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Wednesday, December 1, 2010 Orono Weekly Times - 7 BACK ON THE RIDGE Continued from pg 4 acres of beans or barley can easily be drawn in one small grain wagon where corn might fill two. A chap who custom fills silos told me that it's taken about half the normal acreage to fill a silo this year. I saw one field that averaged 14 feet tall. A big part of the expense in growing corn is drying it to 14or 15-percent moisture. This year most corn requires almost no drying. The grain bin manufactures, truck and machinery dealers are looking forward to a great winter. Maybe this is the year the farmers bail out the government. Lighting a fire for Haitian orphans by Sue Weigand A simple holiday in the Dominican Republic in 1998 lit a fire under Ed and Sylvia Rypstra of Newtonville. The couple returned home with a new passion: to help the poor people they saw living in the slums during their island get-away. More than ten years on, the Rypstras are still working to help the needy, especially some children at an orphanage in a Haitian neighbourhood in the Dominican Republic. And now out of the ashes of apple trees will come more money for the orphans. According to Sylvia, she and Ed started "Operation Dominican Republic" in 1999, with donations from members of the church they belong to in Bowmanville, the Maranatha Christian Reformed Church. "Ladies from the church knit blankets and sweaters," Sylvia told the Orono Times by phone. "The Bibles For Missions store in Bowmanville also supplies us with donated clothing, so we match up the blankets and sweaters with a baby sleeper and give the sets to the maternity ward at the hospital in Puerto Plata where the poor people go." The Rypstras bring the clothing to the Dominican at their own expense. They also collect and transport basic medicines like Ibuprofen and anti-diarrheal remedies for the hospital. And they recently found a company in Cambridge, Ontario that makes freezedried food which Sylvia said was tested for its popularity this past July in a poor, predominantly Haitian neighbourhood in the Dominican. "We brought 63 bags of the food, and each bag will serve 100 meals. We got to serve the people and we also tried the food ourselves. It's like a soup mix. People don't have any money to pay for food. They may only get one meal a day. We wanted to see if they liked it. They added some salami because it had no meat in it, and they liked it. It was very successful," she said. "It's really a threepronged effort. We went to the slums, we went to the hospital, and we went to the orphanage. We saw the need. Every year it got bigger. So now we usually go two to three times a year. It's a working holiday, but we get fulfilled from it." Last Thursday, the Rypstras just returned from a one-week trip to the Dominican, their fourth this year, said Sylvia. They brought donations for the 28 children at the orphanage. "It's a Haitian community in the Dominican Republic. The children are Haitian or partially Haitian, and they are discriminated against," said Sylvia. "We've been involved with this orphanage since August 2009." "It's just something Ed and I like to do. Our children are all grown," she said, adding that the couple has six grown children and three grandchildren. "Once you go to the orphanage, you fall in love with the kids. We're falling in love with what we're doing. It's our passion, I guess." "It's amazing how many donations we get just by word of mouth," she said. "That's how we've survived so far." She said they had $2400 in cash donations for FIREWOOD see page 9 Hope from out of the ashes of apple trees