A Random Yet Charitable Post

Medium and Small searching for eggs

Small found all his before Medium. Smugness ensued.

We now call him Lord of The Turkeys.

because they will follow him

where ever he may go.

Where's the beef?

It was so foggy yesterday, I had to walk out to the fields to see if my cattle were still in there.

My long time readers know that every year at the end of July I participate in the blogathon. As the organization seems to have run out of steam, I have been going all rogue. I have raised money for Farm Aid and the Down Bikers Association. This year I will give you the chance to tell me which charity deserves my undying 24 hour support. 

The only stipulation, is that they must be an IRS recognized charity organization.  

If someone posts your charity, go ahead and repost it, show me your love. 

After we have narrowed down the charity, I will solicit businesses to donate prizes again this year. Business owners, this is the only time of year that I accept ads. 6 months to a 1 year, depending on the prize you donate to the fundraiser. 

Where did it go?

Sorry about that, the last post for some reason went to draft. It wasn't important though, so no worries I guess.

This morning we are going to go help distribute presents. I am hopeful that next year my business will be able to adopt a family for Christmas. It's a great program put together by our local Community Commerce.  They send out letters to the local students and the ones that need help fill out an application.  Then the local businesses adopt one or more of the families and fill the kids wish lists, donate food, clothing and household items. This year there were so many that local families that could afford it were adopting the families in need. And they donate a lot of stuff!

I have seen bicycles and TV's being loaded up. It's rather amazing to see how much this small town loves their own.

The charity does check to see if the family is getting help from another charity, so that those that really need it, will get the help.

I will be making some quick things this weekend for presents, then I will have only 3 days without the boys to finish up their presents. 

Play it again Sam

Husband and I have been secretly trying to find our horse Sam a new home. With us not moving to the farmstead, Sam was nothing but another mouth to feed. I hardly needed her on 5 acres. We didn't advertise her, just asked a couple of people

I got a phone all, seemingly out of nowhere, from a woman I don't ever remember meeting. She said that a friend of ours had told her we had a horse for sale. Her and her husband and 3 boys came over to meet Sam. All 3 of her boys have different and varying levels of autism. While the oldest boy rode Sam around the yard, I spoke with the woman. She was starting a nonprofit for low income families who has children with autism. The program is equine therapy. Her youngest had made remarkable strides in speech and responsibilities ever since they started doing it with him.

We do have a equine therapy ranch in the next county over, but it is expensive. This one would be through social services only. And for those well under the poverty level. As we talked her youngest spied out our goat Zombie. I see there are some new readers, even in my long absence, Zombie is a little billy goat that I hand raised along side 2 dogs. If you were to ask him, Zombie would tell you he was indeed a dog. The youngest boy wasn't quick enough with the affections, and Zombie butt him in the stomach. Nothing too hard mind you, just enough to get his attention. The boy began laughing, no, not just laughing but cracking up! This in turn got me giggling. Zombie took this as a signal to keep playing, and the young boy kept egging it on. The woman and I continued our conversation.

Next thing we know Zombie is giving the boy a ride over to the garden area, both seem very content with each other.

The program is called Abe's Hearts and Hooves for Autism. It is the brain child of her oldest son. After his equine therapy session (parents do the therapy using neighbors horses) the boy said to his mother that he wished others could do the same as him. After lots of calls, legal council and a bunch of paperwork, the family began contacting business and individuals about donations and they purchased their first horse. A mistreated pony. The couple are excellent horsemen. Grew up training horse, but life has a way of steering you away from the things you love, well at times anyway. They have been working on this pony and he is now doing wonderfully with the children.

They fell in love with Sam.

The asked me how much I wanted for her. I knew what price I had quoted to another that was interested in her, but I always try to do one good did for the year and the year was rapidly approaching the end. I looked toward the garden where the youngest boy had hold of Zombies tail, and Zombie was happily leading him around. I made her a deal.

You can have Sam free, if you take the goat.

She was shocked, and readily agreed to it. She had been prepared to pay for Sam. But this is a wonderful charity and I just couldn't see myself selling her Sam.

After they left with her I got a phone call from the family, updating me on Sam. She seemed to be enjoying her new role with the boys. And Zombie is a hit with all the kids. Who knew I was raising a therapy goat.

Another week passes and I get another phone call. Sam is gone! She walked over the fence, and they were out looking for her. I told them I would call if I saw her. I left the front gate open and headed to town. When I returned I spied Sam standing at the back gate waiting to be let in with the cows. Guss she missed them.


Back to her new home she went. She belongs there.

Guest Blogger: Thatu

I think this is a great charity, and have asked Ali to tell me more about it.

Thank you Phelan for asking me to contribute this piece to your blog. Today I would like to tell your readers about, and invite them to get involved with, a charity called Thatu.

Thatu is a UK registered charity established in 2004, that fund-raises to support grass roots and self-help projects in areas of South Africa that are challenged by scarce resources and the effects on the community of the HIV / AIDS epidemic.

Thatu at present focuses on the support of community run organic permaculture food gardens.

Why food gardens?
In the areas that Thatu works, where children have been lucky enough to acquire school places, sometimes they do not get regular food and it is very hard to concentrate on learning school work when hungry. Also, where adults suffering from HIV/AIDS are fortunate enough to have access to retro viral medicines, these only work optimally when the patient has good nutrition.

Apart from the obvious nutritional benefits that a food garden can provide, community food gardens linked with schools allow the acquisition of practical permaculture and gardening skills, so that sustainable management of the resources is taken into the community. The gardens are also used for curricular learning about recycling, reuse and more traditional subjects. For example, children might be asked to bring in from home a container of grey water' (recycled washing water). This is then used to water the garden, and the teacher might get the children to estimate mathematically the volume of water needed to supply plants over a certain area.

Produce is shared between the community volunteers that work in the garden, and any excess is sold and the profits shared between the workers and for the benefit of the garden,

Thatu is supporting 5 food gardens in two areas; Pretoria and the notoriously inhospitable Cape Flats. Each site has its own particular problems and challenges. For example, the soil on the Cape Flats is mainly sea sand, and it is blown by strong winds, so the priority there is to use
permaculture methods to help counter some of the challenges; to establish organic wind breaks and enrich the soil. The message that Thatu's projects all send is that gardens can be established in the most unlikely of circumstances.

As well as all the tangible benefits to food gardening, they all have less measurable, but equally important social benefits. They bring the community together, and they bring pride and hope for the future.

Thatu is very concerned that all the money donated gets spent as intended, and has regular monitoring and reports from the projects that can be read at any time by supporters on its website at http://www.thatu.org/ One of our important aims is that the projects are sustainable, and ultimately become independently run and continue to bring benefit to the community into the long term.

How to help Thatu

Of course, one of the most important things is to donate and raise money for the projects, and there are numerous fun and interesting ways you can do this. You can read about the many ways to do this at our website in the 'How you can help' section, but here I will outline just a few ideas.

Penny Pinchers Appeal
Thatu will send you a sticky label which you attach to a recycled container, such as a washed out plastic milk carton or jam jar. You then use this to collect small change for Thatu, and then bank it. To get your label and to participate, and for full details, click here. Penny Pinchers Appeal

Stamp Appeal
Is you save used stamps and mail them to Thatu, they are able to sell them on at a small profit for the charity. All stamps are accepted, as well as coins and first day covers. For full details, click here. Stamp Appeal


Jabula
Jabula in Bantu (an African language) means 'CELEBRATE!' so we use this word as the name for the fund-raising garden parties that our supporters hold to raise money for Thatu. These can be as small as a few friends getting together for coffee, to a full scale fete with games tournaments and musical events! We encourage our supporters to do what they can to use their own gardens to raise money for food gardens in Africa. If you would like to hold a Jabula for Thatu, click here to read more and download a fundraising pack.


Thatu Shop
Thatu has an online shop that sells small gifts - these include children's tools, seeds, envelope re-use labels, and various other nice festive season ideas. Please visit the shop by clicking here.
Shop

Network for Thatu
One of the most important things you can do for Thatu is to talk about it! Thatu can really benefit from the people you know. Corporate and Trust donations are vital to Thatu's survival. If you know anyone who works for a large company who could arrange a donation, and who would benefit from the positive publicity being linked with Thatu could bring, please tell them
about Thatu and introduce them to us.

Donate
Simply make a one off cash donation, by PayPal, by clicking here Donate Now

~Ali

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you Ali. I already have the Penny Pintchers Appeal, so I have started. This is a charity that I feel many gardeners could get behind. ~Phelan