Water Shortage Forces Local Food Garden Project For The Elderly To Give Me Their Seedlings. It Sucks!

Seedlings in my storage, ready for transplanting

Last week the leader of Tshufi Hill Project For The Aged, a food gardening project run by retired women at a nearby village, called to offer me seedlings from their garden as they are unable to care for them until maturity due to water shortages in the area.

Unfortunately they don't have large water tanks to harvest rain water and/to store.

On Friday I went with one of my nephews to pick them up. I was happy that they offered me the seedlings, but also very sad that their food source is being decimated.

In the absence of a full garden crop, they will have to buy most of their produce. Unfortunately, with the rising food costs, they'll have to scale down on what they can buy.

Here are some of the photos I took from their garden:

Their garden is as large as mine, which is about the size of small suburban plot. The garden soil is cared for and they do feed it, but it's very sandy and dry. It needs a lot of more compost and mulching to help it retain water.

This space is around a third of their garden.

   Their seedlings are beautiful and long overdue for transplanting.

Digging out cabbage seedlings with one of the project members

This is the kind of water tank that they need.

My tank also serves as a water source for some community members.

One of my friends has offered to start knocking doors asking for someone to donate a 10 000 water tank or the money to buy one. So ja, I'm asking: if you can help them in any way to buy the Jojo tank, the irrigation tools would really help keep them fed and make a difference in their lives.

Also note that registered no-profit organisation, Tshufi Hill are vetted by the Department of Social Development and the Royal Bafokeng NGO Forum, a local umbrella body with almost 90 member organisations. So there are governance structures in place.