The Projects
When we travelled Canada it was exciting to share our plan for the childrens home. But something else we shared seemed to attract just as much attention. After we talked about Glowing hearts, the first thing people wanted to talk to me about was frogs. Well I think that is just great, so I have spent a little time working out the future of the frog farm, the fish, and a few other things.
Frogs
Last year we made some good progress into understanding the world of frog farming and not only that, we actaully got some pens built and we had a go at raising em. We are about to start selling some of these frogs, but this first round was more about learning the ropes.
When it was time to buy froglets last spring I cautiously only bought 800 head, or 1600 flippers whatever is standard measure. I felt that if we were just learning frogiculture, we had better not bet the whole farm. When we got the frogs to their new home, we immeadiatley started to have losses. Apparently the sealent or the cement was a bit toxic at first, so we lost about 20 a day for a while.
Another problem we had was predators, it is hard toknow how many losses we had due to predators or even what kind of predators they were (4 legs, 2 legs, no legs, Thailand has them all). Another proble that is very common for frogs is cannabalism. I think we lost quite a few frogs this way. Frogs grow at different speeds, and the big ones eat the little ones. Anchalee's parents are the keepers of the frogs for Glowing Hearts, until we get our own land. And I had communicated the problem about the big frogs and little frogs. But they did not keep big and little apart. So the result of all this is we have quite a few less frogs than we started with, and some of them are quite a bit bigger than the rest.
So no one is getting rich on frogs this year, but I am confident that we have discovered quite a few potential problems and we are ready to make a real attempt at frog wrangling. If it is possible we will try to get another large batch started before the end of rainy season. We do have to wait however for the pens to available, and that will be another 6 weeks at least.
Fish
As we did not have all that many frogs during last years trial, we decided that we would use two of the frog pens for catfish. By all accounts catfish are easy, and it would be a good hedge on our frog investment. The problem with the toxic tanks was harder on the fish than it was on the frogs. We put the fish in the tanks the same time we started the frogs. Because they were dying very quickly, Anchalee's dad took them out of the tanks and put them in a small dugout. This was a good move, and we have quite a few catfish there that are getting ready for market. Later on we even bought some more catfish and put them in the tanks, which were no longer toxic..
It turns out that catfish are tricky too, and what we didn't expect is that they eat a lot. They eat so much, that it is doubtful that we will make much of a profit on catfish. At this point we have decided to sell the fish as soon as there ready and that will be the end of catfish farming for a while. We have decided that if we are going to raise fish, we had better do it smarter, so we are going to enlarge the dugout and raise Nile Tilapia instead of Catfish. They taste better, they sell higher, and we think it is the way to go. Hopeflly we can get the new dugout dug before there are young tilapia ready, which should be sometime in March.
Coffee
We are happy to say that all of the young coffee plants we set aside for planting have survived and quite a few of them are already set into place. There are quite a few mature coffee plants already and this year a lot of volunteer coffe plants have shot up as well. We should have quite a nice little coffee patch in a couple of years. We will have about 500 coffee bushes, but I don't know how much coffee that makes. Quite a few cups I guess.
Nuts
It is a bit premature to talk about this next project, as we are just in the research phase, but we are seriously looking into raising macadamia nuts. What we know for sure is that they grow and are sold here, and the packaged price at the storet is substantial. We also know that this is a very long term project, and it will be at least 5 years before we would see a return on this. But we are hoping to find a source for trees as soon as possible. If we could get it going it would be a long term income supplement for the childrens home. Macadamia nut trees live for more than 200 years and produce every year.
We also have a few other plans in the works, but I think you can see that we are serious about making the most of what we have before us here, because we are desperate to get into a postion to start changing lives for the better. These projects won't be a total solution, but they represent our attitude of not being satisfied with waitng for things to happen. We are ready to move forward.
Pleas pray for our projects, and if you have any advice or you would like to help in some way please contact us here
God bless you all.