Visiting Farmers Impressed with Family Gardens

We’re currently working on a project to help four families from our communities, and a young farmer from another rural community, learn how to garden organically. The people we’re teaching are farmers, and they know about growing things. But unfortunately the knowledge about how to reliably grow things without depending on chemicals to control pests, weeds and to fertilize plants has been lost over the last couple of generations (as is true among many farmers in the US). Because it is only financially viable to buy these products for cash crops, these families don’t grow as much of their own food as they could with the resources naturally occurring on their own farms. So organic family gardens aren’t just about the environment; they’re also about making use of what we have, and having more food on a more regular basis.

A group of farmers from the US which gave the money for the project came for a visit in January and were really impressed with a couple things. For one, the gardens were looking good, and the plants were healthy. Doing things organically is much more complicated than using chemical products, so a healthy garden grown by new students to organic gardening is a great accomplishment! And second, the visiting farmers were really happy to see how much young man from the other community had learned, and that he was already teaching three other people from his community! It’s great to know that these solutions are spreading, and potentially helping people we will never meet!