A team of journalists from the national newspaper Libertatea met with me, Cristina Barbu, and Daniela Vulcu (the real heros and hard workers behind the baskets) at the Gradina Bio AMURTEL on a beautiful, warm, and sunny Saturday as the garden buzzed with bees and Himalaya (the mascot dog of the Garden) ran to greet them joyfully.
They published a beautiful piece, first online – complete with a very artistic video, and an extensive photo album – not only of the garden, but also showing the connection to our social work, and portraying the children from AMURTEL Family that share in the garden’s harvest! And then, just a few days later, to my complete surprise, we discovered that the story made it onto the front page of the printed version of the newspaper – with a full color spread inside! We bought extra copies so that the children will also have a souvenir in their own photo albums
I tell of how I started the project, knowing very little about agriculture personally, but wishing to make the children’s home more self-sufficient in producing its own food. Indeed, the journalists were quite amused when I told a story of how, many years ago, when one of the first people that introduced me to permaculture back in the US invited me to visit their backyard/garden, I pointed with genuine curiosity at one of the plants to ask what it was. When I heard it was a carrot, I was amazed, never having seen a carrot actually growing in the ground, and having no idea what it looked like. Apparently vegetables simply came from supermarkets….I never had given it much thought until then.
Indeed, without the dedication and expertise of our volunteer agronomist, Gabi Corbu the project would have been beyond reach. With his support, AMURTEL was able to launch one of the very first Community Supported Agriculture projects in Romania run by an NGO. Thank you to Maria Andries, Eli Driu, and the rest of the team at Libertate for the special opportunity and beautiful piece! The children from AMURTEL Family gathered around the computer screen to watch the video, read the article, and look through the photo albums, totally captivated! I hope you will enjoy this glimpse into the story and the people behind our vegetable baskets!