What Rice, Coal and Piglets Have in Common

This past week has been full of celebration…much of it happening quietly behind the scenes in our kitchen and on the farm.

Each month we carefully sit down and calculate our food budget. Our goal has always been simple but meaningful: to provide healthy, delicious meals for the children and staff while also being wise stewards of the resources we have. We try to stretch every dollar, reduce what we need to purchase, and make the most of everything our farm can provide. Anyone who has spent time farming knows that self-sustainability doesn’t happen overnight. It takes patience, perseverance, and a lot of hard work under the hot sun. After nearly two years of back-breaking labor, planting, learning, adjusting, and trying again, we are finally beginning to see real signs that all of that effort is paying off.

Let’s start with the rice.

Our farm manager, Abba, and his team planted an incredible amount of lettuce this season. They carefully tended the beds, watered them, and protected them until it was time to harvest. Once the lettuce was ready, they took it to the market and sold it. The result was something worth celebrating: with the money from that harvest, they were able to purchase five 50-pound bags of rice. That means this entire month we won’t need to buy rice for the kitchen at all! Rice is a staple in Liberia and a huge part of nearly every meal we prepare, so being able to cover that need through the work of the farm is a big step forward for us.

Then there’s the coal.

In Liberia, coal is an essential part of the kitchen. Our cooks use it every day to build the fires needed to cook soups and prepare meals for everyone. Without it, cooking for a large group would be very difficult. It’s a necessity, but can also be one of the more costly regular purchases for the kitchen. Just this morning, I had the opportunity to visit the farm and watch some of the team hard at work digging up our own coal supply in preparation for the rainy season. It was amazing to see the process!

Abba estimates that by the time they are finished, we will have more than 50 large bags of coal, which should last us around three months. It might not sound like much at first, but that’s three entire months where we won’t need to purchase coal. And the best part is that every bag comes completely from our own farm. Moments like that remind us that the vision of the farm supporting the home is becoming more and more of a reality.

And as if that wasn’t enough excitement for one week, we also welcomed eight adorable piglets to the H4L family! The sow is doing well, and so far all of the piglets seem healthy and thriving. There is always something special about new life on the farm, and these little ones certainly brought a lot of smiles. In time, they will also help provide even more variety of meat for our meals. We are already enjoying the blessings from our last pig butchering, and seeing this new litter reminds us that the farm continues to grow and multiply in ways we hoped for when we first started.

Weeks like this are incredibly encouraging. Farming is not easy work, and there are many long days where progress feels slow and some of the tasks can become almost monotonous. But then moments come along like this…when the lettuce harvest buys rice for the month, when the coal supply is stacked and ready, and when new piglets arrive healthy and strong; we are reminded that the hard work truly is bearing fruit.

It is such a joy to watch the fruits of so much labor, faith, and prayer slowly come to fruition. Step by step, the farm is becoming what we dreamed it could be: a place that not only grows food, but helps sustain and bless the entire H4L family.