Dear Fr.
Jim and St. Dominic Community
From
small beginning, great things!
When St.
Dominic took up its first collection to sponsor a pelibuey for families in the
parish of Our Lady of Lourdes in Calle Real and Cabanas, we needed your support
and also your trust. Every successful development project has a learning curve.
A community like ours needs that curve in order to learn by success and by mistakes.
What
have we learned?
1.
Contrary
to popular wisdom, not all goats are of the same temperament. While certainly
more frisky than the docile pelybuey, some breeds, such as the Nubian, are
manageable. Their “behavior” is in large measure a result of the way they are
treated. Like any animal, they have understandable reactions to the way they
are raised.
2.
The
goat is preferable to the pelybuey because it gives milk. But in order to have
that special flavor in the cheese and cream, the goat must be removed
completely from the company of the machos, except for the breeding. The males
spray the females and the spray of semen sours the milk.
3.
We have always understood that the
project was principally aimed at producing female offspring. It was only necessary
to maintain a few machos for breeding. But we always maintained the machos,
only slaughtering them on occasion when we had an immediate need. But after
three months the machos get tough and the meat becomes like leather. We need to
slaughter the machos soon after they are born and sell the meat in order to
re-capitalize the purchse of more females.
4. We let the pelybuey and goats have
free range in CHINAMPA. They ate the soccer field and started to pasture
outside of the retreat house, much to the chagrin of the guests with windows on
the east side. When we closed these areas off we noticed that the goats and
pelybuey were getting fatter because we were bringing the forage to them. The
workers, on the other hand, were getting more exercise! The lesson was to keep
the goats in defined forage areas and not give them toomuch exercise. Leaner
meat is also tougher meat. With the goats, we learned that production increased
when they were kept cooler, for example near the water spigot. Milk production
increased form three to five bottles when we changed the forage practices.
5.
Finally, with Ruby’s new direction in
CHINAMPA we learned where to get our breeders in Guatemala and how to make the
purchases without an intermediary. This means that we pay taxes, but the cost
per goat is much less expensive. We will demonstrate how much so when we
finalize the purchse this year.
The picture in the upper right corner
is Ruby Benitez Iglesias. She is the new director of CHINAMPA. Ruby was educated in Los
Angeles and Long Island and then returned to El Salavdor to complete her
studies in agricultural engineering from the National University. Her thesis
was on cows but she is conversant in general agriculture and has already
demonstrated how knowledgeable she is of goats.
Part of our parish outreach and
solidarity inside of El Salavdor is to the prison population. This year we will
be producing milk for the children who live in the women’s prison with their
mothers. We wil also be traiing these mothers in goat production. To undertake
this task we have built a goat breeding station in the San Jose calle Real
Center, near CHINAMPA. The picture above shows this facility from the outside
and below is a view of the main corral. In addition to this corral we have an
area dedicated to birthing and an area restrictd to the four breedeer males. We
are also fenicng in a large forage area in front of the breding facility.
San Laureano’s sister parish and the
Carmelite Mission society are helping with a salary for three years for the
beneficiary families of Cabanas and San Laureano. Now, we will have a
technician avaialble at our beck and call to assist in birthing, vacinations,
general care and training. We hope to be able to purchase a milking mahine for
about 4000 dollars and begin producing chevre for sale. As I mentioned above,
we will donate a large portion of the milk produced at the center to the women
prisoners and their children.
We expect to have one hundred
beneficary families this year and a return of fifty breeders. These families
enjoy the sole benefit of their production. Their ocntribution to theproject,
in addition to the donation of one breeder is to help train the women prisoners
in the care and production of goats to give them a start when they are released
from prison.
This is an exciting time for us and
we owe it to your support and trust. We
are also grateful to Food for the Poor for help in building the breeding
facility. The facility is on the gounds of the orignal refugee camp of San Jose
Calle Real. The floor of the corral is the floor for one of the refugee
dormitories. This is appropriate that we are building on top of the other,
which had a distinuised history in the struggle for peace in El Salvador. We
are eager for your visit in July and expect to sit down with you and enjoy a
plat of chevre with jellied pimenta and crusty lettuce.
When the goats are actually purchsed
we will send you their fotos and also the register of beneficiary families.