Javier Espinoza visited Gettysburg, PA in October of 2013 with Aaron Banas the Project Gettysburg-Leon in country director.
Javier Espinoza visited Gettysburg, PA in October of 2013 with Aaron Banas the Project Gettysburg-Leon in country director. They spent an activity filled two weeks in south central PA visiting with college students, elementary art students, community leaders and of course the Young Grower Alliance.
Several members of YGA delegations to Nicaragua took a day to show Javier and Aaron around Adams county to give a taste of agriculture in our region. The group toured Barlow Worm Composting LLC (Compost Production), Lagging Stream Farm (Dairy), McCleaf's Apiaries (Honey Production), Everblossom Farm (Organic Vegetables) and Three Springs Fruit Farm (Fruits and Vegetables). It turned out to be a successful day and another very valuable exchange in knowledge and experiences. Considering Javier's focus on organic production, he was especially intrigued by the methods used at Everblossom Farm.
The slide show below highlights the farms visited that day. We hope you can join us for events such as this and delegation trips to Nicaragua in the future!
Visiting Lagging Stream Farm
Dairy production differs quite a bit in the U.S. from Nicaragua. While their breeds must withstand months of drought and minimal grazing opportunities, our climate and farming infrastructure offers more leeway. Milk production is also significantly lower in the breeds hardy to Nicaragua.
Barlow Worm Composting
Still in it's first year of operation, this small company is growing, especially it's labor force of red 'wiggler' worms. Currently they use partially composted cow manure, feed it to the worms who convert it into a rich compost soil. This natural fertilizer will eventually be sold to consumers for gardens, lawn and other applications.
McCleaf's Orchard Apiaries
The third visit of the morning was to the beehives of McCleaf's Orchard. Honeybees in Nicaragua are all Africanized, making management of them a little different than of our European strains. Although spring swarming (natural splitting of a colony) is common here, in Nicaragua this occurs much more frequently throughout the year forcing beekeepers to be very vigilant so as not have reduced colonies and low honey production.
Everblossom Farm
One of the highlights of the tour was a stop at Everblossom Farm, an organic vegetable operation. Javier was able to see many management practices applicable to his operation, some of which he had only heard about but not seen in practice. Here Elaine is showing her method of starting and transplanting seedlings, a low tech and low resource method that Javier felt he could easily implement at home.
Tomato Field at Everblossom
After an in-depth and very informative discussion of crop rotation and cover cropping methods, our last stop was at the tomato field.
Huge Heirloom Tomatoes
Javier was quite surprised at how large some of the tomatoes were!
Three Springs Fruit Farm
Our final stop was a visit to the orchards of Three Springs. We were able to see peach, cherry and apple trees and learn about the challenges and successes of being a fruit farmer. As always, Javier's questions made for good conversation about the topic at hand!
Everyone learned a lot from each other...
and we spent a wonderful fall day touring the county together! Here's to the next time we all meet! photo credit: John Armstrong
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