The honey is flowing .

Vitamins are such an important part of developement ,  especialy in Kyrgyzstan where there is a predisposition to rickets .  Fortunatly we have some sponsors that suport us with providing these vitamins.  We also have a good source of vitamins in Kyrgyzstan so we can now purchase there spacific to our needs .  One of our team is a registered doula, so that puts her on the front line when it comes to baby care .  We are able to help before there is any medical condition.   

At The farm we have a few days between guests so its a good time to get the cement pad poured for the yurt.  If you look closely you can see the frame under the cover by the gift shop.  It will be going up in the orchard behind the guest house.  Once the frame is up, we will have the yurt builders come and take measurements for the size of the new cover .  then they will come back and instal it . 
 

 We just got our second draw of honey from the mountain Gojji berry hives.  Last year was a terrible year for honey , then in the winter there was a huge die off .. in fact we lost all 30 hives on the farm, and about half our hives in the mountain... Well this year has turned around.  the new hives on the farm have established well and the mountain hives are back to full capasity ... in fact this year we have an over 900% increese over last year .  So to those who have been missing the honey, we hope to be able to bring back lots with us this year.  

Down on the farm as I was saying, the bees are doing well,  and we have just started to draw the honey from them.  Now when you conside that average hive has 50 000 bees, that means that there are about 1 500 000 bees.   

As they were about to start, I was chating with them about where the antihistamin tablets and Benadril was .. but we also prayed that God would keep them safe.   Then as you can see, they  covered up well  .. NOT...  and proceeded . 

NOT ONE SINGLE BEE STING ALL DAY . 

Mom was helping me to pack up the knapsacks and some tee shirts, and we are shipping them today to the team coming from Possibilities International. https://www.iam1ru.com/  They will be arriving just in time to host the party in the park.  

 

Since reaching our target for back to school supplies ysterday, I have had a couple people contact me to see if they are too late to help.  Well the quick answer is No.. We do have several others , including 3 small orphanages that could use help with back to school.  I even had a message from Aiperi this morning .  She works with Afgan refugies in Pakistan , and has asked if we would be able to help with school suplies again this year for kids in the camp.   so Yes we will continue to recieve back to school donations. 

A joyful heart is good medicine.

We have started to get updates from families that we helped by providing seeds for their gardens.  They are so pleased to be able to show us .  It is a lot of work , but when you start harvesting , there is such a feeling of saisfaction . 

Soon we will begin harvesting the honey from the new bees down on the farm.  From our mountain bees we just took the second draw and got 660 lbs of honey.  Glad we have some teams coming that we will be able to send some back with . 

This last weekend we had a group come and stay at the guest house and they wanted to get their hands dirty on the farm .. It is such a blessing to see the beets all weeded and doing so well.  The next teem coming will be making huge batches of pickles beets, pickled peppers, tomatoe sauce and zuccinni relish and bread.  

The knapsacks have started to arrive at my house . they are being shipped from 4 different depots so will be spred out over 4 days of delivery... I guess not many people buy 700 at a time . 

When I found out we had so many kids coming, I was kind of overwhelmed .  This is outside my comfort zone.  Never mind what do you do with 700 kids , but how do you feed them all and preparing the bags is a huge task , and even limiting it to just $10 a knapsack, thats still $7000. and then getting everything money included to Kyrgyzstan on time .   

Well in Just two weeks it has all come together .  We only have $240 to go.  We have a team coming that will sponsor the snacks. We will have the local families involved with the food prep and organizing the party.  We can also have them helping to order and package the school supplies by grade.  then when we get there we just need to put them in the color coordinated  knapsacks .  The team is even bringing some extra toys and things that we will be able to use as door prizes .. and maybe even throw in a fishing trip for a dozen kids.   Now the panic is starting to subside, I am even starting to get a little excited .  

 

A joyful heart is good medicine,

Update from around the farm

Lots of new arrivals on the farm.  We have been working at getting our poultry numbers up .  Because of the bird flue , we have not been able to by poultry from the bazar so we have been hatching out on our own .  Sergey even went around to neighbours who had chickens and ducks we liked and got the local eggs from them to incubate .  

We now have about 15 ducks and 75 ducklings .  Thy are Mascovy ducks .  they are friendly, great for keeping down bugs in the orchard , and they do not quack and make a lot of noise.  

We now also have another 40 chickens big enough to bring our flock up to about 80 chickens .  They will be great for eggs, and eating the roosters.  They are also great for caring for the apple orchard. 

A couple days ago the grain arrived .   

We have also been working on the walkways aound the farm to make them more wheel chair excessable .  I had a small walk way along the back side of the cafe and Laundry room, but had to build over it when we put on the storage room and the water tanks.  So now we have poured a new walk way to clean that area up a bit.  

We have had an early start on the coal .  Prices down being the middle of the summer , so we have taken advantage of that .  It takes the boys about 4 of 5 days to bag up a truck load of coal, so that gives me about a week between loads to be able to raise funds .  It has been about $750 to $800 for a load rather then $1000.  Our donations after the last load leveled off at $500 so we could not order the next load until we had another $300, but just when we were ready for it we were offered a load for $500 that the driver needed to get off his truck, so the boys are back to work. 

Tanya has been busy as well.  She has so many seniors that she has been workng with. They are always so happy to see her when she    arrives with help for them.  It is also an opertunity for her to do a wellness check.  

We are moving along with the fundraising for the back to school supplies . It has been just over a week since we set out to raise a massive $7000 for knapsacks with school supplies for 700 kids @ $10 each.  With just short of a week to go we have just $3000 to go. They will not be given out until Sept 1st , but several of our donation platforms transfer funds on the first of the month so they will not clear the banks until around the 14th .  This gives us a couple weeks to purchase and pack the bags .. all 700 of them. 

Its been a busy time at the guest house an the yurts.  This morning our friends were up at the kashar and yurts to make beds and fill up the water tanks .  I cant wit to be there myself  in another month.







 

"A gift opens the way "

For years now we have been working with many of the little villages in our region , but we have avoided the village that the farm is in.  While we were establishing the farm it was best that we kept a lower profile.  

We have now reached a point where we are ready to have a more visable presence in the comunity we live.  We have started bringing closer to home things like the coal and seed deliverie and wellness checks.  We have seen in the past couple months a number of people reach out when they need help in emergencies. We have seen our bus used more and more as a hospital transport as people are in crisis . 

We had done some repairs on the playground and planed for a party to celebrate .. we planed for about 40 kids , and that turned into 400.

  

We were able to scramble and pull that off.   We had a fifth event planed .. that was going to be to have another party and give out Samaritains Purse boxes.  For that we need to know the names ages and sex of each child that would be receiving the boxes .. with in hours of starting to gather this information, we were flooded with kids wanting to come .  700 kids signed up in just 10 hours. 

There are not 700 Samaritains Purse boxes in Kyrgyzstan.  I must say 700 is so far out of my comfort zone. I thought 100 kids would be a lot.  700 makes my head spin.  We have been praying about what to do , should we just cancle .. amagin canceling because you have too much interest.  It happened so fast, we could just limit it to 100, but how do we tell 600 that they did not make the cut?  So we have decided that since our return lines up with Back to school, and we often help with back to school supplies so that kids can go to school, we will pack napsacks with suplies for them.  

We have a sponsor for the party and now are working on funds to purchase supplies. The cost will be just $10 a child. Alredy we have almost 200 kids sponsored .  that leaves us with $5000 to go to pull off this event.  The hard part is that for donations to make their way through the different giving platforms and the banks, we need to have funds in place by July 31.   

We are excited about this event. and more excited about the comunity interest and the open doors that we are experiencing . 

Proverbs 18:16 says   "A man's gift makes room for him, and bringeth him before great men."

Thank you everyone who has helped bring a great  impact over the last year .. lets finish this strong . 

 

167 down and 533 to go

Schooling is free, but if you do not have your own school suplies you are not able to go to school .  For years now we have been helping with basic school supplies for kids . 

We have even found kids in the local dump trying to find anything they can sell to be able to get suplies they need to go to school 

This  year we have 700 kids that we are going to be giving school suplies to.  This is more then just the suplies for the kids , it is part of our on going efforts to build relationships with the comunity. Over the last year we have delivered seads , coal , food , and even helped repair the playground and  to restore the town water supply .   People are beginning to develope a trust and an appreciation for what we are doing .   

The cost of the school supplies , including  back packs  for them to go in is just $10 a child .  we will have a great celebration in the park when we give them out .  The celebration will be sponsored by one of the teams we have coming in the end of August . 

At this point we have 167 kids sponsored and 533 to go.  Because of the time it takes to get funds through the banks and transfered to Kyrgyzstan , as well as the work it will take to prepare all the bags, we are hoping to have the funds donated by July 31st 

We have seen some creative ways of meeting this target.  We have someone who has started an on line auction , another has contacted all her friends and asked to join her in a group donation.  Close to my home in Canada we have a VBS program that will be collecting funds for this as well , and makig it fun for the kids .  What ever you can come up with would be a blessing .. or you can be like some others and just see the need and send suport.  However it happens, we would really appreciate your help. 

 

700 kids .. going to need some help with this one for sure .

Some times I sit at the computer with a storey to tell, but don't know were to start.  

So lets start like this .  

Close your eyes and remember as a kid the smell of opening a brand new box of crayons.  I can even remember the soft texture touching the tip of each one.   I have had the privilage of witnssing this houndreds of times with kids over the last 20 years.   When the kids go back to school in september we often do some back to school shopping for them .. some years as many as 100 kids are blessed in this way. 

The cost of the supplies usualy is in the $10 range per child .  This makes it a substantial financial need for us that is often suported from our scholarship fund. 

OK now hold that thought if you will !

So I want to share a little bit of the story of the little playground in the vilage .  This playground was sponsored by a small farming church camunity in Upstate NY.  they came on a team about 7 years ago and built a playround for the kids.  This spring it was time to do some repairs and also add a couple more items to the playground, then have a party for the kids, giving out popcorn and icecream.    As soon as we started work, their was a little difficulty and we almost lost the playground all together.. Crissis was averted and the work continued , but after comitting to treats for 40 kids , there was a renewed excitement about the playground and nearly 400 showed up for the party.   That all had such a wonderful time, so some of the mothers came to us and ask if when we come back in the fall we could have another party like this.   

Of course we agreed .  In my mind I was thinking a little more controlled party and be able to give out the Samaritains purse boxes.  For this we would have to have actual names and ages of the kids registered , then we give that information in and recieve the boxes.  In just one afternoon word of the party spread, and when I woke up in the morning, we already had 700 kids registered.  Right away we contacted Samaritains purse and found out that we were too late and they did not have boxes for us this year .. I even called around to our other contacts and many of them did not recieve boxes this year either .  ( side note *** Please pack your boxes .  they are a real blessing where ever they end up ***)  

a picnic in the park to celebrate the revitilization of the playground 

A new mural at the playground 

 So are you still holding that thought ?

Julie and I will be arriving back to the farm on Aug 27 and we have our first team arriving on Aug 29  This would give us a couple days where we could get 700 napsacks packed with school supplies for the kids by Sept 1.  

I priced out the nap sacks in KG and they are almost $3 each for the cloth drawstring napsacks , but I have been able to purchase them in Canada for just .79 cents each when I buy 700.  So they will be here in a couple weeks.  

I shared about this idea with some friends , and right away with out hesitation they said that they wanted in on that and that they would comit to raising $1000 during a VBS they are having in a couple weeks. Isn't that great ... Kids helping Kids .  

We would like to raise $10 per child total for this event.  

Shown here we have $5 worth of supplies that each pack would have . Then the bags would be topped up with grade spacific items that the kids are required to bring .   

So here is your chance to be part of such an incredible day .  Maybe considering sponsoring a couple kids or even involve your friends and sponser a hundred !..