Also....Calling all pickles! (WE NEED YOUR HELP!)

(Just a note, this is my second post on the blog today...)

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

The good news is that the library is almost finished! The village is planning to commission it by the end of the month, before school is out.

With its completion on the horizon, Conor and I have been looking into other projects we can start before we leave. One of the needs that has really put itself forward is the need to preserve food.

Nyive is made up of many farming families, who's livelihoods and income mostly derives from the land. Unfortunately, the inability to preserve food causes tremendous loss for the farmers both in food and income. Everything here is sold at its season, there is little or no affordable imports. Because the food is sold at season, everyone in the market sells the exact same thing at the exact same time. This means that no one can ask a good price for their goods, because there are 20 other stalls trying to sell the same thing. No one can sell off season because there is no way to maintain the produce.

There is also a loss to the farmers because if they can't sell their produce fast enough, even at a low price, the food will spoil and they receive nothing. The same happens when they buy food. People can only purchase items in small quantities, every day or risk their food spoiling, and having to spend further money.

Nyive and the rest of Ghana have no real traditional methods of preserving food, because there is no winter season, like in Canada, where NOTHING grows. There is always something to eat because there is always something growing, but it is incredibly difficult to run a business or make a profit in this way.

We are asking you for recipes, ideas, cautions, methods and ideas about how to preserve food. This can be anything from dehydration to jam, to pickles to relishes to fruit leather. We need methods, warnings, dangers, ways to sterilise....lots of things. Don't worry if there is no blackberries in Ghana, send us your blackberry jam recipe anyway, because there may be something that we can glean from it for some blackberry like substance in Ghana. If you have no recipes of your own, email familiy members, ask around your town, contact your local Society for Creative Anachronism chapter, or ask some engineers about dehydraters and pester some Girl Guides about tinfoil solar ovens that you make with a few rocks.

We're looking for anything that we can use that won't involve a factory (though a low tech device that we can McGuyver is helpful). Send us anything....even warnings about which foods we shouldn't try to preserve lest we kill off the entire village through food poisoning. If your area is secretly famous for someting like jam or dried fruit, don't feel shy about doing a little research on some old techniques.

Thank you all so much for your help! We really believe that a little information can go a long way into changing lives.

Love,
The Jessicat