Category: Vegetables

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How to build a keyhole garden

Via Hills and Plains Seedsavers, a video from Send a Cow, the people behind the keyhole gardens of Lesotho. To every thing, there is a season, clearly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjcjCCx3BWY

I’m going to quibble, just a bit. Not one of the veggies given a namecheck in the video could be considered local. Are there really no nutritious and neglected species that the people of Lesotho could be growing? I couldn’t find any.

And don’t miss the extended comment on my original post from Jack C, a retired Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho. His view:

If the outside world wishes to play a role in improving Lesotho, they need to be ready to put up real investments that open up non-agricultural means of economic development. Short of that, the Basotho themselves need to implement the educational, social, and land reforms necessary to give those struggling keyhole gardeners the option of leaving the land. Praise of their industriousness is welcome, but what they truly need are choices. The land can longer support them.

Salutary.

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Nibbles: Potato, Cheese, Edible landscapes, Apples, Bees, Cacao, Vegetables

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Farming and tourism

You may remember my recent post from Lima bemoaning the lost opportunity of linking agrobiodiversity education with tours of an archaeological site. Here’s an example of such an opportunity emphatically grasped. An historic farmhouse in Rhode Island is offering “visitors, particularly children, a glimpse into the lost world of small-scale farming in New England, when the distance between the chicken coop and the dinner plate was much shorter.” And that includes heirloom varieties, for example of tomatoes, of which the staff grow 30. They also keep some local ((Later: Ok, Jeremy, how about “locally important”?)) livestock breeds, including Red Devon cattle, famous for pulling settlers’ wagon trains West.

“One of the things we’ve worked on since we’ve been here is constantly trying to cultivate in people’s minds and hearts a preservation ethic, not just about preserving an old house,” he said, “but preserving landscapes.”