We know you love the Earth and her creations as much as we do. In the celebration of fertilizing what works, our foundation has chosen to support two projects. We'd like to tell you about them.
Sandra Williams helps oyster mushroom growers in Ghana
fill and cap bags of compost medium to grow oyster mushrooms.
This project is designed to accomplish two purposes:
To introduce shiitake mushrooms into the small-farm agricultural community and into the Ghanaian diet.
To address contamination of oyster mushroom spawn affecting over 5,000 farmers in Ghana.
The success of this project will result in providing an inexpensive, easy-to-grow, high-quality protein food that requires less labor and less water than oyster mushrooms and, with improved oyster mushroom production, will increase financial support for these farmers and their families.
Staff of Bemcom Youth Enterprises/Association.
Bernard Bempah is second from the right.
Bernard Bempah, the 29-year-old founder of Bemcom Youth Enterprises/Association (BYEA) trains about 1,200 farmers a year in sustainable farming practices, most of them women. The BYEA program has a 10-year track record and has won national and international recognition. Doug and Sandra Williams of Lost Creek Mushroom Farm (www.shiitakemushroomlog.com) in Perkins, Oklahoma, volunteered at BYEA during the summer of 2007 and saw first-hand the mounting crisis of the high cost of protein and the dramatic loss of money from the low yields in oyster mushrooms.
They, along with the Magical Child Foundation, have committed themselves and a portion of the profits of their shiitake mushroom log business to organizing a three-week tour in the USA for Bempah and one of his colleagues. They will visit shiitake mushroom growing facilities in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Wisconsin. They will also visit one of the nation's major mushroom spawn producers.
Bernard Bempah will speak on the campuses of the University of Missouri and Oklahoma State University and to other groups on the itinerary. The men will return to Ghana with knowledge and new equipment to solve their problems with contamination. They will provide shiitake mushroom training and shiitake logs to their farmers and help the community of farmers take their production to a new level.
PUMARAMA Conservation Center. A conservation and educational facility for the cougar, America's Greatest Cat. The cougar is also known as: Puma, Mountain Lion, Ghost Cat, Panther, Painter, Catamount.
This conservation and education center south of Perkins, Oklahoma, will provide a lifelong home to three cougars. The Laura Bottaro, curator of the Oklahoma City Zoo's Oklahoma Trails Exhibit believes they could be extinct in Oklahoma in our lifetime.
Cougars, along with other large felids such as lions, cheetahs, tigers and many of their smaller wild felid (cat) relatives, are now extinct or close to extinction worldwide.
The facility and its programs are being designed to help humans move from a fear-based relationship with large predators to one of understanding the important and necessary role the cougar (and other large predators) play in a balanced eco-system, including the world of humans. It will also educate the public on safety in wilderness areas where cougars move and what to do if you meet one in the wild.
As a special promotion we are hosting a drawing for the beautiful 20" x 30" framed photograph (see below) called Spirit of the Mountain. Spirit, the cougar in the photograph, allowed herself and her three kittens to be seen and photographed in the Elk National Refuge outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for 41 days in 1999. Photographer and nature advocate Thomas Mangelsen - www.mangelsen.com - stayed with Spirit from sunup to sundown for 41 days.
These days changed his life. In dedication to Spirit and her kin, Tom founded the Cougar Fund to Protect America's Greatest Cat, www.cougarfund.org
