My notes tell me that a year ago today we were having the remnants of Hurricane Fay moving over us and we had 6.75 inches of rain! It is so hard to imagine that kind of rain event now. It was good to get the half an inch that we did receive last Saturday and don’t really want to get six inches of rain in one shot, just a bit more now and then.
We’ve had an interesting visitor this week from the ranch at Heifer Project International in Arkansas. For those of you who are not familiar with their work it is a non-profit organization that works to end world hunger and poverty but in unusual ways. Based on the concept of “teach them to fish and you will feed them for a lifetime” their original and most known effort is to give a young female animal, a heifer (female cow) for instance, to a family with the understanding that when it has off spring that they then give them to other members of their community and so on. It has spread to teaching these communities and peoples about how to care for animals, small enterprise development, sustainable agriculture and so on.
Ryan Neal has been the manager of their teaching garden and CSA for three years and hopes to eventually move on to run his own farm. In that time he has had many interns and help train many of Heifer’s program partners in sustainable/organic vegetable production. One of his training tools is a CD-ROM that I made with the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) titled “Organic Vegetable Production and Marketing in the South”.
After viewing it many times and implementing some of it’s contents he wanted to come see the farm in person, so for two days this week he came and worked and visited with us. A hard time of year for us to have visitors as there is not a lot to see on the farm as most of the crops are quickly disappearing for the season. Hopefully it was beneficial for him.
Picture of the Week
The peak of pepper season is approaching!
Peregrine Farm 