Family Gardens: The Sequel

March 3rd & 4th, 2008 La Encantada, Peru

Family Gardens: Attempt 2

Last year I attempted to grow family gardens with mothers in order to raise nutritional awareness and offer a economic option to the standard rice and potatoes. Unfortunately, due to bad governance we lost water for 10 weeks and most gardens perished. The first time I had mothers place their gardens behind their houses because I thought they would be more apt to work in them if they were closer in vicinity. On the contrary, the gardens that worked better were those which were further from town in the fields. These mothers were able to take advantage of the irrigation canals used to water the crops.

I tend to teach my business classes around 4pm because most prefer this time slot. Recently though no one seems to want to meet in the evening due to the rain. Well, you can only read so many hours of the day. Therefore, I have been finding individuals who want to plant family gardens. You should see the look on people´s faces when they seem me up at 6am strolling out to the fields with a shovel in my hand ready to get dirty. This week we planted tomato, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, cilantro, radishes, cucumbers and cabbage. Hopefully, a few weeks from now I will be able to write about the wonderful salads we are eating.