ECHO Agricultural Conference

In December, I got to go to the ECHO International Agriculture Conference in Florida with other interns from the farm, the farm manager, and his family.  (ECHO - Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization)  It was pretty fun to be somewhere so warm for a week in the middle of winter (technically it was still fall, but you get the idea)!  But I also appreciated being able to learn from some great speakers and small group sessions.

ECHO has a lot of good examples of appropriate technology, like this water pump that I got to try out:


I also saw these examples of easy-to-make shellers for maize (corn) which I might have to try making for myself when we go to Uganda:

And then a much more ambitious project -a barrel oven - which I would certainly enjoy having in Uganda since you could then bake with or without electricity.  There is the question of whether I have the skills to build such a thing, but regardless, I have more confidence in my building ability after this year at WHRI.

I got to see quinoa plants growing, which was a new thing for me.  And I learned that it is related to amaranth.  I had no idea, though I suppose I could have been tipped off by the fact that both produce lots of tiny grains!

The humungous avocados made me look forward to the abundance of avocados that grow in Uganda! 

One of the most fun hands-on sessions that I went to was one where we went out and picked leaves and shoots from a diverse group of plants and then got to learn how to cook them.  It was exciting for me to see how these plants could be prepared in different ways than I knew before.

 You might not recognize a lot of these things, but some of the leaves and shoots we cooked were: passion fruit leaves, winged bean, edible ferns, garlic chives, and katuk. 

By far the coolest thing we cooked, though, was a banana flower.  What, you can cook that?!  (Now, technically it is not THE flower, but an inflorescence or a group of flowers, though maybe you don't care about that...)  Anyway, in case you're wondering what I am talking about, it is that purple thing you see in the picture below.

 So, then, here are some steamed vegetables, a fern salad, and at the bottom, the banana flower salad.

 I am looking forward to learning more about traditionally eaten wild plants in Uganda!

Okay, and then we saw this cool frog.

One evening, we interns drove to the beach and ate a picnic dinner there as the sun set.  Can you find the seventh intern waving from the water?

It was also citrus season in Florida and we got to visit a citrus orchard and eat all sorts of great fruit!

Overall, a good learning experience and one that made me even more excited about going to Uganda and learning more about agriculture through personal experimentation and through talking to Ugandans who have plenty to teach me!