27th January 2008; These are some of the 258 girls we support in Secondary school. As part of our Saturday and week-end classed we introduce them to new methods of food production in our gardens around our Centre for Learning. Malawians are totally focused on Maize for their
17th January 2018: Maize is the staple food in Malawi. Success of the crop decides on the level of starvation poor people will endure. It is hard to imagine that this is a crop of local maize with no artificial fertilizer or pesticides. Malawi land we see is
5th January 2018. At the moment we are researching 8 varieties of tomato at our little college of Horticulture at the factory garden. All the 255 girls we support in Secondary school get a chance to see and taste them as well as how to grow them. Besides
4th January 2018: Tomatoes are a big part of the Malawi diet at village level. Sadly we can't grow the local varieties successfully on the farm. We refuse to use noxious chemicals, so the local, GM varieties are attacked by pests the we can't control with our
3rd January 2018: This is Ben, one of our workers in the factory garden. He is tending to a plant called Amaranth (Amaranthus), which we promote for pregnant women as a solution to anaemia. Most women in Malawi are anaemic. You just pluck the leaves from the bottom
22nd December 2017: In our twelve years farming in Lusangazi, we have expanded our horizons considerably. Besides organic/sustainable/agro-forestry, we have a big focus on producing improved varieties of fruit trees. We now have nine varieties of Mango, which extend the season in which mango is available to eat.
21st December 2017: We produce about 15,000 mango seedlings each year, by grafting (now) eight new varieties from all over the world on to rootstock grown from the local variety. First step is to collect seeds when people have eaten the fruit and we do a deal
Today there was a fair (of sorts) in Ngranga village in Rumphi district. It was an opportunity for NGO's operating in the area to showcase what they do and was attended by a representative from the Ministry of Agriculture. There was a great crowd, but entertainment
This is Mary and Miriam after delivering a training session at Mskiki preschool. It was a hugely successful day. Below is the report I received from Miriam about the day: PHASE 2 WORKSHOP REPORT FROM: Miriam DATE: 22rd November, 2017 VENUE: Msiki PEOPLE PRESENT: The representative of GVH Andrea Moyo,
15th November 2017: Maybe the saddest Day? This is Adamson head of the farm in Lusangazi and he is looking at a dreaded beacon. Since the President announced in June last that his new airport would take much of our Sustainable/Conservation Organic farm, our fruit tree production and
There is currently a major electricity issue in Malawi that has gotten progressively worse over the last number of months. For our volunteers, they arrived at a time where there are now spells of electricity outages for up to 30 hours. It's frustrating when there is
My most surprising moment yet Of the three main arms of Wells for Zoë I knew about, I wasn't expecting to be most impressed by the farm. Maybe it was because my notions of farming stretched no further than my Grandad's farm, and the jobs I'd get