By Evelind Schecter | Project Leader
Dear Friends,
With your enthusiastic support, we have attracted additional donations and can now say we have funded the project. It will take a few more months to finish, as we are doing the work with our farm and biochar teams. We aim to have the main catchment tank completed within a month, with the walls sealed so that we can start collecting water during this rainy season. The gutters on the buildings will be installed before we start the carport catchment.
With dry spells, hot, hot weather, and pumps that inevitably need maintenance or replacement, everyone is hyper-conscious of our precious water collection system. As we add fields for cultivation, we reassess the water and irrigation flow, looking for ways to move the water efficiently, to where it is needed.
Our children's home staff all come from farming villages and have built up our vegetable beds over years of crop rotation and adding biochar mixed with manure. Our children take turns with the watering and weeding after school and on the weekends. The staff knows how to recognize the medicinal and edible plants growing around us and pick them to use and teach the children.
We get seeds from relatives in the mountains, as well as through the ECHO Asia seed bank. Michael orders seed packets from the US to try new breeds and expand our palates. All the children now enjoy regular green salad and love to grow tomatoes to make spaghetti sauce.
Today we are hosting a workshop taught by a professor from Maejo University, the main agricultural faculty in Chiang Mai. Organic farmers from around Phrao have come for this second part of a series on cultivating stingless bees (they are tiny and truly stingless) to make high-grade honey, and how to take it to market. We will continue to have these kinds of workshops for the community, as we expand our own knowledge and framing practices.
Thank you for making this possible,
With best wishes for a wonderful summer,
Dana, Evelind, Michael, with the Warm Heart Children and Staff
By Evelind Schecter | Project Leader
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