The Milpa First Acre Program: Free Seed to Feed Your Community

0:00 Hey everybody, Keith Burns with Green Cover. I'm here to talk about our Milpa First Acre program. The First Acre program is a way that we can fulfill our mission statement at Green Cover, which is to help people regenerate God's creation for future generations. And the Milpa allows you to regenerate your soil, your own bodies as well as your

0:20 Communities so you can apply for up to an acre's worth of free milfa seed through this program if you commit to donating at least 50 percent of the produce to your community. So this program is for people who want to improve their soil health and at the same time produce food to feed their communities. Now I will warn you it's not.

0:40 The most efficient use of space if you're interested in maximum production. But it is a very efficient way to improve your soil health and to benefit your community at the same time. I do want to mention that this program would not be possible without the support and the partnership of the Nature Conservancy and Syngena Seeds as they

1:00 Are helping us put this program together and get this free seed out to people. Also a shout out to our hard-working Green Cover team because we're sending thousands of these Milpa packets all across the country and it would not be possible without all their help.

1:16 The concept of the Milpa mix originated with the Mayans in Mesoamerica many centuries.

1:20 Ago and we are inspired by their use of many different types of seeds growing together. Diversity is one of the principles of soil health, so we've taken that concept and we're using it, and we're putting 40 different seeds together—beans and peas and radishes and turnips and leafy greens, squash, melons, and on down the line, so you got a great diverse.

1:41 Mix for soil health as well as producing food. Now you will get sweet corn with this as well. It will be in a separate package. You need to kind of plant that in rows or in Hills kind of by itself so that it has the best chance of pollinating and producing good ears of sweet corn. Before you enter into this program please go to our website.

2:02 Download this Milpa starter packet at milpagarden.com. You can download this whole packet—it has all the information, the background information about where Milpa came from. It will have information about how to plan it, how to harvest it, how to get the food donated. So please take time to read this so you know what the program entails. Free seed—what's the

2:43 Football field, so make sure that you're ordering what's appropriate for the land that you have. Also make sure you have the appropriate equipment. If you just have the one pound a package, you can probably broadcast that in a small area, but if you're doing an acre, we really need you to have a drill or some equipment to get the seed in the ground.

3:01 And then make sure that you're prepared to give appropriate care to the growing and the harvesting of this crop. We also want you to share the bounty. Where will you donate it? Be thinking about food banks, homeless shelters, nursing homes, church families in your community that can partner up with you to share the bounty and get this to the people who.

3:19 Really need it and then also have them help share the load, have them come in and help with the gleaning of it, even the weeding and watering. Make this a community project because that's really how we start to regenerate our communities.

3:31 And then finally we want you to share your successes and struggles along the way, post pictures to social.

3:37 Media and tag us in it and share your photos and other documentation with Green Cover so that we can share those things with other people and we can all learn from each other. To apply for the First Acre program, you'll need to visit www.milpagarden.com. There you'll find a wealth of information about the Milpa program as well as that starter packet and instructions on how to apply for the program.

4:00 Once you've filled out your application, we'll review it and we'll let you know how much seed you've been approved for. You'll also receive a coupon code you can use when you place your bulk put order at our online store. Thank you very much for consideration of the Milpa First Acre program.