photographer Eli Driu, Libertate
A team of journalists from the national newspaper Libertatea met with Didi Deshaies, Cristina Barbu, and Daniela Vulcu at the Gradina Bio AMURTEL on a beautiful, warm, and sunny Saturday as the garden buzzed with bees and Himalaya (the mascot dog of the Garden) ran to greet them joyfully. They published a beautiful piece, first online – complete with a very artistic video, and an extensive photo album – not only of the garden, but also showing the connection to our social work, and portraying the children from AMURTEL Family that share in the garden’s harvest! And then, just a few days later, to our surprise, we discovered that the story made it onto the front page of the printed version of the newspaper – with a full color spread inside! We bought extra copies so that the children will also have a souvenir in their own photo albums
We invite you to watch the video and read the article, it is a perfect way to meet Cristina and Daniela who are growing the vegetables with a lot of love and care from tiny seedlings to abundant harvests. You will find the video right at the beginning of the article. Actually, Daniela prefers not to be photographed and stays in the background so you have to really look for her – but trust us, she definitely exists, and together with Cristina, the two friends are the backbone of the garden!
Didi tells of how she started the project, knowing very little about agriculture personally, but wishing to make the children’s home more self-sufficient in producing its own food. Indeed, the journalists were quite amused when she told a story of how, many years ago, when one of the first people that introduced her to permaculture back in the US invited her to visit their backyard/garden -Didi pointed with genuine curiosity at one of the plants to ask what it was. When she heard it was a carrot, she was amazed, never having seen a carrot actually growing in the ground, and having no idea what it looked like. Apparently vegetables simply came from supermarkets….she never had given it much thought until then.
Indeed, without the dedication and expertise of our volunteer agronomist, Gabi Corbu the project would have been beyond reach. With his support, AMURTEL was able to launch one of the very first Community Supported Agriculture projects in Romania run by an NGO. Thank you to Maria Andries, Eli Driu, and the rest of the team at Libertate for the special opportunity and beautiful piece! The children from AMURTEL Family gathered around the computer screen to watch the video, read the article, and look through the photo albums, totally captivated! We hope you will enjoy this glimpse into the story and the people behind our vegetable baskets![:]