Family Garden Project Part 1

As many of you know, we recently received funding to start 100 family gardens (over the next 3 years) using drip irrigation systems! Last month, Kiara Yoder joined our team for a one year SALT position. She has gardening experience, we have money, there is lots of sun....so we're ready to go! Oh yes, water is still an issue. Well, along with money for the gardens, we also received money to build more water cisterns and composting toilets. So all three of these together makes it possible to garden year-round.
Kiara and Liz are leading the gardening project. They are working with groups of eleven women in 3 different communities, and one boarding school in a 4th community. Everyone is very excited. (The women come to the meetings, but the whole family participates in the work at home.) We meet all together for a 1/2 hour or so, and then we divide into two groups and get to work. Our intention is that we are not only helping people start family gardens, we are also creating a space for people to talk about gardening and help each other out, so that when we are gone, they will have strong group ties, confidence, and a strong self image.
During the first meeting we gave an overview of the project and what all the "package" contains (water cistern, composting toilet, drip irrigation garden, worm bed, simple water filtration system, basic gardening information, nutrition information...). After the meeting, we visited each person's home to check out the garden space.
During the second meeting we did a simple soil test and talked about the importance of healthy soil. (The quality of the soil here is very lacking. So we also talked about improving the quality by adding organic matter by using worm beds and composting.)
Our third meeting was a field trip to Zacango to visit Hilario and his worm beds. We also checked out the MCC demonstration plot where there are two types of grass (vetiver and cane) have been planted as living barriers. (Erosion is a big problem here.) Everyone was very enthusiatic about the worms and the grass.
Next week each participant will start building her own worm bed.
More to come!
Picture 1: Kiara with two women from Chiaucingo preparing soil test.
Picture 2: Shaking the glass jar for two minutes.
Picture 3: Hilario showing the worm beds
Picture 4: A worm bed
Picture 5: Looking at the living barrier grass