We are so floored to have started to break ground on our community garden! We have two permanent farmers, hired to oversee the mini-farm we are cultivating. They have been busy working in between construction of a new church building and preparing the land by hand--literally.
The farmers hack at the ground using hand-hoe/hand-axe like tool. It makes for back breaking work. They are very accustomed to these short-handle tools. We went to purchase new tools from the ones below, which were necessary to replace the overly used tools that made for a lot of effort with little result. Unfortunately, our lead farmer disliked the long-handle hoe, because he said he "didn't get enough power out of it". He was used to his bent-over posture, hacking at the ground. I was in no way going to change his opinion on the matter.
We, I should say "Americans", are so accustomed to our long-handle tools, it seems crazy that we would bend over and bend our backs to swing a pick. I have even begun to read articles of the adversity Western organizations have faced for trying to introduce our Western tools.
Staying on the vein of introducing new things, I got the group together to explain our plans for on-site composting. We have gotten our large family and the community members that live on the church property to begin collecting all of their compostable waste and taking it to our compost pile. We will be using locally purchased chicken manure (strume, in Portuguese, one of the words that has taken me a century to remember) and the excess grasses and leaves to start it out. It's so great to use small ideas to produce delicious and nutritious veggies.
So far, we plan on growing cabbage, corn, beans, cucumber, onion and pumpkin. The community members decided collectively what they would like to have. We are still brainstorming what will be done with this food once it's full grown.
We're thinking we can start a small microcredit program, allowing community members to sell the veggies in the market. We're also thinking that we could use some of the food for expecting mothers lacking proper nutrition, for the orphans adopted by the church or for the children's new health education program.
So many ideas!! I'll let you know what turns out!
THIS IS ALL HAPPENING BECAUSE OF YOUR SUPPORT!
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