Sustainable Agriculture and Development...aka the Farm Life!
- timandeliza
- Sep 6, 2014
- 2 min read
Greetings From Costa Rica!
We have been here at the YWAM Heredia base for nearly 4 weeks now and have been working hard and learning lots. The base is situated on 7 acres of land up in the mountains about an hour north of San Jose and it is really beautiful and green here, especially now that it is coming into the rainy season.
The bulk of our time here has been spent working on and learning about various sustainable agriculture projects alongside the long term staff here. This has included doing various types of garden work, taking care of the goats, chickens, horses etc…and learning about aquaponics, how to make rain water cisterns, composting latrines, water filtration systems and much more. All of these projects are designed to be simple, low cost and using only readily available resources. The purpose for this is so that these methods and models can easily be taken to other parts of the developing world to be taught and applied to their needs. A majority of the world's poor today are rural farmers who live on an average of 5 acres of land and have to get by on less than $2 a day, so the base is trying to use their working models as teaching tools, but also an example of how people can make their land work for them in a responsible and sustainable way when expensive technologies and tools aren't available.
We feel like we are learning so much good stuff and really enjoying the "hands-on" practical nature of the work here. It is also very refreshing to be learning tangible ways to be good stewards of the land and the resources we have been given from a Biblical perspective. The skills and principles we are taking away from this time will definitely be valuable tools for future work in community development, wherever that might be and we are very grateful for this continued time of training in this area. For anyone interested in being trained in sustainable agriculture, this base is “one of a kind” in YWAM and definitely worth coming to visit.
Stay tuned for our next post - a day in the life of a farmer! ;)
Tim and Eliza
Comments