Gardens of Goodness

Many people in Central America grow the food they eat in small family gardens. Here’s just a short list of the many crops they might produce:

• corn
• papaya
• bananas
• chili peppers
• rambutan

They use what they harvest for family meals and keep the rest to sell at the weekly market.

During market day, businesses shut down and local roads close for natives from nearby villages to sell surplus goods in temporary booths. Each village hosts the market on a different day of the week, so that people can do their shopping without missing their own local market.

Guatemalan Gardens

In the mountain village of Santa Avelina, Guatemala, gardens are typically planted on the corner of the family property, often next to the kitchen building. Kitchens are in a separate location because these indigenous Maya descendants cook over open fires or on a wood-burning stove. These gardens do not have fences because they are protected by family members and their dogs, pigs, and roosters.

Herbs get a slightly different treatment. A woven spiked fence surrounds every herb garden, protecting them from the same pigs and chickens that guard the other crops.

These gardens offer good opportunities to use math in a real-world setting. Suppose you’re going to construct a fence that is 48 fist lengths long. If you want to have the widest gate possible, how much space should you leave for an opening?

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