Today started off bright and early with our morning chores on the farm! Some of us had a long night adjusting to sleeping on the floor and porch, but nonetheless we were ready and excited to spend our first full day helping out. We fed the chicks, collected eggs from the chickens, bottle fed the baby goats, moved the chicks to a new pen, and helped weed in the garden for tomato beds. The weather was perfect today for working out in the garden! Most of us don’t have any previous experience doing these type of tasks, but the staff and people here are all very friendly, and we’ve learned the basics. For lunch, we ate a delicious Tex Mex meal prepared by the staff here from mostly food from the farm. We sat in on their weekly community meeting, which gave us a good feel of the environment and the values the people here incorporate into their daily work. After that, we were able to sit in on a class on bio-intensive farming, which included textbook work and some hands on stuff in the garden. What is interesting about WHR, Inc. is that it is a training farm, actually one of the few in the United States apparently. So they have different people voluntarily live in the dorms here for different amounts of time and many college-aged interns that work here. They are able to learn skills through the work here but through also these type of classes, so that they can use them in the future possibly towards their own farm. It’s been very interesting getting to know these people and all the very different backgrounds they come from. We had some down time in the afternoon where some of us caught up on our sleep, and some of us played with the baby pigs.
The evening was very educational, where we participated in a “Hunger meal” and watched a documentary called “Living on One Dollar”. Both of these activities really put things into perspective, not only on how important food and the work creating it is, but how extremely fortunate we are to not have to worry about if we will have the resources to eat everyday. For the hunger meal simulation, a Nicaraguan type meal was used with different amounts of food and options for those who drew High income, middle income, or lower income scenario cards. This prompted a very lively discussion about food insecurity not just overseas, but even in the Lubbock and Waco communities. The documentary bounced off of this and inspired us to try to make an impact in others lives and find ways to share our blessings. We’ve ended the full day with feeding the chicks and finally testing out the rainwater cache system showers. We are now not eating food till our future meals to help us experience how it would be to feel hungry, so stay tuned to see how that goes!
Amanda Flores, TTU CALUE SB Participant