Me, A Farmer?

Farming, or tending my own garden, is just one of the many skills I never realized I'd learn and utilize in Peace Corps. Among others skills I've learned are: cooking, expert bucket bather, and learning how to say no to people even though I'm a people pleaser by nature (crucial skill). Where did I acquire this great knowledge about farming you might ask? At none other than a two-day permaculture training led by a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Peter Jensen, who is introducing permaculture farming all over Eastern Africa for a number of reasons. His primary reason is that people living with HIV and AIDS often do not have a steady or adequate food source, which is apt to diminish more after they get sick because they cannot go to their gardens and work. In Mozambique, machambas are big gardens that can be located far from the house and difficult to tend. Using permaculture farming, families affected by HIV and AIDS can have gardens in their own homes that produce a high crop-yield. But this farming technique benefits any family, not limited to ones plagued, by sickness. Abby and I are planning to start a permaculture garden in our home in fact.

There were 10 PC volunteers at this training with 10 of our co-workers and we worked hard during the training to build our own permaculture garden. We composted, we dug an irrigation system that caught water from the nearby house gutter and directed it into the garden, and we planted all kinds of vegetable at the end. Though I must say, one of the most exciting moments was when the cows escaped after we gathered manure near their pen! It was a riot watching some PC boys run around trying to corral them in, when they clearly had no idea how, yelling about how they were Billy Crystal right out of City Slickers. The main goal of the training though is to take what we learned back together and incorporate it into our project designs so my co-worker, Paula, and I plan to teach orphans how to do permaculture gardening in a rural community our organization partners with.

*So what exactly is permaculture? Here's a very brief synopsis of what a bio-intensive permaculture garden is in case you're interested. And if you're really interested, I encourage you to look more into it. Permaculture is a combination of the words permanent and agriculture and refers to how permanent pathways are built into the garden beds to capture and direct water. The project is bio-intensive because it incorporates an efficient