The second week that I was in Venezuela I was invited to go to Centro Madre in Barlovento. (I copied a description of the project from the priven.org webpage and have pasted it below.) They have built a training garden there and the last day of my visit, a group of school kids came out to Centro Madre for a field trip to see the garden.
I took over 200 pictures while the kids were there and my favorites are posted below.
The first picture is of Didi, the nun who runs Centro Madre, showing the kids the worms in the worm composting that they are doing at the farm. Yes, I really appreciate all soil creation that they are doing at the farm. I still don't really know how to grow food, but I can contribute to the soil making! :-)
The second picture is of Didi describing the medicinal garden to the kids. I think that they did a great job of putting up signs at Centro Madre and I'd like for us to have the same at the Prout institute. (Yes, our gardens are a LOT smaller!)
The farm has a fish pond, but it isn't stocked yet. On my to-do list is to read up on how to make sure that fish ponds don't become polluters. If anyone has a good article or two on fish pond design, please send it my way.
They also have bee hives. Here Didi is getting the pieces ready - they put in starter bees wax. Then later they can pull out these slots and easily harvest the honey from them.
Here are the kids around the compost piles! The farm currently has four fantastic compost piles. The kids were surprised at how hot the compost piles get. giggle!
These are the vegetable beds.
The guy in the organge is another Dada (monk). His name is Dada Atmapranananda and he is from the Philippines. The man is he talking to is an agriculture expert from Cuba who is here advising Venezuelans about how to grow more food. (Chavez and Castro worked out a deal where they are trading oil for expertise. Many of the new health clinics that have been opened are staffed by Cuban doctors and/or Cuban dentists.)
And yes, the farm also has a three legged tortuse. It wanders around and hangs out in the shade. Sometimes it wanders into the house, but it isn't house trained. (I never realized that tortuse poo smelled so bad!)
And the farm has 80 chickens. One of the things that I learned from Dada Atma is that it is good to put fresh leaves and other fresh things in the pen for the chickens to peck at. It keeps them from pecking at each other. So, every morning we'd break off some small leafy branches and weave them into the wire mesh of the wall and the chickens would occupy themselves with consuming all the leaves. The chickens were very excited about all the leaves!
The most exciting thing for me was that the farm had some moringa olifera trees. So I brought back two branches to plant here at the house. http://moringa-plant.com/ I also brought back a lot of leaves which I cleaned and froze for later consumption. (They are an excellent source of iron.) One of the branches is planted already but digging holes in this soil is hard work and we have two papaya seedlings to plant as well, so we have three more big holes to dig.
Starting in February 2009, a very intense effort has been undertaken to develop a self-reliant, integrated farm at Centro Madre in Barlovento, Venezuela. Our goal is both to create a regular source of income from a wide variety of agricultural products and to educate the local community about the principles and practices of small-scale organic agriculture. Dada Atmapranananda supervised the agricultural project from dawn to dusk with his tireless effort. At each step of the way, we were advised and supported by two agronomists from the agricultural institute of the government (CIARA) in preparation for an inspection to evaluate the progress of our 3-hectare farm. In addition to two paid farm workers, many volunteers came from the Prout Research Institute of Venezuela and the Ananda Marga community to lend a hand to this collective effort. Several benefactors gave us financial donations to buy materials. It was astonishing how hard everyone worked, and the results were very impressive.
CIARA recognizes 12 aspects of an ideal integrated small-scale agricultural project. Half of them we already had, and the other half we started during this period: [Click Read more...]
Vegetables
Floriculture (flowers)
Medicinal plants
Fruit trees
Compost
Seed Bank and Nursery
Root crops
Apiculture (bee-keeping)
Pisciculture (fish ponds)
Animal husbandry
Food processing (cottage industry)
Training workshops
Nearly 10 tons of cow manure was brought from nearby farms and combined with compost to create a very rich organic fertilizer, which we used to fill15 vegetable beds, each one 10 meters long and one meter wide. We planted them all with 12 different vegetables and built an irrigation system to water half of them. Very delicious tomatoes are now ripening each day.
We also created a special area for herbs and medicinal plants that now has 15 varieties from aloe vera plants to lemongrass. Nine varieties of fruit trees are flourishing, with over 100 trees in total. Our 22 bee hives are starting to produce honey again. As a cottage industry, we dry and package bananas, mangos and tomatoes for sale in local markets.
We created two ponds: one is 12 by 10 meters, the second is 8 by 10 meters, both are one meter deep. We covered the bottom of each pond with manure to encourage the growth of algae, which will provide food to the fish populations, and then pumped water from a small stream that runs adjacent to the back of the farm
The CIARA inspector came on April 25, 2009 to determine the category of our farm: good, very good or excellent. He rated us as excellent, and said that if there had been a higher category, we would certainly deserve it! In July, he will return to evaluate our progress.
Our project is inspired by the following words of P.R. Sarkar: “Self-reliance is the main objective of our farming projects, hence they should be oriented towards production. They should not be dependent on outside resources. An integrated approach to farming should include such areas as agriculture, horticulture, floriculture, sericulture, lac culture, apiculture, dairy farming, animal husbandry, irrigation, pisciculture, pest control, the proper use of fertilizers, cottage industries, energy production, research centres and water conservation. This approach will help make farming projects self-reliant, and should be adopted.”
The climate of Barlovento is very hot and humid, which means that controlling plant diseases and pests is very challenging. Our gardens will be more productive if we can install shade netting. We also want to invest in the development of our seed bank, extend the irrigation system, and build a laboratory and food processing kitchen. For this, donations will be gratefully appreciated. Please get in touch with the director if you’re interested in helping out.
We invite suggestions and proposals for research and experiments, and volunteers are most welcome.
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