Finishing the Project

The timeline for construction and purchasing of materials has come to a close this Nov 13th. The funds are officially spent and I recently turned in the final project.

Completed Items:

-All 23 brick ovens are built and fully functioning

-The house for the community brick oven is up and looking nice, near the school

-Community trees at the church were planted (over 100 lapacho trees)

what does this tree look like? It can come in orange, pink and yellow

Heres the tree it will be and the church yard with the little plants.

-Personal family trees to the best of my knowledge were also planted (10-50 per family)

-Worm tank (leftover brick and cement) was constructed and worms (californian short worms great for manure) were brought from nearby town.

A view of the brick tank and its top-to keep chickens and rain out

-16 Bee hive brood boxes (op. for starting beekeeping) were purchased and bees are in the process of being captured or transfered to these boxes working with interested bee farmers.

Heres one of the brood boxes all set up with a hive captured under some shade. Farmers were investigating it in the Day Camp on Soil Renewal that we did this November.

-Oven cooking classes- We did one big cooking class together- how to do cake in the oven, then family by family we had personal classes.

Hope to get a few more photos of cooking in action!

Project Changes:

Why did we decide to build a worm tank and buy modern langstroth brood bee boxes?

There was leftover money from the fall of the price in cement and bricks locally to allow for other expenditures. Leftover bricks and cement easily makes a nice worm tank since worms cant get out and chickens cant get in. Lombriculture is something the local engineer of soil renewal recommended the town and many farmers were interested. It will improve the garden crops, trees and citric trees of the area. Ideally, the community will use the manure of the tank for their gardens and when there are enough worms, they can produce their own worms in their own closer to home worm tank. So far the worms seem happy and are fast producers.

As for the brood boxes (location of most brood- baby bees), there is great interest in converting over to modern hives in town in order to produce better honey, so we decided to use the rest of the funds on the boxes. Many farmers see the benefits of beekeeping but now want to try using modern hives in addition to kenyan top hives that are a bit more messy to use with less production. The brood boxes should give the beekeepers the start up capital to work bees, sell honey and benefit from their produce so that they can make their own supers and buy their own bee equipment in the future.

The project continues:

Hopefully the community will continue using their brick ovens and try new healthier ways to eat.

They do have various trained brick layers to fix brick ovens and maintain them and if other members of the community want brick ovens, they can also make them.

Ideally the community will use their knowledge to continue planting to have trees for fire wood and for various other important needs.

The school and community will learn with time how to take advantage of the community brick oven cooking together, especially the children if they get the garden going with their new running water.

Sorry to have not posted in a while, but I hope to continue blogging in order to clear up questions and insight interest in how the project is going.