In spite of the disruptions to every facet of everyday life for most of Haiti due to the savage terrorism of the gangs who still control the streets, all of the outreaches of Love A Child continue to serve the poor and the hungry faithfully every day. This is true even for the large team of our Agricultural Training Center (ATC) staff. It seems they are even busier than ever now after expanding our demonstration and teaching programs to include small animal husbandry. You might recall that not long ago our ATC expanded into a goat program in addition to maintaining a small flock of chickens. All this is in addition to maintaining all the gardens and nurseries. The ATC guys grow most of the feed for the chickens, because we demonstrate and teach that method, as very few Haitians have the finances or ability to buy prepared feeds, similarly for the goats. We use a “cut and carry” feeding method where the goats are housed in a sanitary raised pen, and we cut and carry their fodder to them. This keeps things clean and sanitary. The raised pen also allows us to harvest useful droppings for making vital organic fertilizers. Here are pictures of the guys bringing a large fresh pile of locally grown fodder for the goats who are very happy to see them. The team also continues to plant their rotating crops and here are also pictures of their new seed beds for sugar cane, beets, eggplants, peppers, broccoli, carrots, and leeks. Of course, the payoff is the great harvest from our gardens such as they had this week of bananas, spinach, and cucumbers. We give a huge “thank you” to our donors who support our “Sustainability” programs and also to Hope Seeds International for all the critically important and viable vegetable seeds they donate to us and elsewhere around the world.
Rad Hazelip, Assistant Executive Director