Newsletter December 2014

The farm

Mike Peens is no longer with us working on the farm. We are grateful for all the hard work that he put in in the first year including putting up the fence round the farm - an excellent job; supervising the making of the dam - a difficult undertaking and well done; supervising the making of the irrigation towers and putting in the irrigation system. We wish him well for the future. We have had quite a few difficulties with some of the crops we have been growing. Some 80,000 cabbages were planted and I doubt if we have harvested even 500 as we have had a major infestation of a type of caterpillar. Even the sukuma wiki - a type of local cabbage and other varieties of the same family have also suffered greatly. We are trying to grow a variety of crops which are not affected by these problems and it seems that we can grow cucumber, okra, butternut squash, watermelon, onions and beans without major problems. We are cutting the workforce back to 5 from 17/18 after this week. The farm is currently being overseen by Abraham (as the farm is next to his house) and Oswaldi who has a lot of hands-on knowhow. There will be also Raphael, Jafet, Halima and a cook who will change from time to time and help in other ways. They need our prayers, that they will feel the farm is theirs, not merely a job. They are all 5 good workers. I (Steve) go out about 3 times a week to help in lots of different ways as well as in the decision making processes. The dam is full as we have had rain and filled it up from the river. At its current level drop rate (2 inches a day), it will last 3 months if we get no more rain. We don't know if this is due to a leak or evaporation.





Auszug aus Newsletter Ehepaar Street