Hey Friend,

Since May 1998, I have been living and working on a farm located inland along the the western coast of Nicaragua, about one hour’s drive south of Managua. Our immediate area is part of a large "mesa" or elevated area that is relatively flat. We are elevated approximately 1400 feet above sea level, which makes for considerably cooler weather than many of Nicaragua’s western regions (Chinandega, Leon, Boaco and Chontales) but not as cool and not nearly as wet as the north central highlands (Matagalpa, Jinotega, Estelí, Madriz and Nueva Segovia). The last couple of months here have also been much cooler than normal. Almost every night I have had to shut the windows and cover myself with a sheet. Like much of the western half of Nicaragua, our agricultural year is divided into a six-month dry season and a six-month wet season. February will be our third dry month. Rains can normally be expected to start in May.

The farm and training center with which I work, Ebenezer Farm, has two principal goals: to help rural families improve their capacity for producing nutritious foods and to improve the Center’s capacity for working with rural folk. I am involved to some extent in all of the farm’s work, but I work most intensively with education and extension and with trials and investigations. The farm’s paid work crew is about 15 or 16, depending on the kind of work going on. Of those, three work with me. I like to say we’re a crew of four, but Eddy and Carlos, the two brothers who’ve been working with me the longest, like to say we’re a crew of 3 ½. (Sebastian, my other crew member, doesn’t say things like that yet.)

The farm currently works with six rural communities, but it has had a significant impact on many more. For close to 10 years, Ebenezer has been working with PROVADENIC, a health organization focusing on primary health care and nutrition. Ebenezer’s work with many of the communities was to provide training, breeding stock, and technical support to help rural farmers establish goat, rabbit, and chicken projects for the production of milk, meat, and eggs. Chico Juárez, my boss, a Baptist pastor and one of the founders of Ebenezer farm, has been the main person carrying out the technical support and extension services. Because of this, Chico often spends all day travelling, arrives at the farm late at night, and then leaves the next morning before 5:00. Much to his surprise, Chico often becomes exhausted. As we develop the work plan for the next several years, we are working to improve that system. Among other changes, I and my crew will become more involved in the process of community extension.

Before receiving breeding stock, families must send a representative to the farm for training. Other instructors work with participants on the management of the animals and on human nutrition. My crew and I are responsible for one day during the three- or four-day workshop, teaching techniques for analyzing, planning and improving overall production, with our main focus on the area right around their homes. In the morning, we begin with an activity called "Web of Life," in which we examine the connections between all components of the natural world, including humans. Based on this experience, we talk about the kinds of environmental damange the people see in their communities and what effects that damage has had on their own lives. Then the participants go out with us to a small house where the caretaker of that piece of land normally lives. They look at the soils, the slopes, the plants around the house (bananas, mangos, oranges, herbs, pitaya, lumber trees) and the house itself. Then they go back to the classroom and map out the soils, the slopes, the plants, the house, where the sun comes out, what direction the wind comes from, and anything else that occurs to us or to them. Looking at all the information they bring back, we talk about the problems and then the group makes recommendations for improving the yard’s productivity. In the afternoon, the participants draw maps of their own yards from memory, presenting them to the group and talking about the changes they plan to make to improve their yard’s food-production capacity. As our system of extension and follow up here at Ebenezer improves, we will document with the people the results of the changes they map out during the workshop.

My crew of four (or 3 ½) is also responsible for recuperating about six acres of land that have relatively steep slopes and very poor soils. We have space and freedom to try different kinds of techniques for improving the land, but as we work on recuperating the soils, we are trying to produce as well. We use leguminous trees, shrubs, and vines which, besides protecting the soil with their roots, shade and litter (the leaves which fall and rot on the ground), are good for forage for the goats and rabbits. We are also working with six female rabbits and six female goats, which we feed largely from the production of the six acres we work with. The farm has a fair amount of land to play with to feed its numerous animals, but most of the farmers we work with don’t have much land. Planting degraded land and edges of land with leguminous trees, vines and shrubs can help people improve their animal production as well as help maintain and improve their soils. Using leguminous forages with our small goat herd, we produce at least twice the milk produced by the main herd and our milkers continue to produce milk when most of the milkers in the main herd have "dried up." The goat kids in our trial are also growing somwhat faster than the main herd and have fewer problems with diseases. I thought our successes were going unnoticed by the rest of the crew until one day Uriel and Chico started bragging to me about their "super kid." In an extra pen they had put several mothers together and had left one of their kids together with them. Feeding these mothers apart with many of the same forages we use, their super kid was gaining four and a half pounds a week, compared with a pound to a pound and a half in the main herd (our average is around two pounds a week).

Besides the animals in our studies, the farm may have at any one time up to 90 goats, 300 rabbits, around 100 chickens, 80 ducks, 80 guinea fowl, some dozen geese and turkeys and around 50 hogs. All of these animals have permanent shelters. None of the animals is allowed out to find food for itself (except the chickens and other fowl that find food in their little yards). In particular, all of the goats are kept in permanent shelters and their forage is cut and carried to them. This allows for the kind of intensive management of the land my crew is using to protect and recuperate the six acres for which we are responsible. There are an additional 20 to 30 acres used for production of grasses and other forages for the main herd of goats.

Ebenezer farm also has coffee, bananas, and a wide diversity of fruit trees (the most productive ones include mangos, tangerines and oranges). There are a few cacao bushes, and the farm has several acres of a cactus called pitahaya, which produces a brilliant red fruit that’s used to make juice. One of our main goals for all our areas of production is to make as many connections between them as possible. For example, in our coffee area, we are growing bananas trees, which provide needed shade to the coffee bushes. Most of the bananas produced are used to supplement the commercial hog feed. The hogs, besides providing meat that is sold or used for the workshops, provide manure, which is washed into a tank where it ferments. The fermenting manure produces methane or "biogas," which is piped to the kitchen where it provides around 95 percent of our cooking fuel. The residue from the fermented manure will eventually go back to the coffee plantation as fertilizer for coffee, bananas, and other tree species.

So how do the carambola trees fit in? One day I was eating our lunchtime rice and beans (versus breakfast rice and beans or dinner rice and beans) and thinking about what I’d say in one of these letters. And it occurred to me that right where I was sitting probably would seem odd and even somewhat exotic to most folks in the U.S. When we eat here at Ebenezer Farm, we take our plates of food, step outside the kitchen, sit down in one of the chairs there and prop our feet on carambola trees. Any North American who has noticed carambola, or star fruits, in their grocery store probably think of them as strange, exotic fruits that come from some bizarre, who knows where, part of the world. Well I know where star fruits come from. They come from small, 18-foot tall or so trees with wide canopies and bipinnate, dark-green leaves. They grow pretty well in poor soils here in Nicaragua and they do a nice job of shading us while we sit under them with our feet propped up, eating beans and rice from a plate in our hand. That’s where I am, one of those strange exotic places where they eat underneath carambola trees. It ain’t everyone who gets to do that and most of the time, I realize how lucky I am.

God’s Peace.

Mark A. Hare

The 2001 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 251