This week, our 2-year sustainable gardening course students learned how our livestock projects also help and benefit our vegetable production. Wilner had the students learning about combining animal waste and plant waste, or bio-mass, to make rich, organic compost fertilizer.

In the classroom, the students learned that adding the nutrients and microbes from animal waste to plant waste, and providing proper conditions of moisture and time for it to decay, makes rich organic compost fertilizer. Then they gained practical experience in the field by collecting the animal waste from our goats, chickens, and cows, and mixing it with the plant waste left from earlier harvests and from material they had cleared from the garden beds to make future compost.

They also harvested some aged compost that was now ready to add to the rows of vegetables they had planted just weeks before. They are learning by doing and gaining important knowledge and skills to help them be successful gardeners, so they can be self-sufficient and take care of themselves. This kind of thoughtful development will help them break away from cyclical poverty as they gain the ability to take care of themselves and their families, no longer being captive to food insecurity. They could also have excess harvests to take to a market for cash into their pockets.

Your support of these programs is transforming lives now for a better tomorrow. God bless you.

Rad Hazelip, Assistant Executive Director