I want to share this letter with all of you from Leo Paez, a Christian brother, in Mexico. Leo supports 3 child rescue centers, Teen rescue, and rescue centers for the elderly. Madera is a beautiful city located in the Sierra Madre. It is also home to one of the child rescue centers.

Joe;

Praise God for all He does!

There is lots of news and lots of good stories to tell you, but for now, I will give you a quick update.

I bought a farm close to Madera, there is 78 acres of farm land and 155 of forest land. I sold a house in El Paso TX, and was able to do the land thing. I bought 22 cows and now there is 24 and growing, planted 65 acres of oats, 5 acres of wheat, and one acre of squash.

I also rented a plot where we planted 25 acres of corn, and 2.5 acres of wheat. The 500 apple trees are doing just fine, eventhow the rows are not even and somehow not well organized, I still believe they are beutifull. The farm is my own personal asset, but all I produce will go to feed the orphans. The farm also has 50+ fully mature apple trees, and we will be canning and storing the fruit crop. The pigs are now 32, with 4 lady pigs pregnant, and a new king of the castle high quality, pure blood male I just got. We will be milling the corn and oats (hole plants) into an animal feed for the cows as well as pigs and sheep. The sheep have multiply to 28; two males and the rest females and pregnant. We belive that we will hit up to 60 this year for some will have two kids. Hopefully next year, we will hit up to 100 sheep. The pig population will explote, and we will have an overabundance of lard and meat for our places. I will be killing 2 cows for meat at the end of the year for they are old and will have their new calfs soon. Chickens are not doing so well for some coyotes killed 40, but we still have 50 or so. Rabits are not multiplying for I have them in one single cage. Perhaps you could help me build a professional dweling to raise rabits, for we are failling at it. Anyways, lots happening, lots to come, will keep you informed. Keep an eye for farm equipment, for will need lots!

Here are a couple of sketches of the shade house.
My goal is to put together a folder of pictures,
sketches, and instructions for folks to use to build
the shade houses easier.

Shade house construction

Here are a few pictures of our work day last Saturday taken by Mark Scott .

We had a really hot day to work Saturday building a green/shade house at Steve Arrowood's farm near Fulton, MO. Everyone worked hard and tried to stay hydrated along with occasional breaks. We discovered some things that worked and some things that did not work but it is better to discover those things here at home. Four people from Hope for Caribbean Kids out of Jefferson City joined us also and will be building a shade house in July just south of Port au Prince. We didn't get completely done but we have several people that now know the basics of building one of these in Haiti or elsewhere. No welding required and very few special tools. Here are a few pictures. Thanks to the folks from Jeff City, Global Compassion, and especially Marla for the great lunch.



Connecting PVC

Painting the hoops to prevent reaction between

the pvc and plastic cover

Driving iron posts the easy way Mark held the

post and Steve pushed it into the ground

Placing the hoops over the anchor posts.

Attaching the purlins

Starting to take shape

Covering the ends with chicken netting as

well as the lower sides

Things are coming along great to build the shade/green house on June 27. It will be built on the farm of Steve Arrowood and he has found a great location. This is going to be a great place to instruct potential builders on how to build the structure and beds and also a great gardening tool to be used by Steve's family.

We gave 20 packets of garden seed, each with 12 different types of seed, to Steve Leach to use around Bombardopolis and also 5 packets for Mr. Leonard.

I had a wonderful visit with the folks at Hams Prarrie Christian Church this morning and shared with them about projects we are currently involved in and some of the opportunities coming soon.

The last garden report from Mr. Leonard and Ti Paradi was that things are going pretty well and several of the village men are learning about gardening.

In Honor

Joe's Garden

Sugar peas

water logged tomatoes

Herbs, sage, tyme, oregano, parsley