Alpine Initiatives: Farm Visit #2

We headed to a much drier region just east of Meru with Sally Kims a friend of Ayub's. She has been working in agriculture with the help of Farmer's Helping Farmer's for the last 10 years on different programs. A water tank initiative, a forestry program and most recently a crop diversification program. We went to visit one of their 62 members involved in the crop diversification. It was a wonderful example of how to utilize ground effectively it was still in the vein of small monocultures, drip irrigation and conventional practice but they were getting increased yields and had crops no one else in the region had. We then travelled to her home and the Muchui Women's Business Center, a building built by women and home to their forestry program. The building held their offices as well as operated as a store and storage for grains through surplus periods.

Her home gardens were all organic with great practice of intercropping with fruit and nut trees, reverse bio-intensive beds to collect water, green houses, and a gray water system from their kitchen. She had wonderful drip systems with buckets, a soil sterilization unit out of oil barrels and while we there tons of local mama's were bringing seedlings to contribute to the nursery. The grew a variety of fruits and nuts, grafted mangos and tissue culture bananas. It was exciting to meet a new friend and partner for our projects ahead as well as expanding our organic community.

Much of my work here has been being a catalyst or pollinator of people and resources that exist here. I realized today that there is limited or no access to organic, heirloom or untreated seeds. So we are looking into it and it may be something we pursue as it is a direct need.