Tidkondwe Freedon Gardens (June 23)

Tidkondwe Freedom Gardens

Tidkondwe (means “Be Happy”) Freedom Gardens started in 1982 with Dr. Livingston who was an accountant and economist. He started this because he wanted to achieve food sovereignty rather than food sufficiency. Daniel described food sovereignty as being about to have food wherever and whenever you want it, vs. sufficiency where you dig into your pockets to purchase your goods. He started cultivating a very small sphere of land, which was sold to him because the owners thought of it as useless because of how swampy it was, but he saw potential. It took him 3 years to drain the water out of the land, and another 3 years to remove the reeds in order to be able to cultivate the land. Once he was able to do this though, he created 2 channels with linear channels in between, which was how the river water would flow to the crops… WITHOUT pumps! There has never been a single pump used at Freedom Gardens and this is why it’s absolutely incredible. The main idea here was to recycle nature and maintain the natural balance. It started out being 10 sq meters and it has now grown into 25 acres of success. From the proceeds, 75% is put back into the land, and the other 25% is used for home consumption. Because the family wanted to live in harmony with nature, the decision was made not to kill the insects and pests that would affect the crops. Instead, they produce chemicals (organically, from their own crops!! Using India Tree leaves, aloevera, blackjack, garlic and others) to simply scare the insects away. They even use smart tactics like growing corn around the legumes and carrots because it protects them from flying pests. It was crazy because the water flows through little visible channels that surround the crops (which are sunken lower than the small channels), and they come from 2 main channels, and various wells around the garden that it gets pulled from. They harvest the water in the rainy season and then use it to irrigate the crops during the dry season. All without pumps. It’s amazing because you can see the water flowing around the crops on different paths, and farm hands just use shovels to push dirt into a channel if they need to cut off water supply to a certain crop or divert the flow elsewhere. They also have wells specifically for composting. All of their waste (minus plastic and bottles) are pushed into these areas and is connected to a canal that they use to irrigate the well once a week for half a day, and the compost is ready within a month! This is what they call their “fertilizer” but all it is, is leaves from crops, or fallen food, pretty much organic waste. They even demonstrated this in front of us.

This is why Freedom Gardens is so groundbreaking. Malawi struggles a lot with their agriculture, and it’s pretty much their only way of survival. According to Daniel, Malawi spends 19 billion dollars for things like fertilizer and pesticides - money that could be used on schools, hospitals, etc. It took Freedom Gardens 10 years to break even, but it would have taken a lot less if the land hadn’t been so difficult to begin with. But now, everything comes from within. And they profit, a lot, and it goes back into the farm. They are always able to feed themselves, and even sell to local markets and all over Malawi, even though it’s a struggle because it’s not widely accepted yet. Farmers from all over the world, students, peace corps, etc have been coming into Freedom to learn these amazing tactics with hopes to do this on their own or raise awareness.. it’s basically the future of farming and it can save a lot of people in Malawi with as little as determination and perseverance. Malnutrition would decrease a significant amount. People are starting to realize what Daniel and his mother have been doing!

They served us a fantastic lunch and we were able to eat everything without worry because of it’s organic nature. It felt so great to be able to eat vegetables! Lunch cost us 800K (about 5 US dollars) and we even gave Mrs. Chinkhuntha 20 US dollars on top of that, and she was extremely grateful. It means so much to them, and it really is incredible the difference they have made just from their one small farm. We gave Daniel and Moses a ride back to town with us, and they were so fun! They speak very good English and taught us a lot about the cultural things we would see on the road, and didn’t really understand before then. We got their business cards and they even have Facebook! Haha. I plan on getting in touch with them when I get back to the states, I would love to help the cause any way I can.