorial Day weekend to Thanksgiving 2015

Christmas and New Years greetings.

Its been a while since weve sent out a letter with Geer Sell news. So here it goes.
Some News about Tierra Nueva is at the end.
We had a great summer. Not because the garden produced abundantly, and the
fresh organic eating was delectable. Nor because Joni and I took a couple of short
but enjoyable trips one being a canoe camping trip in Sylvania Wilderness in upper
peninsula Michigan where we hiked, paddled and I fly fished for small mouth bass. It
wasnt because we had great times visiting Deanna in Madison, WI where we
enjoyed great music, bicycling one of the nations most bicycle friendly cities, and
dining at some of Madisons great restaurants that feature great locally sourced
ingredients. Nor was it the art fairs, coffee shops, libraries, benefits and wine bars
that I (Larry) had a great time gigging (playing music) with Bill Liggett. (More on
that later.) Of course all of these things made for an invigorating summer, but what
made for great summer was for the first summer for quite a few years now, we had
lots of time for the Geer Sell family to be together.
Heres how that happened. Deanna stayed in Madison to work this summer, so she
was just a couple of hours away. Even more out of the ordinary was to have Daniel
around. What in earths tarnation, you might be wondering, would lead Daniel to
come back to northern Illinois to stay for a summer? Well he did stay around for the
entire summer. First let me get back to Deanna.

Last December, Deanna graduated from Edgewood College in Madison, WI a

semester early. She worked her butt off to get finished early to help to lessen the
impact of what plagues so many young people today student debt. Her degree is
in art therapy. She found some part-time work giving art lessons to preschool kids at
a day care, and then she got another part time job working in an afterschool
program working with disabled kids. That not being enough, she works occasional
weekends doing promotions at stores and events for wine tastings, and apparently
still needing something to fill all of her spare time (and to pay the rent and
groceries), she makes jewelry for someone who has an online business. She has
also started volunteering at a womens shelter. The good thing is that she was still
able to find time to come visit us, and we did get up to Madison to visit her.
If you havent been following the adventures of Daniel, here is a brief summary of
the past years. As you probably know, Daniel left college to hike the Appalachian
Trail. He then finished up his associate degree at local college. From there he
moved to Colorado and worked in Utah. The following summer he bicycled from
Seattle to the Florida Keys, after which he worked in Vail at the ski resort and spent
countless hours snowboarding Vails vast system of trails and back country. He
broke no limbs and skirted avalanches (thankfully). His next journey took him to
South America where he first spent time working on Jonis nephews farm in
Ecuador. He traveled from there south to Peru, took a boat down the river into the
Amazon rainforest and spent several months living in a village there. In the
rainforest he threw nets in the river for his food with the family he was staying
with and harvested from the plantings in the small clearings in the forest. He did
some volunteer work for a national park which led him deeper into the forest
traveling for days on the river. He walked barefoot through the forest, and improved
his Spanish. But Hawaii was calling him. So after coming back here (proving himself
damn good with a machete, and that hacking out my over grown weeds was
nothing compared to slashing your path through a jungle) for a brief spell working
odd jobs, with $800 to his name, he set off for Hawaii. He landed on the Big Island
Hawaii, and set off on foot along the coast. He found a job at a Work Away (small,
usually organic sustainable farms that offer food and lodging in exchange for your
labor). While there, he met a couple of people also from Colorado who had land on
the island and offered for Daniel to stay there and help them restore its overgrown
orchards while feasting on its exotic tropical fruits. He also found odd jobs doing
construction.
The spring of 2015 Daniel decided to leave behind a life of sitting on a surfboard
waiting for a wave with giant sea turtles swimming around him, whales breaching
from the depths just beyond while admiring the beauty of the 14,000 foot snow
covered volcano that sits in the middle of the Big Island for, you guessed it, exotic
northern Illinois. I dont think it was a brochure featuring Lake Michigan beaches
that drew him away from the star gazing capital of the world (for which the area in
Hawaii where Daniel was is famous for and the slow lava flow that captured the
worlds attention). Daniels good friend Courtney had moved back to this area from
Oregon and was working on an organic farm. Daniel came by to visit and was also
offered a job at the farm. The chance to be with Courtney and work side by side
with her and save money for a new adventure kept him here for the summer. At

summers end, Courtney and Daniel bought one way tickets to India, and left here
the first of December, and thats where they are now. They expect to be there for
about 6 months or until their money runs out. Within a few days of arriving, they got
their first job at a Work Away in an area north of Mumbai.
Joni just got a new job. After 6 years of working at a drug and alcohol treatment
facility, Joni took on a new adventure in what is being called Network Nurse with
AAHAA (Antioch Area Health Care Accessibility Alliance) It is similar work to Parish
Nursing that she has done in the past, but with perhaps a broader scope
coordinating with a larger variety of organizations in the area. Antioch is a
community just a few miles north us. Its a part time job with flexible hours and will
allow for Joni to take the time she needs to visit her mother who has moved into
Holdrege Memorial Homes an assisted living care facility. Over the spring Joni
helped her mother Betty make this transition, moving things out of Bettys condo in
town and then selling the condo in the fall. The house sold in less than a week to
the mother of one of Jonis best friends from high school. Daniel, Deanna, Joni and I
all traveled to Holdrege to share Thanksgiving with Betty and two of Jonis brothers
and their families.
Larrys folks moved from their house in Grayslake Lake to an apartment in Gurnee,
at Heather Ridge that I (Larry) helped landscape during my college days.
I (Larry) still work at Round Lake High School. Its hard to believe, but Ive been
there for 15 years now. I continue to teach ESL (English as a Second Language), but
its different now than in the past. We have fewer new immigrant students coming
into the country. Many of the students I work with have been here most of their lives
or were born here, but are unable to pass a state required test to exempt them from
needing English language services. I still enjoy the kids I work with, but increasing
pressures from administrative mandates and requirements make the job very
difficult. This year has been better since I have been co-teaching and that helps to
share the load. Im not working 60 hour weeks for a change.
I continue to assist with a community garden I helped to get started that works with
immigrant families. Im gradually trying to decrease the gardens dependence on
me, and hopefully this year someone else can manage the allotment of plots, etc. I
will probably continue to start the thousands of plants to sell at a reasonable price
to the gardeners so they have high quality varieties of vegetables to plant and sell
the produce at the market associated with the garden. I still have a very large
garden myself which I cant let go of due to the great eating (its a few days before
Christmas and still eating fantastic salads from my little hoop house with this mild
winter).
Music has been my latest project. I met a singer songwriter, Bill Liggett, at a coffee
house song circle a couple of years ago. We liked each others playing to which he
joked, Lets take this show on the road. We got together and did some practicing
and have been getting some chances to perform. Were having fun. Bill is a great
song writer, and I thoroughly enjoy learning and playing his music. There arent
many places to play original music in the area where we live, so weve been playing
mostly in small wine bars and coffee shops in south eastern Wisconsin. Last summer

we played a couple of libraries and several art festivals. We produced a cd with

some of the songs it was recorded live in a studio meaning we sat down and
played the songs without being able to go back and make changes to individual
parts, but it came out okay. People like it, and one of the songs was even played on
Wisconsin Public Radio. It can be downloaded from CD Baby and very soon a hard
copy can also be purchased there. CD name is North on 51 by Bill Liggett and Ruddy
Nickel. Were terrible at promotional stuff, but we do have a website in grave need
of updating. Its www.billliggett.com/music.
Lastly, I want to give you an update on Tierra Nueva since it has been an integral
part of our lives for so many years now. The last time I wrote about the project in
San Luis the focus was on the terrible violence that was devastating the area. While
the problems of gang related violence continue to place Honduras as the country
with the highest homicide rate in the world, things have settled down in the San
Luis area due to a heavy military presence. One of the sons of the family that rented
us the house that Joni and I lived in when we worked there became a general in the
Honduran military providing the clout to put such a focus on cleaning up the area.
People have moved back into the villages that were abandoned (and out of our
house we provided as a refuge for a couple of families).
Honduras is a country shaken up by scandals and corruption and more recently
ecological disasters. This past year was a year of drought and very little corn and
bean production. With the drought came a spike in the southern pine beetle which
in just one year killed, according to one source that Ive cited below, nearly a
quarter of the countrys forest cover a mountainous landscape that is primarily
covered in pine forest. http://www.ticotimes.net/2015/11/13/honduran-army-goes-towar-against-invading-bugs. With the dry season coming, forest fires could be
difficult to control. A Tierra Nueva promoter Raul Annibal Flores told me over the
phone a couple of days ago that already the area around San Luis is hotter since all
but small patches of the forest have dried up. This could also lead to water scarcity
in the villages. Coffee prices are also low this year, and the price of corn is high due
to the drought.
The Tierra Nueva promoters want to continue the coffee shade tree diversification
we have been doing. For the past four years we have been starting seedlings of
native timber species of trees to use as part of the shade system in coffee farms as
a response to the deforestation of pine trees to expand coffee production when
coffee prices were high. Each year weve started an average of 15,000 trees and
given technical assistance for planting the trees. We also graft one to two thousand
fruit (avocado, orange and mango) trees to sell at very reasonable rates. Well
continue with the same this year as well as work in a couple of villages with some
preventative health training (nutrition and disease prevention). The promoters also
get together with Tierra Nueva people in the Minas de Oro area for bible reflections
and to share experiences. Because of the forestation work of Tierra Nueva, San Luis
has been recognized as the municipality with the most significant reforestation
efforts in the department. Unfortunately, what we have been doing would be
difficult to replicate on the scale that will be needed to deal with the pine tree die
off from the pine beetle. The kinds of trees we are planting need care in the initial

stages, without which, would be difficult to adapt to the poor soils where pines trees
dominate.
If you are interested, to donate to Tierra Nuevas work, make checks out to Tierra
Nueva. On the bottom MEMO line put HONDURAN PROJECT, SAN LUIS. Send the
checks to Larry Sell, 23471 Petite Lake Rd., Lake Villa, IL 60046.

Christmas Blessings to you and wishing you a wonderful and meaningful year
ahead.