Agro Raphael Brings Special Guests to Garden Club
Recent Saturday mornings at St. Paul’s School have brought some new celebrities to campus. At one of the latest garden club meetings, dozens of students—most of them garden club members—gathered around Agronomist Raphael Fernandez Salvador as he introduced a hands-on component to a lecture he had given the week before on animal husbandry.
Garden club learned how to properly handle rabbits.
Underneath the shade of the school garden’s lean-to structure, Raphael hung a giant wire-frame cage that students had helped to construct. Crouched inside were five rabbits in shades of white, tan, grey, and brown. Raphael reviewed proper care for the rabbits as the students gazed curiously into the cage.
There were two goals for the session ahead: first, for each student to properly hold a rabbit by the scruff of its neck, and second, to teach how to identify a rabbit's sex. Some students were initially unsteady with their rabbit-holding techniques, but with Raphael's gentle coaching, everyone appeared to be rabbit-handling experts by the end of the session.
Raphael is known for encouraging his students to dive in and experiment with new skills; his philosophy is that mistakes and hesitancies are simply part of the learning process. Raphael’s teaching style was evident at a similar garden club meeting in February—this time, goats took the place of rabbits as the furry class guests.
In the February meeting, Raphael demonstrated once how to give the vaccine before allowing the students to take over. There were a lot of details to learn, including the method of suctioning the vaccine into the syringe. One girl named Guiereline particularly loved giving the shots to the goats.
Goats have played an integral part in the expansion of garden club—both in helping students learn agriculture skills, but also in providing an income source to develop new programs. Raphael collaborated with St. Paul’s School financial staff to sell six goats last November to purchase the inputs of the rabbit raising project. Leftover funds from the sale provided meals for students after garden club. After they vaccinated goats, students enjoyed big bowls of diri koule (rice and beans).
A student named Guirelene (in polka dot shirt) was a little hesitant to vaccinate her first goat, but with Raphael’s guidance quickly became an expert.
Raphael envisions teaching much more about the goats and rabbits. He keeps the rabbits carefully separated in meticulously labeled cages to track their genetics. He also speculates that the rabbits will serve as a source of meat one day.
We look forward to sharing more as garden club continues to bloom!
Can’t get enough photos of the goats and rabbits? Check out the photo album below.
