Up Keep....Already?

Wow! The weeds showed up right away.  This is actually kinda cool (for now anyway) because weeding will be a great activity for the younger children to do as part of their Flood Garden duties.  Maybe we can even have Patch Competitions to see who keeps the best weed free patch!!

Stuff to Show!!

Almost ready for harvest!!

Today, we had some visitors drop by.  The children are very, very curious about what they will be learning in the Flood Garden.

 These students brought their grandpa to school so he can see our garden

LOOK AT OUR ONION!!!!!

Making the Homes for our Animals

Today, many members of our community turned up to help us create our animal housing and our outdoor kitchen.  We will be raising 2 ducks who will help us keep the fish pond aerated and full of nutrients and 4-6 hens who will be responsible for providing us with eggs to sell and help us turn the compost pile periodically.  We will also have rabbits because they are cute and can make great classroom pets while teaching us great science and of course, we will raise Tilapia in our pond.  The tilapia pond will be for pond science but as we learn more about raising them, we hope to build a much, much larger pond to sell the fish for a healthy income for the school.  

Our Rabbit House

 Nailing down the tin roofs

Our Maasai friends came around to help us design our Maasai style outdoor kitchen

This is a Hen House.  Hope we will get lots of eggs.

 This is the foundation for our Maasai kitchen.  These upright logs will be part of the walls. Can't wait till its done!!!

So many helpers turned up!!. We hope they will be future costumers as well.

First Plantings!!

This was a very exciting day.  We actually got to make our dreams of creating a little farm come true.  Our students are currently on Christmas holiday but with the help of a few kids that showed up, we got lots done.

Teacher Loveless and one of the MDFT moms started by clearing all the debris and creating a compost pile

This patch looked perfect for onion!!

 I love tomatoes!! They come in so many colors and tastes so tomatoes had to go in the ground.  Can't wait to taste these.

BEANS!!!

Spinach will be a new addition to the school meals

Vanessa and Belinda helped design and color our temporary crop signs

Sitting at the edge of the outdoor classroom

It doesn't look like much now, but we have big dreams!!

PREPARING THE SOIL

Our raised beds

David taking a break from the sun in the shade garden area

We decided to use traditional organic methods to preparing the soil.  We used manure to start with but then used all the yard waste to create a compost pile.  We will probably feed the soil with the compost when it is ready because it will be most economical.  We also hope to rotate our crops to encourage better nutrients. 

Since we do not have very much room to plant, we decided to use raised beds

deciding the size of the beds

We added broken bricks not just to add a little decor but also to create a  path for the children and the visitors

Finding Support in the Community

One of our goals as a team is to make sure that we can have the support of the school parents, our neighbors and our community.  Because we are very low in funds, we are hoping to find resources in the form of knowledge, materials and care taking help from the good people of Arusha.

One of the first people we met with was Cecilia.  She is a wonderful and knowledgeable resource for us.  Cecilia has a degree in agriculture that she is using to turn her property into a nursery for exotic plants and ponds.  She is hoping to cater to the landscaping needs of the many hotels, businesses and resorts that being built around Arusha.

Cecilia harvesting eggs from her chickens

Cecilia raises chickens, rabbits and tilapia as well as exotic fish and plants. She has been a great help and we plan to send our teachers to her farm to learn about horticulture and farming techniques.

As soon as we began breaking the grounds at MDFT, people started to come around and as questions.  Soon some of the elders came around to give us their wisdom and show us how things were done traditionally. We soon found that some on lookers knew people, who knew people, who knew other people who could help us with the stuff we did not know.  Wow this is awesome!!

The local elders give us advice on how to set up our fish pond

David studying a sketched idea on the ground

A local expert helping us design a better fish pond

David considering the local experts ideas

Getting the Teachers on Board

Head Teacher Jackie (3 year teaching experience)

Like in any school, having the teacher's support is the most important step of any plan for change.  So, today we sat down with the MDFT teachers to introduce the ideas of using the Flood Garden as the center of the school curriculum.  We spent the day making lists of things we needed, and drawing maps of our new Flood Garden project.

Left to right (a friend of the teachers),  David Gido (in blue plad), Teacher Loveless (pink vest), Head Teacher Jackie (in Red), MDFT Parent helper (in back), Teacher Nixon (in black jacket), Vanessa (5 year old MDFT student) on the day we broke ground

Our new academic Flood Garden team is Head Master and Flood Garden Director David Gido, Head Teacher Jackie, brand new teachers Loveless and Nixon.  We will also be counting on parents, students and community members for their help.

The MDFT teachers, although young, are very enthusiastic about participating in the Flood Garden learning model.  They are excited that they do not have to teach in stuffy overcrowded classrooms and even happier that school does not have to be as boring as they remember it.   The team immediately began to design the grounds today. The idea of making a Maasai style house as our outdoor kitchen came from them.  They are interested in teaching history to the students by showing them traditional Maasai building techniques.

MDFT Teachers working breaking the ground of the Flood Garden

(left to right) Head Master David and  Teacher Nixon getting design suggestions from our clients and the real experts...The Students!!