Success
A few months ago this was an empty field with just weeds and brush. We contracted with a local organization to find a village that wanted to start producing their own food. The organization brought all the village adults in for 5 days of training at their headquarters. They were trained on farming, seed production, harvesting, composting and excess production sales.
They have already had a couple harvests. They have made over $1,000 in vegetable sales.
The man standing next to Cheryl is the village leader. The farm is on his property. All of the surrounding households are invited to work on the farm and then they receive a portion of the crop as well as proceeds.
Thus far this Farm has been a great example of how people when giving a little bit of knowledge and some money for basic tools can become self-sufficient. In addition to the training on this Farm we supplied hand tools, a water pump, a water tank, and drip irrigation. Their Farm is larger than we had planned and they have already outgrown their water tank. But now that they have a source of income they can make additions to the Water Systems themselves.
Produce is picked daily. Usually just before they're going to eat it.
Often it's very difficult to buy seeds so the Farms use a portion of their crops to produce the seeds. Here the various types of plants are being dried and the seeds will then be extracted.
These are some of the villagers.
It is usual and customary when we make a visit to one of these projects that the village puts on a meal. When we first arrived we had a snack and then about an hour later we had the meal. Usually Cheryl and I will eat just the rice, some vegetables and bananas. So far I've never had any of the fish.
With their proceeds from the first few harvests The Village bought a motorcycle so they could bring future harvests to the market.
This goat has a great beard.
The manager of the organization we contracted with bought a fighting cock from one of the neighbors. This brings his total to 12. He fights them every weekend. Cockfighting is a big sport here. He got to ride home in the back seat with Cheryl and another worker, it was only an hours drive.
Comments
Post a Comment