The students from SSVC, along with their agriculture teacher, Mr Deo, the home based project coordinator, Miss Shanitah and Suubi Centre director Ssemwogerere David spent a fabulous day at the St Jude Family Rural Training Centre today.
The students home based chicken project is what had peaked the schools interest in visiting the training centre but they also came away from the day with a multitude of other skills surrounding integrating crops and livestock on one piece of land.
The excited SSVC students arrived at the St Jude Family Project Training Centre with their agriculture teacher, Mr Deo.
The day began with inspirational talks about the best farming practises that help to make the many various crop and livestock projects at the centre so succesful.
With SSVC students having their own home based chicken project they lapped up every bit of information they could about caring for chickens.
Other livestock such as pigs, goats and cows are also kept at St Jude. Throughout the day it was highlighted to the students about integrated farming, where by on the same piece of land, one can grow a variety of crops and livestock and each aspect can benefit another. For example, chicken manure can be feed to the pigs, which in turn creates further manure that can then be incorporated in to making compost for the crops.
Intercropping is also encouraged at St Jude, as is seen here with the motooke underplanted with vegetables.
The students were happy to learn about how to make compost from, what may otherwise be seen as waste, from the livestock and plants that are grown on the property.
The size of the cabbages at St Jude's gives a great indication of how much of a difference it can make when crops are well cared for and composting is incorporated.
A variety of garden beds, that can be incorporated on even the smallest piece of land, were all clearly doing well at St Jude's.
Even items like old jerry cans were planted out, showing the students what is possible. Every home in Uganda has damaged jerrycans that can no longer be used for collecting water; clearly they should not be thrown away as they can be turned in to a garden.
Small seedlings that have been grown in a nursery bed are protected from the strong sun with banana fibre from the matooke trees. This protects them from the harsh elements and allows them to grow stronger while they are still young.
The students checked out the large dam on the property that is used for fish farming.
They were also showed that this too is possible on a smaller scale at a family home.
The SSVC students, teachers and St Jude staff were happy to take a group photo at the end of the day.
The agricultural study tour to St Jude training centre was definitely a huge success. The students have not only come home with great advise on the ways to care for their chickens but they have also leant many other skills that they are now keen to try out on land at home and/or at school.
An exciting outcome from todays tour is that the founder of St Jude, Kizza Josephine, is more than willing to continue working with Suubi Centre and SSVC in furthering this kind of training. They have a new project that is soon to begin for extension training in schools, and they promised SSVC will be one of only 5 schools to have the opportunity to participate.
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