Closing out 09

So what happened in 2009 ?

First, we would like to thank those who have made sacrifices to support this year. I am aware that some of our supporters have even lost their homes this year, yet we have not lost their support. We keep this in mind as we use the monies given to us, to use those funds with care.
Thank you.


Well if you have time you should look back over the past blog posts to see the pictures and get more information.

In short; we continued to helped raise 36 children along with 6 other staff.
We accepted 8 children, 4 boys and 4 girls throughout the year.
We have 8 children learning and playing music on the drums, piano, guitar, and electric guitar.
11 of the children have been using the computers learning to use Word, Excel and email. 28 of the children are studying English.

On average or children have between 50 to 60 students per class.
29 of our 36 children are placing top ten in their class.
22 of our children have improved their school score on average of 14 places.

VeChi at age 13 skipped 3 grades from being in 3rd grade not knowing his alphabet or how to read or write to being in the 7th grade knowing how to read and write, learning English and playing the guitar is now number 10 in his class.

SreyOwn went from 44th place second years ago to placing number one the last two months.

Needless to say I glow with joy when I get their scores. I am so happy and proud of their work.


We currently own 12 pigs, 9 of them reproducing mothers. We have 10 goats still and 13 turkeys, some rabbits, geese, chickens and fish.

We repaired water damage in the upstairs bathroom.
We are building a small house for our laborer.
We had a bio-digester methane producing waste tank built that replaced most of our propane usage.
We built a worm farm, micro fish farm, and composting area.

Some of our trees we planted from seed have began to produce this year.

We will add tile to the children walls and repaint the interior next year.

Our July Firecracker Golf Tournament was a blessing raising over $12,000. US dollars or their college education. There is another event planned for July 2010.

For the future we hope to expand our properties to build a team house, medical clinic and possible a private school to cope with the over crowding and poor education our children get at the local school.

You can always connect with me via Facebook or emailing us and I'll do my best to answer your questions.

Have a wonderful New Year,
Kit

End of the Year

I am sorry the last blog said I would write again soon and it turned out to be longer.
We just have an a lot of things going on right now.














We put some tanks near our pig pen to collect their waste. While I took a break from digging the holes I looked up and noticed this tree frog pinched between a split branch on the tree only a couple feet away..















Our Pastor blessed us again this year with a second trip. The children always request that he play some worship for them. They are really proud of their American Pastor.



















We did celebrate Thanksgiving this year, we do not normally celebrate any holiday, but we certainly enjoyed it. You do not know you miss something until your reminded of how good it was.















One of our many projects happening last month was changing out our planter box. There were to many cobras hiding in the bushes before and the children had a bad habit of braking the branches off. It also really cleaned the yard up and the palms are able to withstand the constant straying of soccer balls.




























Sour Sup I believe related to the Cherimoja fruit, Ream Planted this tree from a seed a couple years ago it is about 8 feet now and bearing it's first fruit this year.



















It's hard to see them but Vuthy has about 5 long bean plants growing.



















Wut's spinach is coming in nice.

































Lim's cucumbers are doing well.











































Our spinach, the geese killed our first batch so we had to start over with a net this time.















We have a verity of water plants growing this year,a real nice ecosystem finally. So much is living in there, much of it we did not stock.















Our lawn mowers at work. Ours put out gas as your uses gas. :)










Were growing some sugarcane this year, a little snack later for the kids. I never realized how long it takes to grow, it's taking for ever.
















This is our worm farm we have been feeding the fowl, fish and pigs with the worms and using the soil for our gardening.

You'll never guess where we are at. Under ground in our new Bio digester or methane converter. It is the only and the last time we'll be able to do this. This system takes out pig waste and captures the gas for our use in the kitchen.
It is saving us 2 to 3 bottles of propane every month now















So we have about 6 cubic meters of space in a large underground dome. The waste is pushed in one side and the old stuff is pushed out the rear for use in the garden. Our 9 pigs produce enough waste to take care of most the cooking we do.


















Sadly the best brick work I have ever seen in Cambodia is buried. It finishes up to look like an igloo here is the rear end of the tank.

To start off we needed a lot of waste a couple tons. Pastor was kind enough to lend a hand in the moving it to the tank during his "vacation". :) A bit of warning to other guest, there is always a Dirty Job here to do.










































That is one big pile. As you can see Tong has had it up to here with this kind of labor.














It's about 6 feet deep here at the exit and maybe nine feet in the center.

We have been repairing the bathrooms as they were not sealed properly, we are lucky as there is not any water damage to the floor.
We will be painting the interior of the building.
We are adding tile to the walls in the children rooms.
We will be making more tables and beds.
We have started a house for our workers to stay on the property.
We are also making a compost pit and a micro cat fish farm.
Oh also we have to seal our gutters the leak into the house.

So we are off to a busy start, but I like projects so it is good for me, keeps me going.

We will be celebrating our Christmas on the 26th all the gifts are bought.
We plan on eating a goat for the holidays but we are having a hard time choosing which one. The biggest male is the one who needs to go because he is getting mean but he is also our biggest and best breeder. The other males are half his size.

We plan on learning how to grow two different types of mushrooms and we still have a chicken farm to visit, plus we found a lady raising crayfish. I have been wanting to do this for a while as shrimp sells for $5 a pound here but no one raises crawdads which are easier and can live with out water.

We have a visitor coming for 3 months January 27 please keep her trip in prayer that it will go smoothly and comfortable, as she is a young lady traveling by herself for the first time to a foreign country.

I will really try and not let the month go by before we post again.

Kit

P.S. I will have some very nice photos of the children soon. We have a professional photographer Erica Simon from New York going to drop by. This should be a treat for the children and their sponsors early February .

Gardening

Some of the the children have started on a new project.
They have rented a small space to start their own garden area.
They will be allowed to grow what ever they wish in their garden.
They must care completely on their own for their garden covering all costs from the seeds to the fertilizer.
How ever they also will keep all the money from their sales.

With this project we hope they will use the many skills we have given them. We hope this will teach them greater responsibility, finances, time management, and giving them the confidence that they can do these things with out our help. Hopefully that will also make all other farm classes much more valuable to them.













The children are allowed to grow and easy crop for up to half their land. This happens to be the morning glory/unchoi that we already grow because it grows like a weed. They can use this to feed their own animals that they have such as chickens. An easy crop such as this requires little time from them and assures them some kind of return about .12$ a week.
The other half of the land they rented will have to be planted with any thing they wish. This makes sure they have to work for their funds and that they have to grow something that may be more of a challenge to them. It also adds risk to their project.


















The rent is .50$ a meter half of their months allowance. So most of the children only have one meter to start. Some of the children shared the space to cut the cost and labor. If things go well for them they will recover the cost with in the month. Two of our children have been saving for this and have started with 5 meters.

They all have different ideas of what they want to grow. One child wants to grow a small red chilly because they can sell them for .02$ each and there is a lot on one bush. Another group is going to grow spinach.

They each will keep a record book to keep track of their time and money. Hopefully they will come to their own conclusion of what is worth growing and what is not. How long it takes to grow something and how much they can sell it for will be important.














Some of what they sell will be whole sale to our kitchen. Some things they will have to take to the market and sell it to the vendor for a suitable price. Some of the children are hoping to eat their own produce.

Some of the children have chosen not to participate yet. They either did not save their money and spent it on cookies, or the have no time because of school or they are to lazy and do not wish to work any harder than they do already.

I hope that the first groups income will encourage others to change their mind.
Also I will be shifting their work away from the orphanages animals giving them time to spend on their own animals. This will also bring a change in their allowance income as they will be doing less for us and more for themselves.

Our other goal is to help the children start a savings account with the bank in town.
So we will see how it goes.

A little bit of fun. We had been going at each other with water balloons when I made a switch to shaving cream. Then we it turned into hand to hand combat with Long taking the most damage.




































Sam wounds were self inflicted.

A friend at church was kind enough to help me find the exact link to our property on Google Earth.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=11.201241,104.790301&spn=0.01465,0.019548&t=h&z=16

I hope this makes the last blog a little easier.

I will be posting again shortly.

Where are we?

This is our property round about 2005. The white square centered in the picture.
Just recently published. Previous searches showed the land green and separated.
I am supposing the picture was taken shortly after the land was filled in.
You can find us on google earth maps of Takeo, Cambodia.
It might be hard for you to find if you do not know the area or what your looking for. If you did want to find the area on Google maps the best way is to find the mountain to our East and to the right of the picture called Phnom Chisor. The white road north of the property. This road runs to the North side of the mountain, so find the road and you back track that road to us..

When you first type in Takeo, Cambodia you come up south of us. There is a large lake there you go North to the top of the lake where it thins out keeping the road #2 in you sights. So you have the tip of the lake where it meets a mountain where the white road is and then left or east to the road #2 then there we should be.










taking the time to try and find us on Google maps will let you explore our area a little. Our area is not supper quality yet but you get an idea of the country where the roads are and the temples around us.

You might find it interesting.



















We had a return visit of our Australian friends. They played soccer and made balloon animals that the children had a lot of fun with.













































Our piglets are all gone. 88 babies this summer. Sadly the prices where at a low for us. The children carries a lot of pigs to day it was quite fun.














22 babies a load 4 loads. It was the most babies I have ever seen on a bike.














We finally found the help and ideas we needed.
We where invited to visit a professional pig farm about 20 minutes away.
Over 350 pigs makes about $5000 a month.
What was important for us was to learn about keeping the temperature the same. How they feed and what they did.
I did not really like how they where cadged but over all we learned a lot and now we will think about how we can apply it to what we do.













Their pig where the best I have ever seen it really put ours 207 kilo mom to shame. On average these mothers where over that. They also had a good breads as they only use artificial insemination with the donors coming from Thailand.














When we where done with class we could see some fun looking temples on the mountain so we dropped by for a look.


















Ruin, Lim, Te-a, Chow, and Channee.
Ruin is one of our workers. The other 4 boys are from our animal team leaders. Children selected because they really care for their animals well and they will be here a few more years to take what they have learned and share it with other children.

Teams and Travelers

I have a few teams lining up and some people making trips by themselves.
If you interested at all in making a trip please get in contact with us and I can help you connect with some one if you wish to travel as a group.

Here are dates for groups or individuals that are planning their trip.
from USA Nov 1 2009
from USA Dec 18 2009
from USA Jan ? 2010
from USA July-Aug 2010
from Germany Sept 2010
from USA Oct 2010
from USA 2 trips with dates unknown

Quite often you can find tickets for $700.


I was looking online at our fish that we raise. I found that it can grow over 600 pound and 6 feet long in as little as 6 years. I am not sure we will keep it that long as I think he will put a crimp in our budget. We'll keep him s long as he eats for free and does not eat the children.














I am pretty happy with our children right now. We in the past tried to do a work project with the kids where they have their garden raise vegetables and sell them to make some spending money. Well back then our dirt was pretty bad almost all clay. It was too much work for them and nothing really grew. Back then they where making more money picking up nails from the construction than they where in the garden.

This year we assigned the animals we have to groups of children they are responsible for the animal and make a share when the animal produces or goes to market.

It was only this last month that the children started saving their money to do something with it rather than spend it on snacks or toys.
They started to buy their own animals to raise and sell. Mostly chickens while one girl bought a pair of ducks. It is fun they are buying their own seed and some have chosen to free graze their animals. One boy spent all his money on chicks but he rode home with them tied up in a black plastic bag. They did not last long one he got them home. So he waited until his next allowance and went out and bought 2 more chicks and handled them a little differently the second time.
During their free time the kids take their birds out and walk them around our property.
It is funny that all our teenage boys have become little mothers.

So in a couple months they will sell their chickens make a profit and do something else, maybe the same or maybe a bigger animal. The children are also requesting to grow gardens again but in a different area.

It is quite exciting for us as it take the burden of how much money to give the children. We give them so little and lots of time they want more. So now they have finally taken the mater into their own hands.
Also most people I speak to are concerned about the children becoming institutionalized, not knowing how to operate in the world once they leave here. So I am happy and kind of confident that they will not be helpless when they leave. They will no doubt have some problems when they leave but not as many as people might think.

Also some of our children who have been learning music have begun to teach others how to play. Really cool for me to see.
It is almost like I could leave today and they would continue doing the work by themselves. Very exciting.

part B of our Summer.

8 new bicycles in the middle was recently donated by a friend in Anaheim Cali. The 5 older bikes on the left and the group to the left with the sad face are still walking to school.














Pastor Tuy, friends and family from Anaheim Cali. Stopped by for the day. We had a really great time with them. It was also nice to have a connection from our Anaheim friends make their first visit.









Around the 18th of August our pond was very low, almost 4 feet. By early September it is near over flowing again. It is nice when to have more water than you know what to do with.

During the this summer we had hoped to get the children off the property a little more. We where trying to make connections with other NGO's that offer training. We have one NGO who trains people better home making skills and one NGO that teaches better farming skills.
But it did not work out this year. We will try again next year.

We did however get the children to a ma who lives fairly close to us. We heard about him on the Christan radio. He has taken all the NGO advice he can and has put it into practice. I found him him to be a very impressive man.
So we made arrangements for our children to go and learn for part of the day.

They learned how to raise earth worms. I had looked on line before how to do it and it was a major project with materials and things, mainly wood which is harder for us to get or use.
Besides the worms ability to repair our soil they will feed all of our animals from the fish to the pigs and everything in between. Pretty soon we will have high protein diets for every thing.
Mostly our big kids went to this class, girls to.































Shortly after our kids made their own pit to start farming earth worms. We will start pretty small and if every thing works out we will enlarge it to actually produce enough worms to use for the animals and the property.














He also showed us how to micro farm a smaller bread of catfish. The children are very excited about this. They eat the worms and termites. The net is to keep them from walking away, when it rains this type of catfish crawls away.














A gardener looks on as the teacher is going to put the worms on the dinner plate.














He also had some larger catfish like ours.













Plus he had 2 ponds for Talapia.













Then he showed us his gas tank. This tank located next to the bathroom takes the animal waste and collects the gases from it and it is used for lighting and cooking. He has had his tank for 3 years and it feeds gas to 3 houses with about 15 people.














Gas lantern













This is the area where the left over waste is collected and reused for the gardening.
I did not think it smelled bad I guess because the stink was already burnt off.

















Te-a and Tee looking after their litters. We had like 81 piglet this year, the bad weather made it a bit challenging to keep them healthy but we made it. The next litters should be born in better part of the year. We also have an appointment to visit a real pig farm where the kids will get real information and we will see how to do things better so next year we will hopefully deal with less illness.














Though our pond was pretty low we got some plants growing in there. Which was great for our echo system. We have and incredible amount of life in there that the children like to eat. We only planted the large cat fish everything else came from some where else maybe dropped off a birds foot or something.













We also have a lot of these really colorful frogs living in the pond.













Six and a half pounds now. During the dry season we empty the pond and its fish to dig out any mud that has fallen in. So we put the largest fish in mother in-laws pond once and a while they are caught and we put them back in our pond. We think we will just keep letting these grow.













We had a boat building contest.
Judged on looks and performance.













What I was most surprised was by the amount of creativity there was and some real design.
Most of them had and old shoe as the body but they added sails and paddles and all kinds of things they thought would work.
Vuthy looked and worked well.

















Chow got second for looks but quickly sank. The wholes in the bottom and not having any sides made it more of a submarine.

















Channee ad Melor a group effort paid off. They got third for beauty but number 1 for performance. The made a rubber band propeller and a sail that worked great.








































































































I was looking at windmills to use here awhile ago. The only ones I could find we really expensive. Then shortly after I made an information request on face book. Ream saw one on the way home. Every time we drive by it now it is umping water. What is great is that it is drawing a large crowd. Hopefully this means some change in the area.











































Back in the trees. I had the though that this would make a better picture. How ever our children look so small compared to the building. I was hoping they would line the balconys.
I also I got extreemly sick. The wind was so bad I almost got sick up there and I had a head ache for 3 days.













It does give some of you a better perspective of how large the building is. This is about 30 of our children out there boys on top and girls on bottom.













We did also make it to the Zoo again but my memory card dumped so no picture.
My sister took some so when we get her copies I will post them.

Thanks to though who supported our Summer activies this year. I am sure the sponsors will hear about it in their next letters.