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.