Echo Farms

What a great field trip!  Echo Farms is a gardener's delight.  Echo stands for Educational Concerns For Hunger Organization.  Their website Echo Farms states that:

The Global Farms is divided into seven main areas. Each area is managed by one of ECHO's agricultural interns who spends 12 months cultivating, harvesting, and researching numerous crops, fruit trees, and nutritious food plants. Each plot is also used to produce seeds which are ultimately packaged and sent overseas in order to be evaluated as a potential new food crop. Showcased on the various plots are affordable and sustainable farming techniques that also incorporate suitable animals and appropriate technologies.

Thanks to the friendly guidance of Vic Estoye, a 30 year Master Gardener, we toured all of them.

Master Gardener Vic

A Very Curious Goat

Methane Production.  (If the tire is inflated there's methane)

See the bottle on the roof?  It's is filled with water and used to bring light into the dark goat barn.

Ways to Grow Vegetables on a Rocky Hillside

She is not much bigger than a goat and is a cow for small spaces and sparse grazing.

No electricity to run a pump? Here is a hand cranked well system that will do the trick.

A new method of rice growing to be carefully introduced to subsistence farmers. Sudden  changes are never suggested for fear of a devastating crop failure which could mean starvation in undeveloped countries.  Instead, Echo volunteers suggest part of field as a test.

No soil for growing your veggies on that rooftop?  A five gallon bucket, an old piece of carpet and some corncobs can make it happen for you.  The bucket has a small hole in the bottom and is filled with liquid fertilizer.  The solution leaks out and wets the carpet.  Seeds are laid on the carpet, and when they sprout are propped up with corn cobs, soda cans or whatever is available to hold them upright.

 Many items can be re-purposed for growing vegetables.

Gloria, a moment after she learned that the leaf she just sampled should not be eaten raw as it turns to cyanide in your system.  Fortunately, she didn't eat enough to hurt her.

We had a great time, and many of us are planning to return to buy those lovely plants that just wouldn't fit into our vans.  We did manage to bring home a few though.  Dee Dee bought an apple tree, two of us bought passion fruit and almost all of us took home some herbs and seeds.  It's really worth the trip, so if you have the time and inclination, directions on how to get there are on the website (link at the top of the page)  Sign up for a tour to learn about their work, and I guess I don't have to encourage you to visit the nursery.  It would probably be impossible to keep you out. Enjoy!