Month: December 2020

Feeding Others From Seed to Table: Sustainability-Themed Gift Ideas from ECHO Bookstore

ECHO Bookstore generates funds that support its mission to help provide global training and resources to small-scale farming families so they can achieve self-sustainable hunger solutions. In addition to providing seeds for you to start your own garden, the bookstore offers some great options if you are interested in sharing other sustainability-friendly items and ideas with others.

Books such as Roots, Shoots, Buckets and Boots by Sharon Lovejoy and The Edible Garden: How to Have Your Garden and Eat it Too, by Alys Fowler are perfect to get children and adults, respectively, starting their own gardening activities with their eye-catching, informative and easy-to-use design, layouts and ideas.

For those who prefer to cook, rather than garden, there are beautiful and bountiful books like Share: The Cookbook that Celebrates Our Common Humanity, compiled by Women for Women, International — an organization that helps marginalized women in eight countries affected by war and conflict. This book is filled with a myriad of recipes for healthy, everyday meals such as spinach and fennel risotto, piperade, orange-scented olive oil almond cake and cherry compote recipes, but boasts beautiful photographs and stories of the women and the cultures that create these delicious foods. This gorgeous book also makes a stunning coffee table book if you’d rather just enjoy the dishes vicariously.

 

Sustainability can start in the garden, but it can be carried through the kitchen and onto the dining table with handcrafted tableware. Colorful, hand woven tablecloths, unique serving dishes and utensils can add the finishing touch to your sustainability efforts.  

Whether or not you garden, you can support ECHO’s mission and sow the seeds towards sustainability for yourself and others with invaluable gifts that keep on giving.

Shop online at http://www.echobooks.net or in-person at ECHO Global Farm in North Fort Myers. 

Photos and post by Maya Fleischmann

Intern Spotlight Kayla Hatcher

Wildflowers fill my grandma’s garden — the origin of my curiosity for the world around us. I am a photographer, a designer, an English as a Second Language teacher, and a farmer. My diverse passions unite through the necessity of patience, listening, and observation. These are all skills that began in the garden when I was a child. My name is Kayla Hatcher, and I am the current Semi-Arid Intern at ECHO.

In 2012, I graduated from Milligan University with a BA in Fine Arts Photography. Before ECHO, I spent six years working with multiple organizations on four continents. During that time, I watched communities on the Burma border, in Palestinian refugee camps, in downtown St. Louis, and the mountains of Japan use regenerative systems to heal the land and unite divided communities. It was an alignment of my passions that I had only begun to imagine. ECHO’s internship provided me the opportunity to pivot my career towards agriculture development work.

Each day at ECHO offers discovery. New plants, new soil, new insects, new technologies, and new people. Working with international partners on design consultations has been a highlight of my time here. Their questions have guided my research; their experimentations have fueled my own. The relationships formed on the farm, over tea, and on video calls across the ocean accentuate the unique gift of this

diverse community, a glimpse into the infinite love of God for all people, all cultures, and the soil that unites them.

After ECHO, I will continue to pursue the passion that began in my grandma’s garden. From permaculture consultation to mobilization, I hope to partner with those living in post-conflict semi-arid regions. It is the entrepreneurial and cultural wisdom of smallholder farmers that will regenerate the land and unite communities through the observation and nurturing of a common ground.

 

Top: Volunteer Susan Lucia and Kayla pause for celebration after completing a large planting project in the semi-arid region of ECHO’s Global farm. Susan has mentored seven semi-arid interns.Bottom: Integrating animals into regenerative agricultural systems (and spending time with Moiyo the calf) has been a treasured part of Kayla’s internship.