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| Thanks to Rhoda for the photo. |
by Rhoda
Beutler
My first
introduction to HAFF was in 2006 as an ECHO intern who lived on
campus and helped with agricultural programs that included planting,
mapping, pruning, and watering many useful plants around the campus.
Among them were fruit trees well-adapted to dry climates, leafy
vegetables that grew in the form of a resilient bush, and forage
plants that animals liked to eat.
I am now a
missionary with Christian Veterinary Mission in Haiti and serve as a
member of the HAFF US board. My work in agricultural networking takes
me around the country but also frequently past HAFF. Whenever I stop
by the HAFF campus, I check to see which fruit trees are bearing and
how the other plants are doing. Part of this is just to enjoy the
juicy carambola or tart red mombin when they are in season, but part
is because there are other groups around the country who are
interested in these same plants. To me it is very useful to know if
those plants are still surviving at HAFF.
Last
week I was at HAFF as a translator for Dr. Eric Anderson and their
clinics for the HAFF staff families and also for the community Nan
Don, beyond Grand Latanye. The morning of the clinic in Nan Don, we
prepared
about a hundred cuttings of chaya for Pastor Delès, who wanted to
get chaya established around the church and in the community. Met
Claude, HAFF's Project Healthy Family coordinator, who has long
promoted chaya as a nutritious and tasty leafy vegetable, took charge
of distributing the cuttings after he finished distributing chlorine
solution for families to treat their drinking water.
Before I left, I
harvested Nacedero, garlic chives, and three ornamental plants I
wanted to establish for my housemates in Port au Prince. Nacedero is
a hardy forage plant that came to ECHO from Central America and is
great for restoring plant cover along streams, for reducing erosion
through living hedgerows, but most of all for feeding to goats, cows,
and chickens. I love to cook with garlic chives, and I know that once
they are established in good soil in a yard, they are easy to harvest
daily and use in any kind of meat, vegetable, or egg dish.
I also took note
that many plants were thriving on the HAFF campus that could be a
resource for another organization to diversify diets, provide food
for animals, or brighten up a corner of a yard. Red Mombin produces a
tart reddish-orange fruit about the size of a large grape during the
summer months. The leaves are also a possible animal forage. African
Moringa (stenopetala) has a larger leaf and tends to be a little more
drought-tolerant than the more common moringa native to India
(oleifera). Canistel grows as a beautiful tree casting heavy shade
and produces a fruit similar to a cooked sweet potato that can be
eaten fresh, made into a smoothie-like drink, or baked into breads or
cakes. The mango varieties at HAFF have been shown to survive the
climate over more than a decade and now serve as a source for
grafting onto young trees in order to increase the availability of
mangoes at the end of the season when other varieties have finished
bearing. Starfruit survives well and is a refreshing and juicy snack
as well as a good possibility for dried fruit. HAFF still has a
cassava variety that was developed by a tropical research center
named CIAT in Colombia. This high-vitamin A variety was introduced by
World Vision into the region, and according to Ely, the HAFF farm
manager, people in the area like it. Mulberry is good not only for
the fruit but also as an animal forage.
As I left the HAFF
campus with my pickup full of cuttings, I was part of the payoff from
the investment HAFF made over the years in maintaining perennial
crops like fruit trees and leafy vegetables. HAFF continues as a
stable resource to community members, churches from the area, and
other organizations. But HAFF’s biggest perennial investment
remains the education and formation of strong Christian leaders for
the region and the nation.
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