The Rural Active Women Say No to Chemicals
Winter passed, spring came. A group of women in Solak community of Hrazdan region who are the staff members of the center for sustainable agriculture support, created in Solak community in the framework of the project “Say No to Chemicals in Our Environment”, with a sinking heart have been waiting for the spring. Since 2011 the women farmers, being informed about the availability and usefulness of plant tinctures and biohumus, have refused the use of nitrogenous fertilizers and pesticides, and instead, conducted experiments using plant tinctures for spraying and biohumus for fertilization. In autumn they got wonderful results.
Since August the women who made biohumus piles in their crofts have begun to fertilize their orchards and fields with their own hand-made biohumus. After the second and third fertilizations they got indescribable results: the plants were lush, healthy and delicious, and the harvest was rich.
And this year in spring 2013 prior to sowing the plot of land with potato the women are going to fertilize it with biohumus. Each farm has already accumulated burnt wood ash, which then will be mixed with soil while making the soil friable to avoid the damage caused by nematodes, as this pest was acting most actively last autumn.
With the help of solar dryers the beautiful and versatile Armenian women have prepared dried fruit and vegetables and this year also are going to make dried food from their own ecologically pure products.
The residents of Solak community are very excited about the possibility of cooperation with the “Armenian Women for Health and Healthy Environment” NGO and the GEF Small Grants Programme, through whose support we are able to use several methods of sustainable agricultural and get ecologically clean and delicious fruit and vegetables. This is very important for each Armenian woman to have more clean and pure products in the diet of her family.
I am happy to mention that the majority of the population in Solak community is interested in organic farming. Everybody is working in his way to contribute to the development of this field, not to mention the recently constructed solar dryers, which are growing like the mushroom in the village thanks to the gifted and hard-working carpenters.
