2nd Pathways to a Sustainable Future: Day 9

Day 9: July 12th, 2016

Our first full day here in Puerto Leda was an eye opening experience. We started off with a tour of the Leda Settlement visiting all the different buildings and agriculture on the land. There are a variety of bedroom dorms and buildings for large groups or for families to live in that includes a kitchen. We visited the different agriculture sections of the land. The land is very hard and clay like which makes it difficult to plant anything. They had to try many different vegetables. Many didn’t work mainly because of the variety of birds and insects here in Leda that would feed on the vegetables. One of their successful crops is taro which contains a lot of nutrition and can be used to make many different foods and ground into flour. We also saw the fishing farming and incubation for Paco Fish which is a big production now and has developed a lot over time. It took many trials and errors to be able to incubate the fish and have good results. They also have pigs and cows but we didn’t get to see them because the bridge to reach them isn’t accessible at the moment.

In the afternoon we did our first project painting the police station and repainting the sign in front of it. Later we had a presentation given by Mr. Sano who talked about what they hope to establish in the future. The hope is to have eco-tourism, a university, zoo, hotel, houses, agriculture and more.

Rev. and Mrs. Moon’s vision has been to create an ideal community where everyone is in harmony with God, humanity, and creation. The Leda Settlement started off with nothing but with this vision in mind the pioneers were able to create something out of nothing. It is named “the garden of sunshine” in regards to their vision.