By Evelind Schecter | Project Leader
As we look ahead to find ways to make Warm Heart more self-sustaining, we are pleased to have the offer of assistance from a longtime friend in organic farming (Spencer) and two of our college graduates (Earn and Koon). Spencer built an organic vegetable marketing company and Earn has a degree in environmental sciences. Spencer has a broad network of farmers and innovators in organic agriculture and Earn is applying what she learned in school. Koon has a degree in nutrition and is seeing ways to apply her knowledge to our food consumption They are assessing our current systems and how we can add new farming techniques to increase our yields, and make it easier to farm and manage scarce water resources. Once we have a picture of our current state, we can engage the staff and children in designing and organizing the gardens for more intensive farming,
The current gardens have been nurtured over the years from dirt made mostly of clay to a soil that grows a range of crops. Biochar mixed with compost or manure has brought back the soil. We have been growing an increasing amount of our own vegetables along with eggs from the chickens. The team is collecting ideas for improvements and we’re looking forward to testing the techniques.
As we mentioned previously, water is a major concern and we have started repairing and improving our current water system. We have rain tank catchment on most of our buildings and we added a drinking water filter at the children’s home to save on purchased drinking water. We've gone out in rain storms to see which way the water flows to divert flood waters. With the details on Google Earth, we can see how the after flows and plan catchment areas for each garden plot.
With all the day-to-day activities required to keep the children healthy and in school, we have kept the gardens active, but now we have a team to focus on them and improve our bounty.
Thank you for supporting and encouraging us. We'll keep you posted as we learn more!
By Evelind Schecter | Project Leader
By Evelind Schecter | Program Manager
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