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Sustainable Harvest International779 North Bend Road
Surry, ME 04684
P: 207.669.8254
F: 207.669.8255
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Testimonial from Participant Farmer, Estebana Romero
San Miguelito, Nicaragua

My name is Estebana Romero, and I have always lived in the community of San Miguelito.

I like to work with institutions which help us make improvements in our farms, giving us the support we don't receive from the government; that's why I became interested in SHI when they first arrived here about three years ago, so I am practically a founder.

Being part of the SHI projects has helped me because we have made improvements in my farm.  We have things we did not have before such as cacao, lumber, fruit trees, banana trees, worms that fertilize the soil (humus), orchards in summer, and seeds we did not have before.   We are very happy with Sustainable Harvest because we see results fast and help arrives in a timely fashion.  The truth is that SHI is the most valuable institution because it has helped us so much.   At the beginning my husband Hilario did not want to participate in the SHI projects because he does not like to attend meetings.  However, I told him that our participation was important, and "look at him now", he is happy with all the benefits.   We now have a hen house, a troja (raised structure for guarding and drying see), a silo and even a grain drier which we could not afford to buy and did not even know before.

We have had some training, because no work can be done without it.  Therefore we have learned new things such as how to build nurseries and to cultivate different plants in the same plots.   A group of us women have built a Pacas breeding pen (guillero). We are very proud of it, because it is the only one in the area.  SHI helped us build it and it was through SHI that we have our guillero as well as the investment loans (Trickle Up).   Furthermore, when there was a shortage of beans seeds and their price went up, SHI helped us.