Old Macdonald had a farm!

The story of the CCCD school farm.

As you may know, we have begun working on our school's farm with the students. We have not updated about it very much and so we thought we would tell the story.

Confession: We must confess some shame that many of our conversations revolve around pounds of cabbage harvested or piglets being saved rather than people being saved. But, right now it is what we believe we are supposed to be doing and so we press on.

In the beginning was a patch of brush. Along came some classes of kids and a tractor. This is our farm before it became a farm. I showed the kids what we are going to do and had the tractor come in with the plow. Here is the beginning of the hard work of clearing the land.

Here is the tractor clearing the land and the work progressing.

We wanted to put a fence in to protect it from the cows. We put the fence in and continued to clean the area.

The vegetables beginning to be planted. This is callaloo. It is like the equivalence of spinach in the states. It grows fast and gives good returns. A good place to start.

Here is a better picture of alot of the vegetables and a more mature picture of the farm.

A little better picture of some Callaloo.

Jamaicans love cabbage.

Because our farm just wasnt enough, we decided to expand. We got a call from the local agricultural extension office and they offered us 3lbs of carrot seeds. So, we then proceeded to plant an acre of carrots. We have been in the midst of a horrid drought and so our carrots have yet to germinate.

We are not only about the vegetables. After the vegetable farm got up and running, we turned our attention to the chickens. This project is well on its way. We are getting some new "pullets" soon and hope this project begins paying for itself.

Chickens are fun, but pigs are a blast. We have had a piglet mortality problem in our operation. So, after the chickens were rolling, the attention shifted to the pigs. In December, we had 2 full litters (23 piglets) die. As I am sure you agree, this is wrong. So, we did a little research and started improving some practices. Here is one of the sows (moms) posing for a picture.

This is her litter. She has 13 piglets. Here they are chilling out in a heated box. This is one of our improvements to the operation. All 13 piglets are living and now weaned. We have not lost one piglet from the last 3 litters after the first day. We have had 2 that were born sick, but after the first day we have improved our mortality rate 100%. Who doesnt love happy pigs?

In review, here is the before picture.

After

Thanks for checking out the story!