Today is an exciting day for us! No, not because it's 83 degrees here and snowy and white at home....we actually all lamented a bit about missing the excitment of waking to the first dusting of snow. No, we are building!
Last week we had 500 lbs of seed arrive with some trays. I'll back up the train to explain for those who are unfamiliar with our vision for employment here.
Sprouting for human consumption and for animal feed was a relatively new concept that we were becoming aware of a few years ago. We started to grow and consume sprouts or micro greens in our home. The cows that were being raised on our farm before we left were also consuming barley fodder or sprouted barley. I won't go into details about the nutritional benefits of consuming spouted grains and seeds but we truely believe in it and it spurred a passion in us to bring it with us to Belize. It seemed a viable option because essentially you are growing feed hydroponically where weather and drought will never effect your crop and you can grow the equivalent of 700 acres in about a 20' x 50' space. Anyway, to not bore you with the details you could simply google "barely fodder" and "micro greens" to unleash a world of knowledge if you so desire.
We had in our mind upon coming, that this was where our passion lied and we saw it would bring benefits to Belize too. So we (mostly Chad) have been doing research and seed sourcing since we've been here. See....we have been working, we just didn't have anything to show for it yet!
We were taking it slow and not wanting to jump into a business too fast because we also were very prayerful in the "what" we were to do here.
You know when your passion lines up with God's plan it's an amazing thing! It was about two weeks ago when Chad said he really felt the Lord press upon his heart that is was "go time". Time to get to work and move quicker with this business plan. Chad was thrilled. Thrilled that what we desired to do was what God was ordaining for us too!
Here's the great blessing of walking of in His plan. We approaced the Ministry of Agriculture to seek their support and get a referral for a business license and work permit. There were several stipulations to getting a farm permit that we did not meet. One being that we needed to own land.Oh us of little faith for a day doubted a little that they would laugh at us and dismiss our idea. Further more in Belize these processes can take weeks! But, we are learning that when God says go, He paves the way. We had the Ministry of Agriculture visit our "farm" (we are not a farm at all and we don't own this land), write us a glowing recommendation for work permit, write a letter of referral to get import fees waved at the port where or shipment was coming into and had 110% support and excitement for the business the same day we contacted them !God is sooo good!
So, this week has us building our racks to hold 20, six foot long trays to move to phase two of our testing. We will be growing barley, tritacacle (rye and wheat), peas, and sunflower seeds.
We are alway thankful for things like this that give us new excitement. We are exstatically awaiting the arrivale of December 12th when Oma and Opa arrive! Our first guinea pigs to see what life is like in Belize. We are so thankful that both our parents are young and able to come visit. Our weeks are fairly routine now and we truck through 5 days of school work, house hold duties and volunteering with little time to miss home. It is on the weekends that I have found missing home creeps up a little. The good thing is we don't miss our house or our lifestyle or anything material....we just miss the company of our loved ones and friends. We couldn't ask for anything better to miss.
Hope to share some pictures of our crop soon!
Love to you all!
