Give a Farm Animal to a Family in Need
A major part of Garden Harvest's
fight against hunger & poverty is the provision of food-producing
animals to the rural poor. We serve the poor regions in Appalachia
and in India.
WE choose the area where your gift will be placed, as animal availability varies according
to the season in each region.
All donations are made online. We do not accept phone or mail-in
orders at this time.
Why Donate Through Garden Harvest?
Garden Harvest is not the biggest charity that donates farm animals, but
we try harder!
We are very
thorough, and hence, we are very effective.
For example, it sounds very nice to give a baby goat
away to a needy family. But there can be serious problems with that: You
can’t just give baby goats to poor families who can’t even afford to feed
themselves. Baby goats need to be fed their mothers' milk or
bottle-fed a formula for three months, and then they need a diet of fresh
pasture or hay. All the while the baby goat is not contributing anything to
the family. And for those that don't have good pasture, the expense is
impossible. It will be seven months before the baby goat can be bred and
another 5 months before she gives birth and begins producing milk. 
To solve these problems, Garden Harvest gives fully
mature
lactating goats to the poorest families. These are goats that are already producing milk
so that the destitute families receive instant nourishment and
even income
from the sale of excess milk that they don’t consume.
Garden Harvest
also provides all that the family needs to care for their goat:
Hay, if there is not adequate fodder; medication, for immunizations,
worming; fencing, when necessary; and training, in milking, hoof
trimming. Garden Harvest works with the families that do have land to
teach them how to use the fertilizer provided by their goat to enrich their
soil and establish irrigation so that they will be able to produce their own
fodder and hay.
Another problem arises in that goats need at least
two months off a year from milk production in order to build their
bodies up for their next delivery of babies. To solve that problem,
recipient families are welcome to have a Garden Harvest
center care for their goat during her dry period & breed her for the next lactating cycle.
The benefits to the families are multifold:
1) They don't have the expense of feeding & caring for their goat when she
is not producing milk;
2) They don't have the expense of caring for a male all year just for the
breeding;
3) They still receive their original goat back once she has given birth and
is producing milk again;
For those families that are poor but have access to
fenced pasture, Garden Harvest provides female Kids, 3-5 months old.
These families cannot afford the start-up costs of purchasing a goat, but do
have decent pasture , so they have what it takes to keep their goat and have
it fertilize the land and keep weeds down while growing. Garden
Harvest takes care of the breeding of the goat and even the goat's babies
once born so the family can have full use of all the milk.
In this way, being just as thorough in the placement of
its sheep, cows, oxen, and poultry, Garden Harvest goes the extra mile to
ensure that all the animals it places receive the best care and that the
families it serves becomes financially independent.
All the animals Garden Harvest places produce
food both directly and indirectly:
Female goats, sheep, and cows all produce milk, which can be . simply
drunk or made into other products with a longer shelf life, like yogurt,
kefir, and cheese. Chickens, ducks, geese produce eggs. But
their contributions don't stop there. Each of these animals performs a
valuable job that produces food indirectly: All of them fertilize,
which increases soil fertility and hence yield per acre. Goats, cows, sheep,
and geese keep the weeds down, and do so as effectively and more safely than
mechanized equipment or chemicals. Chickens control rodents and soil living
insects. Ducks eliminate noxious insects that live on plant leaves. Oxen
pull plows. Garden Harvest teaches people how to employ their animals
to produce crops suitable to their region. And, remember, animals LOVE their
work, and, when the moon is bright, they work joyfully 24/7!
Garden Harvest nurtures all living beings.
We do not raise animals for slaughter.
 A major part of our work is teaching people the world over
how to employ animals to produce food in ways that are good for everyone:
The Earth, the people, and the animals.
Every donated animal is placed with a family that has an environment best
suited for the specific animal's needs and abilities, an environment where
it can thrive & be most productive.
People are trained to first recognize and then maximize the contributions
these animals continuously make to the production of food for their
families. Hence, people are shown how to make it economically
beneficial to let the animals live out their natural lives, euthenizing them
only when they start to decline.
We acknowledge that there
are times when taking an animal's.. life becomes necessary, either due to old
age, a physical defect, uncontrollable aggression, or simply an
overabundance of males. The proper thing to do in that case is for the
family to eat the meat of the animal or give it to a needy family to eat.
While slaughtering eventually becomes necessary, animals are not raised for
the primary purpose of being slaughtered. |
