Reconnecting to nature’s cycles – a collaboration between Field to Fork and Jibal-Eedama
The way we eat impacts both us and our environment: We pollute the ground in order to produce food in large quantities. We package our food with disposable and harmful single use plastic. We transport it over long distances… and finally dump on average almost half of it!
This has several negative impacts on our health, on nature, and generally the environment. With the growing distance between food producers and consumers, we have totally lost contact with nature and how it feeds us, for the worst. While eating remains one of the basic needs, a majority of children do not know the origin of the food they have in their plates everyday.
We offer a field trip to a farm that tries as much as possible to reconnect us to nature’s cycles while focusing on the importance of the link between producers and consumers, locally. Students and participants will walk around and touch upon a number of topics related to food in an engaging tour. They will then get to do hands-on activities where they will actually contribute to the farm’s functioning and take home some results of their work (seedlings, composting pot, seeds … depending on the activity), in order to go ahead and contribute to a greener Lebanon from home.
Topics covered:
- Permaculture, including companion planting
- Soil management: accompany nature’s cycles
- Basic soil biology: how to enrich the soil, mulching
- Worms composting, spontaneous composting
- Local and seasonal food production
Hands on Activities
Participants will perform two out of the following activities (depending both on availability and their choice):
Activity 1: Planting – Seed Starting: We will need to manipulate soil and plant seeds.
Activity 2: Fruit Harvesting: Depending on the season, we might harvest fruits.
Activity 3: Composting: Cleaning (extracting non-biodegradable waste) and screening
Activity 4: Basic Farm Routing: Feeding chicken; Picking eggs; Weeding
Activity 5: Make Fermented Food Liquid – Kombucha
Logistics
Location: Qob Elias, in the Bekaa, just before Chtaura when coming from Beirut.
Travel time: 40 minutes from Hazmieh
Age groups: All. We adapt the language and the difficulty of the activities
Languages available: English, French, Arabic
Number of participants: Minimum 10 and maximum 50
Note: Toilets are available onsite