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A Year of Changes
New Office Staff – Our Son and Daughter-in-Law!
Our son, Germain, and Erika Sprung have moved down to Costa Rica to work for Finca Leola. We are thrilled to have them with us, and this change is going to help tremendously with communications. The first priority has always been to make sure your trees are growing well. As we have planted more and more trees this has consumed more and more of our time, and we have not be able to keep adding to the website and keep up with communication like we have in the past.
Having Germain and Erika in the office adds native English speakers who are here day and evening and someone qualified to handle the office communications and enhance the website, taking many more pictures. This helps us toward our plans of carrying the management of Finca Leola into future generations.
A Note from Erika and Germain
Hi, everybody! We just wanted to take a minute and introduce ourselves and get the ball rolling! This is our first newsletter, but I’m sure we’ll make an appearance in more. Germain and I have been here just over a month and we’re still surviving living in Costa Rica. This is my first time living out of the United States…but Germain has lived in four other countries, so this isn’t anything new to him. We started thinking and talking about moving to Costa Rica sometime in April. Over the next five months or so, we visited Costa Rica for five days, somehow managed to pack up most of our apartment in Rochester, NY, get all the vaccinations that were needed for our dog and two cats, and fly all of us to Costa Rica! It was a lot of work and a huge step, but it’s been going very well and we look forward to all we can accomplish here.
Over the next couple of months, we’ll be working on improving the website and newsletter, so feel free to send us your ideas and give us your feedback. If we know what you want, then it will make our job easier!
We’re looking forward to sharing more of our experiences with you, as the months go by.
Erika & Germain
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Phase II: The Woodshop
A key component to realizing the projections from your trees is a good market for the wood. Even though we are interested in the final result of a permanent rainforest, we like you need the trees to generate money to reward those who own the pioneer species that are getting the forest restarted.
From the early days of Finca Leola, there has been a plan to buy the wood from tree owners to use in a woodshop. The woodshop would primarily be focused on making doors, cabinets, flooring, and moldings. We are happy to announce that the woodshop is built and the local construction people are eager to put in their orders once it is in full production.
We believed in the past that the market for your wood would be primarily in the USA and
Europe, but because of the strong market here we have found we can do just as well if not better fulfilling the needs of the local market. Currently MINAE is predicting that Costa Rica will need to import 50% of their wood needs this year because the local supply is not adequate. This is pushing up the cost of wood, which is good news for those who have trees.
As a tree owner, you have the right to sell your wood to whoever you wish, but we are hoping that the majority of you will sell to us at the better price we will be able to offer because we don’t have to haul the wood anywhere to work with it.
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