A Warm Safe Place

Plants are not that different from people. They live outdoors in all kinds of weather, but in order to flourish they need a warm safe place away from the cold and wind. Our urban gardening program has a shelter called the BUGI (Bethel's Urban Gardening Institute) Barn where we keep plants, tools and seeds (along with bikes and miscellaneous junk that piles up). It's not really built to be a greenhouse. Occasionally the temperature has been colder inside than outside. Our poor plants struggled to stay alive through an unseasonably cold winter in Texas this year, much less thrive. What to do?

Greenhouses in some form have existed since the Roman Empire. Modern greenhouses started in Italy in the 13th century to house exotic plants and animals that explorers brought back from the tropics (source). It's interesting that in both cases greenhouses were built to benefit the wealthy, not in order to improve agriculture for the masses. From the beginning greenhouses were a resource intensive endeavor. It takes a lot of fuel (wood, propane, electricity, etc.) in order to keep a greenhouse heated through the winter.

I'd heard snippets here and there about unheated greenhouses. Eliot Coleman is the guru of greenhouses and year-round farming. He does this, not in the temperate climate of Texas, but the harsh winters of northern Maine. I was particularly intrigued by rabbit-heated greenhouses. According to one site, rabbits produce about 8 BTUs of heat per hour. Their feces is composted with worms underneath the cages which adds additional heat. When someone who used to work at the farm dropped off four rabbits that had been 4-H projects, I had found my project.

We sectioned off a 10 foot section at the end of the BUGI Barn with a double layered plastic curtain. We lined the inside of the barn with plastic as well to create a layer of air that will insulate while the plastic helps trap the heat. We set the rabbit cages up on cinderblocks about two feet off the ground. There is a table for plants above the rabbit cages with some aluminum roofing nailed to it to keep water from hitting the rabbits. Then a small square table and one more long one for more plants.

There's a fan in the corner blowing across the rabbit cages. This, supposedly, causes the rabbits to produce more heat by cooling their ears, which are temperature sensors for their bodies (though I'm no biologist so correct me if I'm wrong). So rabbits provide heat and compost. If you get them to reproduce like, well, rabbits, then you also have a meat source.

There are lots of other techniques for unheated greenhouses. Five gallon buckets painted black on one side and filled with water act as solar heaters. The idea behind unheated greenhouses is to think about the inputs required to grow our food and reduce or do away with our dependence on outside inputs as much as possible. If my little experiment works we'll have a greenhouse that doesn't require outside inputs or a fuel source and produces meat and compost.

Here's some pictures of the finished greenhouse. Pardon the mess. We live on a farm.

The BUGI Barn from the outside. It's about 40 feet long.

The greenhouse from the outside. There are two layers of plastic with slits that are offset for entrance.

Inside the greenhouse. Lots of room for all our plants.

Our little biological heaters. They are way cuter than a propane or electric heater, tastier too.

Up close and personal with one of our bunnies. Notice the fan on the left to circulate the air and encourage our bio-heaters.

Envisioning A New Haiti

Hundreds of individuals have now settled in Ferrier, Haiti following the January earthquake which struck Port-au-Prince some 8 hours to the south. The World Hunger Relief - Haiti team has responded by providing temporary assistance thanks to the generous giving of many folks reading this post. We continue to feel that our assistance is best delivered through our Haitian brothers and sisters, and are seeking ways to do this most effectively.

Addressing needs in outlying areas, like Ferrier, seems to be gaining wider attention, not just as a short-term response to internally displaced Haitians, but also as a solution to a long-term, chronic problem. By the time of the earthquake, chaotic urban migration had turned Port-au-Prince from a modest-sized city to a crowded, messy habitation for over 3 million people. Experts involved in the reconstruction effort, are increasingly asking how to encourage the 1 million Haitians who have left Port-au-Prince to stay put for the long haul.

The Jan. 29 Christian Science Monitor reported “As Haitian officials and international development experts start to envision Haiti's reconstruction, 'decentralization' has become an ubiquitous rallying cry. Port-au-Prince should never again be the congested and almost anarchic city it was before Jan. 12, these experts say: Those who have left the capital should be encouraged to stay out.”

Economic development in outlying towns, like Ferrier, serves both the short and long-term best interest of the country. After hundreds of phone calls and e-mails, we are more and more convinced that our response to the earthquake should be shaped by this understanding. We intend to redouble our efforts at encouraging agricultural improvement and food production in one of the few areas of the country with under-utilized, potentially productive farmland.

To this end, WHRI Executive Director, Neil Rowe Miller, will travel to Haiti on Monday, Feb. 22 to discuss potential strategies with WHR-Haiti President, Jackson Nelson. We will likely focus on rice production since the area around Ferrier includes the third largest flood-irrigated area in the country. Rice production creates additional jobs as the crop is processed, transported, and marketed to consumers.

Meanwhile, WHR-Haiti has been asked to help in the rural town of Léogâne, an hour west of Port-au-Prince. This area, which was also devastated by the earthquake, is the focus of the relief efforts of the Christian Reformed World Relief Committee. Their water resource specialist, Jos Josse has asked for assistance in drilling four wells to provide drinking water for their traditional population as well as those displaced from the city. This need also seems in keeping with our overall approach, and we will do all we can to help Jackson and his crew respond.

Snow Day at the Farm

The Waco area got 1-3 inches of snow late Thursday and overnight. Here's some pictures complete with witty captions for you.


Nothing witty, just the ed building with snow... cool.


One of the chickens was trying to throw us off the trail... we still found him. We are still smarter than chickens.


"I'd like to see this thing solar dehydrate anything now!" -Mother Nature


The farm accepts all kinds of snowmen, although some should still learn to pluck their eyebrows.


My son is proud of the snowman he built with his dad. Unfortunately...


our development director has a sick sense of humor.

My farm blog - Chase Estrin

Hodwy! For those of you who don't know me, my name is Chase and I'm a new live-in volunteer here on the farm. I came out here last May with a group from the University of Michigan and enjoyed my experience so much I decided to come out for 5 months to learn everything I can about agrarian life. Nature is really a wonderful thing. You find out very quickly that everything that happens in nature has evolved and adapted to what it is now. Even being here for a few days you will learn a plethora of new information dealing with gardening, sustainable practices, and everything in between.

My blog is for my friends and family and covers what I've learned here on the farm as well as what I've been up to. It covers information from our classes and the information that I've learned that, should be, second nature to everyone but has managed to drop out of society. I hope that you enjoy it. Feel free to comment.

Chase Estrin's blog

I am sitting in a hotel room in New Mexico watching C-SPAN waiting for dinner at a training so I can officially become a VISTA Supervisor. Michelle Obama is on giving a speech about how to keep kids from giving getting and staying fat. She is giving a shout out to community gardens and Will Allen. She committed to eliminate food deserts within 7 years. This will include bringing grocery stores to neighborhoods that currently do not have them (read North Waco and East Waco) or help convenience stores include more fruits and veggies. She promised that funding would be available to encourage better nutrition and more physical activity through The Partnership for a Healthier America.

Her initiative is called Let’s Move.

Check out the USDA Food Atlas to see where the governments perspective on how Americans are eating.

She is talking about making food healthier in schools but she is not talking about why the U.S. subsidize foods that make people fat but we have only done a little to encourage farmers in the U.S. to begin to grown more fruits and veggies.

MLK Day 2010 on Quinn Campus

There's a nice page with pictures from Rapoport Academy about MLK Day of Service 2010.

Ending Hunger in Texas

KWTX had a report last night on the Texas Hunger Initiative and interviewed our urban gardening intern about WHRI's work with the initiative.

Battling Hunger

Texas Farm Bureau has a story about World Hunger Relief on their website:

Waco nonprofit works worldwide to promote food production and economic development...

Americans live in a land of plenty. Luscious greens, hearty meats, endless aisles of canned and boxed foods line the aisles of supermarkets. And most folks don’t give a second thought to how it gets there.

"People are definitely more and more detached from where their food comes from," says Matt Hess, education director for Waco-based World Hunger Relief, Inc. (WHRI). "Whether you’re a kid and your dad is a commodity farmer, or whether your dad is working on Wall Street, the food system is way more complicated than most of us understand."

Read the rest...

tales of small gardeners

The WHRI school garden clubs have been full of life and activity this year. I work primarily with the elementary schools, other farmers work with our 3 middle schools, and have had the pleasure of observing the young gardeners antics. Here are a few of my favorite tales of small gardeners....

The Garden Club at Sul Ross Elemenary consists of some of our most enthusiastic gardeners. At this school we work with 2 groups, one of 2nd and 3rd graders and one of 4th and 5th graders. All of our Garden Club students have been involved in a number of enviable activities from petting goats and rabbits to pulling bright orange carrots out of the ground and snacking on a variety of fresh treats. One day the often overlooked joy of weeding was enough to lure a group of kindergarteners away from recess and over to the garden fence. One small girl, nicknamed Flaca, sweetly asked if she could "stick her little hand through the fence and pull some weeds."

We have kept a few things growing in the school gardens through the winter, primarily lettuces, carrots and onions, but mostly we are planning for the spring. One cold day at Doris Miller we took a seed catalogue so that the students could select which plants they wanted for their garden. We are trying to emphasize student ownership of the gardens and saw this as another way to include them in an important decision process. Students took turns gathering around the catalogue and coming to a consensus on seed varieties. Some students made their selections based on pictures while others insisted that I read through the descriptions of each variety. The greatest debate came in the melon section when a group of boys could not decide between the largest watermelon variety and one that boasted sweetness. The argument was settled when J proclaimed "bigger doesn't mean it tastes good."

The West Ave. Elementary Garden Club also been doing a lot of planning and dreaming about the spring. On the last day of the fall semester before Christmas we took the kids a pecan pie, made of course from WHRI pecans, and fair trade hot chocolate from the Village Store. We all enjoyed this treat together over a conversation about what they wanted to plant this spring. Many of the suggestions came from fruits and things that the students liked to eat, which was great. However we were even more excited when individual students made suggestions from things that they had experience planting. One student, E, told the group about how she had planted sunflowers at her home and had even harvested and either eaten or replanted the seeds. I asked E if she would lead Garden Club in planting and harvesting sunflowers and she enthusiatically agreed. We see gardening as an avenue for empowerment and leadership in our students and you could see on E's face that she felt these effects.