Just Coffee and the Gardner's of Eden Seed Project

Orlalan, Laclubar

At the end of July, Just Coffee and the Gardner's of Eden Seed Project hosted a Just Coffee delegation to East Timor. Besides investigating the current state of the coffee industry of Timor-Leste our delegation had the opportunity to visit the mountain district of Laclubar. The weather is still cold at night in Laclubar. By equatorial standards, hovering around zero degrees Celcius at night is cold, especially when house walls are little more than split bamboo. The second, short wet-season of the cool months of June and July are near their end and in normal years the coffee harvest would already be well underway. This year, because of a lack of rain during flowering in late 2006, the coffee harvest is considerably smaller and running later than usual. The lowlands are already drying out fast and heading into the beginning of the dry season food supplies are already precarious for many people.

On the road up into the mountains we stop at Cribas to collect Mana Elvira and her sister. They have come down in the Anguna the night before, to purchase maize corn for the families of their clan (uma-rota) in Orlalan, Laclubar to eat. Elvira is super excited to see us and as we load several sacks of corn, her sister, and a flea-riddled piglet into the truck she has difficulty containing herself in telling us about her garden.

The Laclubar program remains small at this stage, as only a fraction of the seeds coming from the USA have arrived. On our trip we visited four of five family garden sites that have been established. We distributed the remainder of the seeds that have already arrived to two new participants who had come along to observe discussions of the program's progress, one of which included a key community organizer from the Suco.

Elvira's garden in Orlalan continues to be the most successful, with the garden's worked by her and her children providing food to eat and greens for sale locally. Elvira explained that since she started her garden she is never short of a little money and always has a quarter or fifty cents in her pocket when she needs it for the house and her children. She had even purchased a set of plastic cups and a pot for coffee to be able to have something nice to put on the table for visitors.

Other gardens visited were started later in the season but have been set up close to water sources and are irrigated. Silver beet, lettuces, and mustard greens were all ready for transplanting and radishes were ready to eat. In Elvira's garden, lettuces, kale, broccoli leaves and bok-choi have already been harvested and there are many more seedlings ready to be transplanted from their seedling beds. The weather will begin to warm in the mountains now and it is time to plant tomatoes, eggplant, beans, pumpkins and corn where there is water available to sustain growth through the dry season.
It is a pleasure foraging for our evening meal with Elvira in her gardens. She is happy with the new vegetable varieties that have performed well and has meted out her seeds for successive plantings each week.

Before returning to Dili a brief meeting was held with representatives of those families participating in the project in order to discuss their results thus far and what vegetable seeds they want for the coming season. There is strong interest in local commercial vegetables such as dry-land kang-kong, tomatoes, and eggplants, as well as ongoing interest in expanding the range of varieties available from kitchen gardens and in obtaining new varieties of fruits, spices and herbs. Everyone is eager for the next shipment of seeds to arrive and in the meantime it is agreed that some seeds will be purchased in Dili, and others ordered from Australia to support the momentum already established. For those growers who already have plants selected for seed, it was agreed that old glass bottles will be sent up from Dili to be used to make airtight storage containers, sealed with wax from local wild hives.

At present the Gardner's of Eden East Timor Seed Project is in need of money to support the cost of the purchase of seeds and tools, funds to support transportation costs, the building of a nursery and refurbishing of Laclubar's agricultural building. In the USA donations are tax-deductible if checks are written to Family Farm Defenders (please put 'Seed Project' in the memo line). Family Farm Defenders is a non-profit 501(c)(3) registered charitable organization. Checks may also be written to Just Coffee (with 'Seed Project' in the memo line). Seed donations may be made to Just Coffee or by mailing seeds directly to East Timor. All contact information may be found below. Thank you kindly for your interest and support!

In Peace,

Colleen Coy and Hector Hill
Project Coordinators
Gardners of Eden Seed Project

To Donate:

Gardner's of Eden Seed Project
C/O Colleen Coy and Hector Hill
P.O. Box 19
Dili, EAST TIMOR (TIMOR-LESTE)

Just Coffee
1129 East Wilson Street
Madison, WI 53703 USA
www.justcoffee.coop

Family Farm Defenders, Inc.
P.O. Box 1772
Madison, WI 53701 USA
http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/Main/HomePage