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Colleen leaves for Dili, Timor-Leste....back in 2010.

Seed Project Update – July 2009


Laclubar:

Mana Elvira and Sr. Anacletus have started a small seed bank. Anacletus is a school teacher in Orlalan who has been working with the groups participating in the sub-district of Laclubar. He is from Oecussi and has married into one of the local clans. He was trained in advanced agricultural and horticultural techniques during the Indonesian period. He runs a small nursery at his house, which is just below the main water supply point in Dirikun. Anacletus has been grafting citrus trees for international NGOs such as CARE, and several UN agencies who have conducted projects in the Laclubar back in 2003 through 2006. Anacletus has been planting apples from seed, in the absence of any ongoing support from any of these agencies.

The Gardeners of Eden East Timor Seed Project is calling for support for its 2009 program. You can help by sending seeds or making donations. With global food stockpiling and rising prices, Timorese families need to renovate their traditional farming systems organically and address the annual hunger and nutrition gaps, as well as invest carefully in other crops (forestry and small-commercial farming systems) sufficient to support trading. To do this, they need seeds, tools, supplies, and training.

The Gardeners of Eden East Timor Seed Project continues to have successes with groups who have received in small commercial quantities of seed at six locations in Ainaro. All locations report good germination rates and we have avoided distributing seeds of crops that people are unfamiliar with. There has not yet been direct contact with the groups in Ainaro that were contacted through the Ministry of Agriculture but we hope that there will be in the near future; Such are the difficulties of maintaining regular communications with groups in the mountains. Carrots have all performed exceptionally well, as have silverbeet, some of the open hearted lettuce varieties, rocket, zucchini (summer and winter squash) and the more traditional crops of the area like cabbages and kale. In the next phase of the project we would like to start to concentrate on groups that are ready to move on from simple seed saving to seed multiplication. There are many groups that want seeds and not presently enough seed to go round.