August 15, 2007

Gardeners of Eden East Timor Seed Project Update:

Greetings! We hope this letter finds you well. Below is an update of work being done by the Gardners of Eden Seed Project here in East Timor. Please read on to find out more about all of the hard work we have been doing and about how to donate to this important project! Photos of the project can be found here.

Orlalan, Laclubar

At the end of July, Just Coffee and the Gardners of Eden Seed Project hosted a Just Coffee delegation to East Timor. Besides investigating the current state of the coffee industry of Timor-Leste our delegation had the opportunity to visit the mountain district of Laclubar. The weather is still cold at night in Laclubar. By equatorial standards, hovering around zero degrees Celcius at night is cold, especially when house walls are little more than split bamboo. The second, short wet-season of the cool months of June and July are near their end and in normal years the coffee harvest would already be well underway. This year, because of a lack of rain during flowering in late 2006, the coffee harvest is considerably smaller and running later than usual. The lowlands are already drying out fast and heading into the beginning of the dry season food supplies are already precarious for many people.
On the road up into the mountains we stop at Cribas to collect Mana Elvira and her sister. They have come down in the Anguna (1) the night before, to purchase maize corn for the families of their clan (uma-rota) in Orlalan, Laclubar to eat. Elvira is super excited to see us and as we load several sacks of corn, her sister, and a flea-riddled piglet into the truck she has difficulty containing herself in telling us about her garden.
The Laclubar program remains small at this stage, as only a fraction of the seeds coming from the USA have arrived (2). On our trip we visited four of five family garden sites that have been established. We distributed the remainder of the seeds that have already arrived to two new participants who had come along to observe discussions of the program's progress, one of which included a key community organizer from the Suco (3).
Elvira’s garden in Orlalan continues to be the most successful, with the garden’s worked by her and her children providing food to eat and greens for sale locally. Elvira explained that since she started her garden she is never short of a little money and always has a quarter or fifty cents in her pocket when she needs it for the house and her children. She had even purchased a set of plastic cups and a pot for coffee to be able to have something nice to put on the table for visitors.
Other gardens visited were started later in the season but have been set up close to water sources and are irrigated. Silver beet, lettuces, and mustard greens were all ready for transplanting and radishes were ready to eat. In Elvira’s garden, lettuces, kale, broccoli leaves and bok-choi have already been harvested and there are many more seedlings ready to be transplanted from their seedling beds. The weather will begin to warm in the mountains now and it is time to plant tomatoes, eggplant, beans, pumpkins and corn where there is water available to sustain growth through the dry season.

It is a pleasure foraging for our evening meal with Elvira in her gardens. She is happy with the new vegetable varieties that have performed well and has meted out her seeds for successive plantings each week.
Before returning to Dili a brief meeting was held with representatives of those families participating in the project in order to discuss their results thus far and what vegetable seeds they want for the coming season. There is strong interest in local commercial vegetables such as dry-land kang-kong, tomatoes, and eggplants, as well as ongoing interest in expanding the range of varieties available from kitchen gardens and in obtaining new varieties of fruits, spices and herbs. Everyone is eager for the next shipment of seeds to arrive and in the meantime it is agreed that some seeds will be purchased in Dili, and others ordered from Australia to support the momentum already established. For those growers who already have plants selected for seed, it was agreed that old glass bottles will be sent up from Dili to be used to make airtight storage containers, sealed with wax from local wild hives.

Ainaro

Plans for distribution of seeds and a coffee depulping machine for coffee growing family groups already contacted in Ainaro are underway. This portion of the Seed Project has been made possible due to the generous cash donation from USA coffee roaster, Dean’s Beans. It is hoped that distribution can be completed now that the Timor-Leste government has been formed and the security situation continues to be stable in Ainaro.

Aldeia ROMIT, Becora, Dili

In Dili, with the beginning of the dry season, we have started a project with women in Aldeia ROMIT, Becora. There are four vegetable plots being established, in total around 0.75 hectares of growing area. The idea is to cultivate vacant land within the aldeia (4), thus improving both the living environment by reducing dust and adding to food and income. The women within the aldeia have opted to grow a core of crops suited for the hot lowlands: corn, pumpkins, pigeon pea, dry land kang-kong, snake beans, tomato, eggplant and chillies. To these will be added smaller plantings of rocket, hot season lettuces, basil, and mint. Once these gardens are established there are plans for a small nursery area. The nursery will be used for sprouting seedlings, growing trees, and also for growing tropical flowering plants such as heliconias and gingers which can be sold within the city and planted as perennials alongside pathways and in shaded areas thus providing cut stems with good display characteristics.
Maria Kinoi, a trainee staff member of local NGO Fundaciao Hari'i Au Metan – Foundation of the Black Bamboo (FHAM), together with Hector, are preparing field reports and completing records of seedling trials. Thanks much to Maria Kinoi for her diligent work in the office! For now we await our next trip to Laclubar and prepare for Ainaro.

USA

Back in Madison, Wisconsin, USA Mark Bystrom and Alicia Wright from Just Coffee (www.justcoffee.coop) are in the process of sorting and sending more seeds graciously donated through the assistance of Mr. Emmett Schulte and with the help of John Peck from Family Farm Defenders. Special thanks to these individuals as well as the Rochdale International Housing Cooperative, an anonymous professor from the UW-Madison School of Social Work, Solea Leon, Kathleen Koppa, David Montgomery, Colette Stewart and Scott Anderson, Bobbie Webster, Laura Tony and the Whitefeather family, Ben Hung, Lori Matthews and Family, Leah Partridge, and the Madison chapter of the East Timor Action Network who have previously donated seeds or money to this project from so far away. Thanks also to Just Coffee and Family Farm Defenders for believing in the vision of this project and for sponsoring its execution.

At present the Gardners of Eden East Timor Seed Project is in need of money to support the cost of the purchase of seeds and tools, funds to support transportation costs, the building of a nursery and refurbishing of Laclubar's agricultural building. In the USA donations are tax-deductible if checks are written to Family Farm Defenders (please put 'Seed Project' in the memo line). Family Farm Defenders is a non-profit 501(c)(3) registered charitable organization. Seed donations may be made to Just Coffee or by mailing seeds directly to East Timor. All contact information may be found below. Thank you kindly for your interest and support!

In Peace,

Colleen Coy and Hector Hill

Project Coordinators
Gardeners of Eden Seed Project

Notes:
(1) Anguna: local truck used for ferrying passengers and goods to and from the district marketplace in Orlalan (Laclubar) and the larger suppliers and traders in DIli. Capable of carrying only 750kg over very difficult roads.
(2) nine boxes of seeds posted to Timor-Leste from Madison were returned from Jakarta, Indonesia and thanks to assistance from Jean and Steve Coy are now being sent again, hopefully this time with the US Postal Service being able to figure out where Timor-Leste is in the world.
(3) Suco: village, of varying size, usually with a small weekly marketplace, church, school, and one or more kiosks selling essential supplies depending on the degree of isolation, road access, etc.
(4) Aldeia: extended family hamlet. Traditionally a cluster of houses surrounding one central uma-lulik or spirit household. There are around 3000 aldeias of considerably varying size and collective land holdings in Timor-Leste.

To Donate:
Gardener's of Eden Seed Project:

Gardeners of Eden East Timor Seed Project
C/O Colleen Coy and Hector Hill
P.O. Box 19

Dili,

EAST TIMOR (TIMOR-LESTE)

via Darwin, Australia

Just Coffee

1129 East Wilson Street

Madison, WI 53703 USA

www.justcoffee.coop

Please make all checks payable to Family Farm Defenders:
Family Farm Defenders, Inc.

P.O. Box 1772

Madison, WI 53701 USA
http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/Main/HomePage

For inquiries:

Gardeners of Eden Project Coordinators:

Colleen Coy

colleen@justcoffee.net

+670-735-5177

or

Hector Hill

hextopia@hotmail.com

+670-729-7567