By Sherry Manning | Executive Director
As 2015 draws to a close all of us at Friends of ENCA Farm would like to send a heartfelt thank you to our Global Giving supporters. It has been an impactful year of financial support and program expansion for Friends of ENCA Farm. Thank you for helping us launch the Organic Seed Bank Project in the Philippines. This project is now fully funded and we will be launching new project pages for you to continue to support our programs via Global Giving in 2016.
Please read below to learn about the successful launch of the first Seed School in Tublay, Benguet and best wishes to all for a very special 2016. You can continue to follow our programs by visiting our website: www.encaorganicfarm.com.
Seed School Success:
On Thursday, December 17th the Municipal Hall in Tublay, Benguet, Philippines filled with over 70 eager farmers for the launch of Seed School. During the program farmers learned the history of seeds, why they are critically important to local bio-diversity preservation, and all participants learned to save wet tomato seeds and the basics of saving biennial crops (such as carrots and cabbage take two years to flower and produce seeds).
Thanks to the great talent and passion of local Chef Aguinaya Cloche (or as we call her Dimples) all participants enjoyed a delicious homemade local organic meal. The menu included: malunggay (local super food plant) pesto pasta, veggie burgers (made w/ tofu and banana blossom), spinach pie, rosemary roasted chicken, eggplant rolls, and a fresh green salad with sprouts and radishes. Farmers work incredibly hard to produce these amazing veggies but they rarely get to see the diverse ways they can be prepared. It was wonderful to see their smiling faces as they enjoyed this unique, healthy, and amazing meal prepared with love!
In the coming months, we will be conducting follow up meetings with farmers that said they want to be apart of the organic seed trial program. Friends of ENCA Farm will distribute organic seeds to the farmers that meet our requirements, and conduct field trials with these initial seeds to monitor their success and challenges. We are incredibly excited to have planted this first seed in Tublay and look forward to watching it germinate and grow over the course of the coming year!
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