Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

On 2/7/10, Mana Waidina <manawaidina@gmail.com> wrote:

Jim,
It is indeed heartening to hear from you so soon!! MEGA THANKS to you and your fantastic team.

I am actually a community volunteer working in an isolated community in the highlands of Fiji with a population of about 1,000 comprising 3 villages in a district known as Naqarawai...you can Google-Map Naqarawai if you like...three villages (Naraiyawa, Wainimakutu, Naqarawai) beautifully set along a free-flowing crystal-clear mountain stream below a range of lofty mountains with very little flat land for farming...however most of our farms are on hillsides. We have a primary and a secondary school, but there are too many young people here who don't make it through to college or tertiary level. They stay in the villages instead, and do subsistence farming, but you see the most lucrative commercial crop they usually thrive on is KAVA which supposedly is the national drink of the Fiji Islands...but unfortunately it is creating a lot of social issues amongst these young people because of its drug-like addiction effects.

I'm working with a number of small groups of these young people farming other tropical crops, fruits and vegetables as an alternative to Kava, but the returns from these alternative crops are not as lucrative as kava.Hence my conviction that if we were to adopt your Mittleider method on our crops and vegetables we may just be discovering the ultimate alternative to Kava planting.

Each of these small groups have a group farm where we spend a couple days work every week while individuals have their own. We get together once every week for training and discussion sessions using the school hall where I would conduct training on any topic of interest to the group from farming to computers and technology with an emphasis on how to become self-sufficient and be a productive member of the community. My weekly training sessions usually draw a fullhouse crowd as the elders and children flock the hall to listen and watch my audio visual presentations projected on a big tarpulin screen.

We have been mostly using poultry manure on all our crops and vegetables as this has become somewhat the norm in our traditional farming methods. I'm most certain that if I were to be offered the training opportunity in your Mittleider method you may just be leading us through the door out of poverty and hardship into a much healthier life of plenty.

By the way, Jim, I'm an engineer by profession (Telecoms & IT) with almost 30 years of industry experience (including 5years teaching at tertiary level) but I grew up as a typical Fijian village boy. I've been volunteering my services to the community as a way of sharing with our people what our good Lord has graciously blessed me with and I have been doing this work ever since I left full time employment 5 years ago.

In addition to that, Jim, volunteerism is an 'alien' concept to the local mentality...in the typical Fijian village thinking, it is real crazy for someone to leave a well paid job and a 'good' life in the city and come back to lead a simple village lifestyle...you see, adding more confusion to the minds of these local people, I'm not from this district...however, they seem to agree with me that this is my divine calling.

Thank you once again for your kind interest, and may God continue to shower His special blessings upon you and your ministry.

Terry.
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Terry:

How do you receive "Snail" mail? Send me your address and I'll send you some gardening books and training materials that are contained on CD ROM and DVD, if you have the capacity to use them.

Meanwhile, attached are a few things to get you started. The 6 Steps Recap should be duplicated onto legal-sized paper, with the back side containing Traditional Methods comparison. This is good to let people see how simple the basics can be.

A big key to your success will be your ability to find and buy mineral fertilizers. Can you find NPK, such as 16-16-16 - or other percentages? How about Epsom Salt (pharmacy) and boric acid? And lime is very important.

I can send you the Micro-nutrients, if you can find the ones I've mentioned above.

Jim Kennard

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