UK Co-Director, Morgan Phillips, is in Nepal at the moment monitoring our project work in Solukhumbu, Kavre and Nawalparasi. This is his second diary entry.
The students from GSIS school arrived safely here in Deusa yesterday and have settled in brilliantly.
It was a full moon last night, the one that marks the end of the Dashain festival and the last day for giving and receiving Tika. Village elder, Gulkrishna Rai, the founder chairperson of Deusa AFRC led a Tika ceremony for us all - a truly special moment.
During the afternoon we toured the grounds of the AFRC. It is noticeably more mature compared to my last visit, Keshab Rai and Hari Kumar Kharki are concentrating on tree grafting at the moment. This involves grafting high yield varieties of fruit trees onto the roots of their local equivalents.
Over time, as grafted trees mature, the productivity of apple, oranges and lemon trees will improve significantly. They are also taking care to choose varieties that are more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
As part of the Prime Minister’s agricultural modernisation programme the AFRC was selected to receive a high tech polytunnel. It is possible to monitor and maintain constant temperature in the polytunnel and it has an automatic watering system. This is making it easier to grow seedlings for sale and grafting.
Today we trekked down to the village of Kurte, it was the first time I’d ever been there, it is beautiful. We had tea in the new community hall before a training session on biointensive tree planting, which is a fascinating process to give the tree the maximum chance to thrive.
There is now a Macadamia tree growing in Kurte that should start fruiting in 2023.
After a beautiful farewell programme in Kurte and a tough climb back to the AFRC, we had dinner before Anisha from EcoHimal led a really engaging reflection session with the students. They are starting to ask deeper questions about the things they are learning and experiencing.