Elizabeth's Story

We love to share stories with you. This mama has one mean goat call, she's won the Food for His Children Goat Call Contest twice! But she's even more proud to be a farmer. This is Elizabeth Elias' story as she shared it with her Field Officer.

'I’m not just a goat keeper as a lot of people think. Yes, I’m in Food for His Children's goat project, but FFHC doesn't just provide a goat. They also provide several trainings about agricultural farming techniques. I decided to join FFHC because I was a victim of extreme poverty. I mean I suffered a lot with poverty. It was even hard to afford basic needs for my family. We have farmed since the 1970’s and back then, our life was very tough. We used a hand hoe as a tool during crop production. The amount of energy we dedicated on the farm was very different from the amount of crops harvested. I can say we had nothing. But today, I can testify how FFHC has boosted my farming skills. We now have enough food throughout the year and even have extra to sell for income!

I joined FFHC in the year of 2012 and my life has completely changed, I’m not going to tell you the whole story because we can take a week (laughing), but just a small part of it. The first day an FFHC training, I’m telling you, the moment was amazing. The people were very polite and kind and we were a tough farming crowd! We were all about crop production, because crop production is everything to us. I decided to listen very carefully to the trainer. I asked some questions about food storage and scientific ways of farming for better crop production. After hearing the answers I realized I had been losing crops for years, before and after the harvest because we weren't using the proper techniques. I was encouraged and told not to feel bad, instead I should make sure those worse moments won’t come back again.

After the training, I started applying what I learned. I’m telling you right now, I own 3 acres of land. Before the training, we were only producing 1- 1/2 bags of maize per acres, but now we produce up to 6 bags of maize! What a success! Now we usea tractor instead of a hand hoe, we use short term seeds and we use goat manure from our FFHC goats as a fertilizer.

I’m so happy for the support FFHC has provided us. It has given us direction and the opportunity of achieving our dreams.

Thank you so much!