Story time 2: Water buffalo and lots and lots of rice!

I'm running out of time - I'm off to the airport in a half hour to pick up the UNION team for "Part 2" of my time here - the Cambodia 2010 UNION Program!  BUT- because I probably won't have the chance after this, I wanted to just put up a few project monitoring/evaluation pictures now!

What's this?

It's a rice plant, ripe & ready for harvest! :)  And actually... it is one among many - a whole FIELD - of rice plants ready for harvest!!

But - you might ask (or maybe not, I wouldn't have until I got here!!) - why are there rice plants ready for harvest at the beginning of the wet season? Doesn't that mean it has been the dry season with no rain in the last few months when crops can't grow??

Why yesss that's exactly what it means! BUT- thanks to HOPE's Dry Season Rice Farming Project, farmers are not only harvesting rice once a year at the end of the wet season... but THREE times a year, twice of which happen during the dry season!


How???  Well, here's a seed bank that HOPE has built - where they have grown a special variety of rice that is able to grow with less water, and in less time (3-4 months, instead of 6 months). HOPE has given these seeds to some farmers, and provided irrigation (pumping water from reservoirs and canals to flood farmers' fields) and training for better rice growing! (Organic, non-chemical fertilizer & pesticide, planting only 1 seedling instead of 4 clustered together like the traditional practice, etc.)

Farmers working the field, now busy planting rice seedlings for the wet season harvest.

So... there is now lots and lots of rice!! This one committee of dry season rice farmers (below)lent me their time for a very jolly group interview. They are also so happy! Why? Because now they can feed their families year around - they have enough, and even excess to sell to the market for some income - something they never could do before! 

Checking in on 'food security', I asked them if they are also eating more variety in their food since joining the project 2 years ago.


Farmers: Of course! Why not! I want to have delicious food!
Me: Haha... so, what is delicious food? :)
Farmers: Some more pork, some more meat...  Before, my family eats only 1 small piece of meat for 2 meals if we can have meat. Now we can have 1 big piece for only 1 meal!
Me: Do you think it's funny that some barangs (foreigners) like to only eat vegetables?
Farmers: Only vegetables!! How can that be delicious??

Haha. Anyways, I'm really running out of time. So I should go! But here's a family that received a water buffalo. Project beneficiaries really took such good care of their water buffalos, making sure it was fed, and had water to cool off. This lady said she even helps bathe it like she would bathe herself!

Something from our interview that made me smile - when first got the water buffalo, she was concerned that there were so many mosquitoes around, that she spent 4000 Riel (about US$1, but quite a bit for a poor family!) to buy a mosquito net to put around the buffalo, but then  net got torn down very fast because it got all caught up in its horns. Sad day. But so cute. :) So now instead she burns something close to the water buffalo so the smoke keeps the bugs away. 

Alrighty, I'm off to the airport! 

xoxo

Rainbow