Garden-making time!

Ack! Sorry again for the lack of blogging... when the posts are few and far between it's safe to assume that I'm super busy working on my project. So here's an update!

Since my last trip to the countryside my garden project has really taken off. I was considering 3 or 4 different portable garden designs but I've finally chosen one to mass produce and give to herders to test out. You can see what it's inspired by here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjItiepmPA0

Mine is a little different from the above. The watering system is manual (a.k.a. you pour the water in at the top and when it trickles through you catch it in a soda bottle at the bottom and then pour it back through the top), but otherwise it's pretty similar. I chose this design for a few reasons. First, the frame makes it sturdy and durable, which is important if it's going to be out on the steppe on top of a ger and moved around. Second, you can get all the materials in Mongolia for relatively low cost. So far the projected cost is about $10-$20 per garden, though I will know the exact numbers when it's finished. Also I like this design because it conserves water, which I think will be one of the determining factors in the success or usefulness of the gardens when they're used. Finally, I chose this design for cosmetic reasons. Herders already place large, square solar panels, and square wooden boxes to dry milk products on top of their gers, so I'm hoping this design won't be so bizarrely different from that. I'm hoping the sort of familiarity will make it less weird for herders who are trying out gardening for the first time.

So that is my plan and I have been hard at work making the gardens. I was able to negotiate some work space at the Agricultural University (not an easy task, I'll tell you), and have set up a sort of garden factory in a corner of a professor's lab. Between many trips to the hardware market district and the "black" market I've amassed almost all of the tools I need, plus the necessary hose tubing, etc. It was an interesting day when I went to the plumbing section and told them I needed 400 T-pipe pieces... It became even more interesting when a homeless guy tried to steal a bag of them when I was getting in a taxi and I ended up chasing him down the street. But aside from people thinking I'm an absolute crazy lady, things are going really well! At this point it's mostly just a tedious process of preparing all the parts of the gardens. Oh, and collecting plastic bottles... I need over 800 for all the gardens. A few days ago I scandalized the neighborhood by picking through the trash in the apartment courtyards and collecting bottles. It will probably be my main method for collecting bottles since I need so many. When I have enough bottles and all the parts of my gardens I'll begin assembling them, and then in early June I will distribute them to the families who have agreed to test them.

So that's what I've been up to here in Mongolia. I'm heading out for my final countryside trip in the next few days, provided the weather improves. Spring in Mongolia is a funny time, you can have hot sunny days next to dust storms rolling up from the Gobi, next to blizzard-like snow storms. If the weather is good, I'll be heading off to Arvaikheer by next week!