De la Mata a la Olla - Organic Agriculture with Añamisi

Our agriculture partner organization has been doing exciting things in the realm of organic farming lately, and Luke, one of MPI Ecuador's agriculture PDs, would like to give a shout out to our wonderful friends at Añamisi:


What is better than food?  If you ask the men of the Manna house the answer would be “Nothing!”   In my eyes they are right, (I happen to be one of these men of the Manna house) but only partially.  The correct answer is organic food!  Yes I know, it is a bit of a trick question.

The distressing reality is that not everyone has access to organic produce and products, and even some that do don’t take advantage of the environmental/health benefits of organic produce and products .

De la Mata a la Olla (roughly translated as “from the earth to the stove pot”), a project started by our agriculture partner organization, Centro de Investigación Enrique Añamisi, works to remedy this problem.  Within Quito and the surrounding Chillos Valley, De la Mata a la Olla supports the agrarian livelihood of many local farmers while giving the opportunity for families in Quito, without yards of their own, to enjoy the benefits of organic produce.  As Christian and Laura, the founders of Centro de Investigación Enrique Añamisi, describe it, their project is an online social network connecting organic farmers with local household buyers, and is the first of its kind in Ecuador.  Christian and Laura work as the intermediaries, picking up the preordered fruits and vegetables from the organic farmers and delivering them to the families that have purchased them.  Furthermore, this service is virtually free of charge for the local producers.  They only pay a small fee to cover the traveling expenses of Laura and Christian.  Sounds too good to be true for the organic farmers, right?  If you want to learn more about De la Mata a la Olla and/or support their project, check out their website for more information at http://delamataalaolla.wordpress.com/.

 

Hope all is well with our Manna readers/supporters!

Spring break in the garden

After Duke's spring break group returned from Baños, we got our hands dirty with our partner organization, Fundación Añamisi.  Here to share is Mateen!

Slashing at the gnarled weeds, dodging the hundreds of bugs, and digging into the tough ground, we were fighting a battle in Fundación Añamisi's organic garden. In only three days, the garden would be completely planted, and we would have helped move Christian Añamisi's dream forward.  With his partner, Laura Araujo, Christian has been able to create an organic farming business (De la Mata a la Olla, roughly translated as “from the ground to the table”) through which local organic gardens are able to distribute their products to the people of Quito and its surrounding areas over the internet. They both also utilize the knowledge they have gained from this venture to teach other people in the area about organic farming through their organization.

When we arrived at the garden Wednesday morning we were greeted by Christian, Laura, and their two crazy dogs Lupita and Tommy. Christian gave us a quick overview of his projects and proudly showed us some of the many products he sells.   We were all amazed by how Christian and Laura were able to create such a sustainable organic farming business while also giving so much back to the community. It was surprising that organic products would be so popular, especially over the internet in a country where only small percentage of the population own computers. Our work over the week was to clear several plots of land, plant new crops, and harvest corn. When we first arrived, the garden was overrun with tangled weeds, grass, and hundreds (only a slight exaggeration) of spiders. With the guidance of Christian and Laura, we dug our tools into the ground.  Two days and several tarantula encounters later, we had finally conquered the garden. During the last week of work, we planted lettuce, beets, chard, Japanese lettuce and ahí (chili peppers), and it felt good to be able to see the product of all our hard work.

With the garden work finished, we had the opportunity to help Christian with the English class he teaches at the local university.  He had his students record videos with questions in English for us and we recorded answers.  We had so much fun with the videos we decided to send back our own questions for the students to answer.  My time at the garden was definitely one of the highlights of the trip and I hope I have the opportunity to help them more in the future.

The Duke crew in Añamisi's garden

Mateen and Kia working together!

Angela and Miranda listening to one of Christian's student's English questions

Aging chard in the beds we completed weeding!

Beds freshly planted with lettuce and chard

Green Acres

First summer session has departed and second arrived on Friday night. We'll be sure to introduce you to the eight new females who will be helping and taking over programs throughout the next month. But for the next few days, we'd like to take the time to applaud the extremely hard work that last month's group did; specifically for agriculture, the library, and in our classes.

I was very fortunate to have three awesome volunteers helping me out with agriculture, a program that I was flying solo on for most of the year. Jenni, Trevor, and Jen spent two hours every Friday at Fundacion Añamisi, helping in the organic garden; tasks included everything from uprooting weeds, mixing and preparing soil, and harvesting carrots to be sold and delivered to families in Quito.

Jen, Trevor, Jenni and Laura in the huerto

They also were a tremendous help in planning, advertising, and executing our charla for the month: sustainable agriculture methods and practices. The idea was to appeal to families who focus solely on growing corn (choclo) and/or potatoes to encourage crop diversity; this increases the soil's ability to retain water and decreases the need for pesticides, which in turn increases soil fertility. Laura, from Fundacion Añamisi started off by explaining why the importance of organic farming (less chemicals, less pollution, healthier crops) followed by an in-depth discussion of how to use the lunar calendar for planting schedules to achieve the best yields; she also taught best practices for using plants like aji intermittently to discourage pests and keeping small weeds to help retain water in the soil, especially when rain is not abundant. Our volunteers learned a ton about agriculture from Laura and presented why and how to compost on their own.

As you can see from the picture below, our charla had rather poor attendance; only one man from San Francisco showed up despite valiant advertising efforts. Unfortunately, that's kind of how it goes for agriculture charlas; we were thrilled to connect this man and his family to Fundacion Añamisi and hope that a relationship develops. In the future, we plan to focus our energy on supporting organizations, rather than giving intermittent charlas to individuals. For example, Añamisi has opened their garden up on Fridays to volunteers; this is a win-win situation as they receive much needed help for their land and those who come can learn best practices for their own projects.

Laura presenting the benefits of organic agriculture

A huge, huge thanks to my volunteers! I can only hope that this session's volunteers are as eager and helpful as you all have been.

organically yours,
Jackie

You Are What You Eat

This week's guest blog comes from Krysta Peterson, our house walking human dictionary who has a tendency to make up words and mash-up sentences. More importantly, she is our nutrition enthusiast who has been working with a local school, Aliñambi, since August, on starting up a nutrition education program. After months of hard work, she now helps run an inclusive nutrition program. This program focuses on educating students through hands-on learning with an overall goal to raise students' self-efficacy in food consumption and decision making. Here's a glimpse into working with these enthusiastic sixth graders twice a week!

Charlas! Portfolios! Cooking Classes! School Garden! Oh my! If you think those sound fun, just imagine the excitement and enthusiasm coming from our 6^th graders each week as we walk in the gates at Aliñambi to do just that. After 7 months working with Aliñambi and nutrition with little physical evidence, I am thoroughly ecstatic, to say the least, about starting this nutrition program with the kids there. I believe through these kids is where we will be able to really initiate a change towards healthy lifestyles for these communities.

Along with Profes Haley and Jackie we will be teaching nutrition through charlas (lectures), thought provoking portfolio work, and hands-on cooking classes and a class garden. Every Tuesday I will be leading the class through charlas and portfolio work based on topics from the food pyramid to macro and micronutrients to hygiene. And every Friday Chef Haley and Sous Chef Krysta will be leading the culinary trainees with watchful eyes as they learn to wash and cut vegetables and make healthy meals using all local goods. Farmer Jackie and Farmhand Bibi will be leading the apprentices in designing and building their own garden to include radishes, lettuce, broccoli, cilantro, and basil…can anyone else see delicious salads in our future?! Yum!

Today we finished our second full week of class and despite a few punishments after a dirt-throwing jaunt everything has been going great. I truly believe in these kids’ ability to succeed in this program and their capacity to realize they have control over their nutritional lives and can promote permanent change at home.

Last week we didn’t realize we were not allowed to take photos at the school, so these are a few and probably the only pictures we will have for evidence that this program actually took place. Enjoy them while they’re hot!

Krysta, Erik, Chet, Mike and Sarah lending a helping hand in the huerto (which was all grass before we started)

Two hours later...

Krysta and some of our Aliñambi students

amor + nutrition,

Krysta