Archive for Guatemala
It Is a Good Day When I find Worm Fertilizer
Posted by: | CommentsLast week I ran into a friend who asked me how my day was. I responded with, “it was a GREAT day!” My friend was so amazed by my positive response she thought something major had happened. Perhaps a BIG donation. She asked me, “what made it such a great day?” I smiled and with such enthusiasm said, “I found worm fertilizer!” At that point we both started to laugh. I realized how silly I must have sounded and my friend laughed at my excitement at finding worm fertilizer.
Guatemala is an agricultural country. The soil, in most of Guatemala, is rich and just about anything grows when stuck in the ground. Sadly, Guatemala also depends heavily on toxic pesticides to grow these crops. Most people who spray the pesticides do not wear protective gear. Pregnant women spray pesticides and work in the fields and this can cause birth defects. The bottom line is that pesticides are dangerous and there are other alternatives. Changing that belief system is not an easy one.
Semillas de Amor has an excellent gardener but he has worked with pesticides his entire gardening career. I, on the other hand, am adamant that our vegetable garden and flower gardens will be organic. So off we went to find worm fertilizer and anything that was the least bit organic.
What a wonderful surprise to find company that sells worm and chicken fertilizers only 10 minutes from the children’s home. This place had mountains of chicken fertilizer. The owner of the business came in as we were paying for our fertilizer and never missing an opportunity to tell someone about the children’s home, or getting a discount, proceeded to tell him about our garden, the home, the kids and our future. We left with our worm fertilizer and hundreds of vegetable seedlings donated by the owner of the fertilizer business. They were thrilled we wanted to have an organic garden and spent lots of time with us explaining different organic methods. We were also directed to an agricultural partnership between Taiwan and Guatemala that is developing fruit trees. We left that project with peach, lemon and orange trees. So yes, it is a good day when I can find worm fertilizer because, if nothing else, the kids will eat healthy veggies. Next stop, the chicken coop and eggs.
Please keep Semillas de Amor alive and the children thriving by donating to our children’s village SAVE SEMILLAS
Our Green, Green Garden
Posted by: | CommentsWelcome to our beautiful garden filled with lettuces, broccoli, tomatoes, herbs, strawberries, sunflowers, carrots and radishes. Our tomatoes are carefully covered with a plastic green house or they won’t survive the rainy season. Everything else does well outside. We have planted many of our plants from seeds and some from starters we have purchased. We are all very excited about the tomato crop coming in. Our fruit trees were planted last year so they had at least one rainy season to take root and now have their second. We have fruit on all of our baby trees!!
Our future plans include a worm composting program for our fertilizer and a small green house to begin starting all of our new plants. The children will be included in all of what we do. They will really learn where their food comes from by planting a seed, watching it grow, picking the veggie, cooking it and then composting what is left over.