Navajo Reservation in Arizona 2019

​Since June 2019 I am living and working in on amazing project in St. Michael Indian School in Navajo Reservation in Arizona. I met Joe Pacal in Tucson, Arizona. This amazing talented and ecological / permaculture knowledgeable man told me about his School Gardening and Permaculture Project and his School for Ecological Living. Joe's idea is to provide Navajo Nation, especially Navajo children, with understanding, knowledge and life skills for living a healthy and happy life in the harmony with the whole creation. I was very amazed and took the invitation to move to Arizona and to be a participant of creating Kateri Institute for Applied Ecology. This should be a training center for teaching people: how to grow own organic food, to live ecological and permaculture life style, to regenerate original flora and fauna  by planting native plants, to work with ceramic and wood and etc. You can check Joe's website www.JoePacal.com. I am very excited and honored to be involved in this transformational project. Joe already created miraculous gardens around the school and greenhouse but  to make the whole project fully functional we still need to do a lot of work. I invite everybody who is reading this to be a part of this amazing project and give your support in your own way. You are welcome to come here as a volunteer or send us volunteers :). You can invest financially, physically, mentally, spiritually - what ever is possible for you if you want to. :) Joe's website is www.joepacal.com  . Visit it! You will be excited at least as much as I am for sure! :) 
I am looking forwards to learn how to build a greenhouse - Joe already built many different kind of greenhouses but not in a school property.  We need one here for the School Project. So I am looking forwards to participate on this fun work! I also think that to teach the children and their parents how to build a greenhouse is  very important. It could be a small greenhouse but it will be a place to start planting from the seeds and to grow food in the wintertime. Until we will have a greenhouse here in a school property we are using other greenhouse which is very practical and pretty but a little bit father than I would like :)  In this greenhouse - also built by Joe -( you can see on the photos) we grow: bell peppers, tomatoes, eggplants, green onions, all kind of herbs but also very delicious figs, lemons and tangerines. Now when outside is so cold we have a lot of food in the greenhouse growing. It is so much fun and we don't need to spend so much money for buying food!
Another project we are going to start is to build a ceramic studio. Look at the photos of the greenhouse! This beautiful ceramic pots are so much better than the plastic things! Also to keep the grain, corn, dry vegetables and fruits is much better in the ceramic pots than in the plastic or even glass jars. And if we will teach the Navajo kids to do ceramic in their Navajo tradition -How cool is that? One of the gardens - St. Kateri Garden - which we are creating now is dedicated to St. Kateri - as far as I can remember - only one native American saint of the catholic religion. This garden is a place for the native plants: eatable, medical and for dying. 
We gave each garden a name:
St. Kateri Garden - dedicated Saint Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-1680) who was a catholic patroness of indigenous people and dedicated her live to ecology and environment protection,
Presents garden where the kids could practicing to be present and where they can harvest the presents from the garden :), You probably saw the beautiful sunflowers, chilis, cabbage, Asparagus, broccoli, other veggies, currants, peaches and so much more! :)
Corn Garden - for indigenous people corn is very important not only as  food but also for their prayers and holy rituals. Corn is here a symbol of sustenance and connection to Great Spirit. You can see this pretty corn on the photo. :)
Blessings Garden - is really a blessing because  so many wonderful thing are growing here: a lot of pretty and delicious tomatoes, a lot of tomatillos, eggplants, zucchini, cucumbers, basil and other herb and again yummy peaches! In the Blessings Garden children can learn to bless all the gardens and plant and also how to be a blessing for the garden and the whole world! :),
Ancestors Garden is where we are growing native plant only so the kids can learn what their ancestors have been eaten. Are you familiar with  Banana Yucca? It has a super sweet and delicious fruits! But the cows like them too! :) This native amazing plant is almost gone and it is not so often you can find it in the nature :( Too many cows around! They eat all the precious native plants! :) They just know what good is. What we do - we fence the cows out  a little. So they can not walk everywhere. :) So we can restore the native vegetation here. Yes! A lot of work! and... a lot of fun!

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