(Ladies showing off their fruit and vegetable seeds for home gardens)
Recently I’ve done a series of seminars with various communities and groups in and around Cerro Iglesias that encourages the use of organic soil making to produce healthier crops and ultimately healthier people. My focus was working with mostly women and teenagers to promote home gardens. This seminar series was inspired by a very nice donation of fruit and vegetable seeds I received from a dear family friend, Mr. Eadie of Davidson, NC. The seeds came from a neat organization called Seed Programs Inc. Mr. Eadie provided me with several hundred seed packs including: tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, collards, watermelon and cabbage. Instead of handing out seeds haphazardly in the community, I felt that education was important and I could touch on important themes such as organic soils/fertilizers and nutrition/health in addition to providing seeds for home gardens.
Soil:
Without good soil, it’s not worth even having a home garden so soil quality is the first topic covered. One of the toughest things about living in tropics is that once the jungle has been cut down to build houses and plant food, the soil quickly looses its fertility due to intense sun, rain and erosion. Almost everything grows in this climate, but without healthy soil, people become dependent on chemical fertilizers mostly supplied by the government to have success with their crops. These fertilizers are polluting the water sources, are dangerous for the farmers handling them and in the long run are making the soil even less fertile by stripping it of other important minerals. Although I am opposed to the idea of chemical fertilizers, I can sympathize with the fact that necessity drives this behavior (people need to eat!). I also believe, however, that a balance must be found. If we can teach people to keep organic matter on the ground instead of clearing it all away and burning it, they will need fewer chemicals for their crops. Organic soil making (composting) will improve soil fertility, thus improving crop production, thus leading to a healthier family.
To start the seminar, I asked my participants, “where does the soil come from”? From everything that falls to the ground and decomposes. When we walk in the jungle and look down, we notice that the soil is rich and black. When we walk through the farm where we have corn or beans or rice planted, the soil is reddish-brown. This soil is tired and crops will only grow if they are fertilized. In contrast, what grows in the jungle? Everything! So, in order to mimic the rich soil that we find in the jungle, we have to mimic the jungle in our own yard or at least designate an area for composting. What falls to the ground in the forest that later decomposes and becomes dirt? Leaves, animal excrement, rotten fruit, trees, ash (in the case of forest fires). All of these things can be found on or very close to our homes. So instead of chucking them and letting the chickens peck away at them, why don’t why put them in a big pile and let them decompose to turn into a rich soil? The most important idea I wanted to convey here was that composting is easy, free and can help crops in your garden or farm grow healthier with less chemical fertilizers.
(Working with school kids and teacher to chop up organic matter for the school garden's compost pile- imagine 20+ kids swinging their machetes wildly)
Gardens:
People here in the Comarca picture a garden differently than we do, typically. They picture a garden as at least a 1/2-acre of terrain to plant a single crop. I believe in the States we would just call this a farm. So, the first step is to introduce the idea of a home garden: a small space near the home where various fruits and vegetables can be grown to increase the nutritional content in our diets (i.e. something of nutritional value to go with the white rice or boiled green bananas). Each participant learned how and when to plant each fruit and vegetable seed. We also went over different creative ideas to enclose your garden without having to buy expensive chicken wire.
(making a fast decomposing compost pile near my house with my neighbors and covering it up with banana leaves to keep out chickens and heavy rains)
Nutrition:
A healthy tomato plant will produce a ton of tomatoes, which provide us not only with a delicious fruit, but also with a great source of vitamin C and other nutrients. A lot of times, poverty and lack of education do not afford desperate mothers the chance to feed their children a balanced diet. Boiled green bananas and root tubers such as yucca are the main staples here and in some places this is all there is to eat. Children in these areas are lacking important vitamins that are necessary for mental and physical development. For the people that live closer to a road and are typically better off (and I use the term “better off” in a relative sense), there is more access to the beloved white rice and snacky foods such as cheese puffs and sugary sodas. They have extra money to buy empty calories but are not as motivated to buy vegetables and definitely not motivated to grow them. Like most of us in the U.S.A., they are victims of clever marketing and pretty packages. In a sense, my role in this seminar was to make the case for vegetables – a crafty marketing scheme to promote their delicious culinary uses and exquisite health benefits. Unlike the soda or the cheese puff, my motivation is not to maximize returns for my shareholders, but to maximize the development of healthier bodies and minds for my stakeholders. Take that, cheese puff.
I taught this seminar in 4 communities: with my knitting group, my closest Peace Corps neighbor’s site (about an hour away), at my house with my neighbors, at a PTA meeting in the school in the town down the hill and with the kids at that school. In all, about 70 people (mostly women), plus about 25 children in the school received this training and received 6 types of fruit and vegetable seeds. In hindsight, I realize that a better strategy would have been to charge people a nominal fee (say, a nickel) for each seed pack. Not because I’d pocket the money (in contrast, I could have helped purchase fencing material for them), but because people tend to care more for something if they have worked for it or invested something. Oh well, live and learn. I’ve gone to visit several of the participants and many are having success so far. Below are a few pictures of them. Thanks again to Seed Programs Inc and Mr. Eadie for your support!
(Above: Cabbage is off to a great start!)
(Above: Norma shows me her beautiful tomato seed bed)
