Caba, PH – Organic vegetable garden gives hope – 19 Jan 2015

The RMC family live near Caba, La Union in the Philippines and come from a long line of farmers. They have three school age children ranging from thirteen to sixteen years of age, who they support on their father’s farming income. Mother MC is a stay at home mom who cares for her children and eighty year old father.

The family dream of helping their children get a good education, and they know that they can only get closer to that objective if their income improves. To support this endeavor, they joined the Food Always In The Home (FAITH) garden program in order to grow vegetables for food and to also earn additional income from selling surplus vegetables.

Before joining the Faith garden program, their father RC was able to harvest an average of 25 kilos of bokchoy each month, and earned approximately 3,000 pesos (US$ 68) per month by selling the harvest. The family applied for a FAITH garden in October 2014, and Happy Shine Garden Shop helped the family build a garden. Within less than two months after building the garden, the shop team helped MC to increase his garden size from 12 to 16 beds of bokchoy.

In addition to the garden, the family has now started raising livestock. The children care for their cow and goats, and their goal is to increase the number of livestock so they can make a living from them.

The family’s income has been steadily rising since adding more beds to the garden, and the garden shop team has taught the family to use organic fertilizer and natural pest repellant sources that have lowered costs. The family is even able to add 500 pesos (US$12) a month to their savings. RC is therefore now more confident about further expanding their garden and family income.

RC and MC dream that their children will be the first generation in the family to head to college. Their eldest daughter hopes to become an agriculturist so that she can help the family cultivate their vegetable garden more efficiently and effectively. She is inspired by the garden shop team, and admires the work they do helping the community start gardens and increase family nutrition and incomes.

RC had struggled for years with not being able to increase the family income, because he was held back by the tiring labor intensive work he performed every day.

He has been watering his FAITH garden with a manual pump, and occasionally he is able to borrow a machine powered water pump. RC has discussed with the garden shop team his desire to buy a diesel powered water pump to help ease his labor. The garden productivity improvements he learned from the garden shop team has enabled him to start saving towards that goal. Once he has this machine, he believes he can increase the size of his garden beds and also start growing other vegetables besides the bokchoy. With each monthly deposit, the RC family gets more energized as it gets them one step closer to achieving their dreams.