It takes only a spark to get a fire going. After seeing Nanay Anita’s vegetable plants in her frontyard starting to bear fruit, her neighbours want to turn their frontyards into vegetable patches too. One neighbour, Grace, a mother of 2, decided to pull out her flowering plants to grow beans instead. So far 14 families in Dayap have joined the project.
Grace pulling out her flowering plants to make way for beans
Jordan (left), the farm manager, with a father pleased with his tomato seedlings that have sproutedChildren planting seeds
The manager of our model farm, who is helping the community there to plant vegetables, recalls how the children used to have little better to do than throw stones at passersby, himself included. Now they want to help with the planting.
The lady who was our pioneer in Goducate’s backyard/frontyard veg@table farming project is already seeing the rewards of her labour. Towards the end of November, the manager of our model farm went to Dayap to help Nanayanita turn her frontyard into a vegetable patch. Dayap is the village where victims of 2009 Typhoon Ondoy’s damage in Manila were resettled.
Sandy, a volunteer at the Goducate model farm, has started to introduce backyard farming to the Talahiban area, where he works. He has “borrowed” 1 kg of African night crawlers from the model farm for the first family in Talahiban to start backyard farming. The condition is that 1 kg of worms will be returned to the farm in 3 months’ time. The worms will be used to make compost.
Preparing bed for vermicomposting
First, Sandy taught how to make the vermicomposting beds—starting with a layer of banana stalks, then cow manure and other decaying leaves and grass, then the worms, and finally covering everything with banana stalks to maintain a moist environment.
While the guys were making the vermicomposting beds, the mother and some of the children planted the eggplant seedlings brought from the model farm. They also prepared a nursery, in which they sowed eggplant seeds. They will be planting bittergourd and tomatoes within a week.
Planting eggplant seedlingsNursery for eggplant
We hope they will get a harvest in 2 months’ time. Our bigger hope is that other villagers in Talahiban will start backyard farming and that our veg@table program will improve the nutrition of the children in poor villages. It is quite common for poor families to flavor their rice only with packets of instant noodles.
