The start of this year did not go too well, really I am never happy there is too much water or there is nothing. We had lots of rain this summer, very good of course, but when it rains it rains with buckets, lots and lots of buckets.
When it is not raining it is dry dry dry. and then we have the biggest problem, the school has only water from the borehole and the pump of the borehole is really the problem of our frustration these last few months. If the pump does not work properly we dont have water or very little water and then that water has to go to the kids in the school first ofcourse in this heat they need to drink water , I wont even start on the situation in the bathrooms of the school when this happens.
At the moment it is a bit better and we started to put the new seeds in, I had to wait till we knew for sure we would have at least the first week enough water for the new seeds to take.

This summer we really wanted to try if we could grow as many pumpkins as we could, last year the ones we planted did very well, so we thought let fill the lower half of the garden with pumpkins, I could not wait to see them grow, but no this year did not go well, perhaps because it was such a wet summer but we only had a few pumpkins this time.
The butternut did better we had planted 2 terraces full of them , they did very very well, also the courgettes or marrows as they call them here, we had lots and lots of them.
But I was really disappointed that the pumpkins did not do so well this summer, whoever is out there and can give me some advise how we can do better next summer please let me know!!!!

A few photos of Christmas party we had for all the ladies, who help in the kitchen and in the vegetable garden.
This way we are saying thank you to all these ladies without whom we would not be able to feed the children or have a vegetable garden.
These mothers are there every morning at 6am winter or summer and believe me 6am winter time is coooold!
They are all volunteers helping us to give their and all the other children at the school a warm meal.
They work hard and have learnt so much!

Buster

BUSTER

Buster must be almost a year old now - he has become the ‘kitchen dog’. Whenever one of us arrives at that side of the school, Buster is sure to make his appearance. He is a big dog and unfortunately leaps up at us in greeting, and then nips your bum and feet! After the initial exuberance, he does quieten down thank goodness. He has such a friendly, sociable nature that you can’t help liking him.

By Shirley Doyle

Indigenous Herbs

Now that spring is here, we have begun putting in more herbs. Unfortunately most of the indigenous herbs that Thoko brought for the garden have died; possible because Johannesburg experiences colder winters than the areas where the plants occur in the wild.

We have put in two new indigenous medicinal herbs:

“Artemesia afra” is one of the oldest and best known of all the indigenous medicines and it is used for a number of ailments. When the mothers who work in the garden saw the plant, they all exclaimed over it, because they know it so well. We’re hoping that once this ‘wilde als’ has grown well, the women will feel free to use it to treat their families.

“Sutherlandia frutescens” or ‘cancer bush’. This is attractive bush with red flowers (July – Dec) and balloon-like seeds. It is also a multi purpose and useful indigenous medicinal plant.

The mothers often show interest about the plants we use as herbs, so we have put three files of information in one of the sheds. These they can use as and when the need arises. When the lemon balm, lemon verbena and lemon grass have grown more, we can introduce the mothers to the delights of herbal teas – beneficial to health and cost effective!

Shirley Doyle

The mothers who volunteer at the project.

All the mothers who volunteer in the project start at 6am, making breakfast for the children, who come to the school early and dont get any breakfast at home, after that they start preparing the meal for all the 750 children, they eat around 10 am at first break, when everyone has eaten, the plates and pots washed the mothers get their food and relax till it is time to start preparing all the vegetables for the next day.
We are feeding the children now 3 days/week, Monday,Tuesday and Wednesday, on Thursday all the mothers work in the garden from early in the morning till around noon , when it gets too hot.
On Thursday we give all the mothers a bag with second hand clothes for all their hard work.
We always need lots of second hand clothes to be able to do this, these ladies work very hard at this project, we could never keep the feeding kitchen and the garden going without all their help.

So thank you ladies for all your hard work to make this possible.

Spring time

I cant believe how fast time goes now a days, already October.
All the hard work has started in the vegetable garden, lots of summer seeds have gone in, we want to try to use the whole of the garden this summer.
Only half of the garden is now terraced and have beds for the plants, the other half is still wild and full of grass and weeds, we have put many old car tyres in this part and will grow the fruit baring plants in the tyres, we tried a few tyres last summer and it went well with the pumpkins and watermelons.
There must be about 70-80 tyres now and every few weeks we will plant a few more seeds in the tyres, hopefully we will have plenty of pumpkins, butternuts, marrows, watermelons and melons this summer season long.

All the mothers worked very hard these last months, we made new compost heaps, all the old tyres moved to the lower part of the garden for the use of the fruit bearing plants this summer and we built the new heaps with the pellets from the Lovell Industries.
We ordered lots of new compost and ofcourse are also making our own.