Monday 4 August 2008
Pastor Joseph’s Farm
This day was a turning point for me. After another English breakfast of eggs, toast and fruit, we met Chichi and drove with Fr. Martin out to Pastor Joseph’s permaculture farm. It was a revelation. I had been hearing about permaculture for so long without having a clear picture in my mind’s eye of what it really means. Pastor Joseph Chawawa is Malawi’s permaculture expert, and he has created an oasis of green in the middle of the all-too-familiar dusty red earth of Malawi. At first, it seems a tangle of growing things, but as we stepped into the cool and breezy garden in the shade of banana trees, we realized that what seemed a kind of hodge-podge-lodge has a deep logic and purpose. Trees are everywhere. Broken bricks make intricate pathways covered in maize husks alongside rich beds in which grow mangos, paw-paw (papaya), casaba, carrots, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, lemons and peas. There are plants indigenous and exotic, plants that fix nitrogen in the ground to offset the carbon dioxide expelled into the atmosphere at an alarming rate and plants that produce a great deal of oxygen. Some plants are grown because they make a bio-manure to enrich the soil. Certain bushes are grown because they attract ants so the ants don’t eat the vegetables and fruits, and others because they draw water into the earth. There are medicinal herbs and flowers grown purely for their beauty. A spice native to Malawi called mpungabwe is ground up and sold to flavor almost every Malawian dish.
We followed along as Pastor Joseph taught us that everything in his farm has a purpose. Like Sr. Agnes, he wastes nothing. His irrigation system is both simple and brilliant. When he first bought the farm, he dug a twenty-five foot well. There was no water. But as he planted, using gravity and seepage to restore the water table, the well filled. It was eye-opening to realize that irrigation has as much to do with slaking the soil’s thirst far below the surface as watering on top.
Pastor Joseph showed us a garden within the garden, with plants growing under a tree in everything from seat cushions to shopping bags, called “pot gardening.” And I was particularly impressed with the theology of “guild gardening,” in which a circular bed with one main plant or tree in the center surrounded by a variety of plants. Each growing thing supported the others. The notion that individual crops must have separate fields or beds is anathema to permaculture. Maize, for example, can be grown with beans. The beans fix nitrogen in the soil and together, maize and beans are far more nutritious than maize alone.
Fr. David kept shaking his head. We could tell he was overwhelmed; imagining the land around his church, land he thought was to small to produce any significant amount of food, as fertile as Pastor Joseph’s farm. There can be almost immediate results. Pastor Joseph may plant casaba and mangos in March and harvest them in January. Banana trees produce bananas within one year. He uses no commercial fertilizer at all, and is constantly experimenting and reevaluating his efforts to improve his farm’s production and harmony.
Pastor Joseph is the designer who implemented the start-up permaculture farm at the Anglican Seminary at Zomba, which we will see on Wednesday. The seminary farm is one of the initial test projects of the group that would become Love’s Harvest, and it met with amazing success. Still, there were failures as well as a need to expand and it became clear that we should take Pastor Joseph along with us to Zomba where he can work for three days, essentially to plan Phase Two. We also determined to negotiate over lunch to create a plan for a garden and orchard at Fr. David’s church.
Photos: The Amazing Pastor Joseph; Kate, John and Fr. David; Cindy at the well; Pastor Joseph and a guild garden; picking lemons for the guests
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