Monday, March 3, 2025

Jembo Ag. Update by Cory

 

Patrick has done excellent work managing all of the agricultural work while we were away.

Rains were good and it seems that the early dry weather preserved soil fertility so when good rains arrived the crops developed rapidly without much added fertilizer.

Weeds also grew very fast, requiring big work crews. But it was a big help to the workers during this difficult year after the drought, helping the students and neighbors, many of them church members to earn some money.

Beans in the experimental fruit orchard.

Cory is learning about corn and bean farming and the fertilizer and herbicide use.

As he learns he passes along the knowledge to Rev. Patrick and the current students and they teach Cory their local experience.

This education should improve their crops for years to come and prevent wasting resources.

Part of the soybean field that we planted along with fruit
 trees this spring.
One mango tree can just be seen just below the middle of the photo.


Principal Roy told us that even though the rains should be tapering off soon that the cooling weather as Zambia transitions from summer to fall will help the crops continue to progress even with less rain. 



One surprise was how well peanuts did next to some beans that mostly failed.

A Bible student with his corn field, just at the juicy corn on the cob stage.

It is not sweet corn but still good.

Additional items being harvested from student and staff gardens include: greens, okra, beans, squash.


Tuesday, February 25, 2025

Back from Asia

 I know that we flew back on Monday night over a week ago


and I've been silent.

Apparently my immune system decided that I overworked it with all the travels and let a cold virus tag along for the return trip to Zambia. 

Thankful for the daily rains [none yet today] but those and a cold tend to give me headaches, and my energy/motivation levels dropped very low on our return.

We did get unpacked, things put away, some laundry done, and Cory's been working on office work.

Fritz enjoyed friends, two baby kittens in his room, and playing soccer with the Bible College guys this week.

So I've spent time resting, thinking, and praying. 

And we returned to our school work this week.

My prayer list now includes more specific names, places, and items from our trip.

I'll be honest with you- I didn't 100% want to go on this trip.

My list of things that were on the 'con' side about such a trip included:


  • 14 flights: one was canceled = 7 hour taxi drive. 
  • 10 immigration points: a lot of paperwork, visas, standing in line, possible issues.
  • Travel in 5 countries: taxis, roads, language barriers, getting to airports on time...2 flat tires, 1 breakdown, no being late for airports
  • SPICY Food! Yes, it was spicy. I managed at every meal to eat something. Thankful for fruit. Understanding hosts who tried to help me out. 
  • Possibility of getting sick. Only on one flight from something I ate-thankful for down time the next morning, nice bathrooms, and medications. 
  • Loosing items. Lost a couple items that were found/ returned including my nice cloth bag that the laundry folks said "Flew away" in Cambodia but it returned the next morning. One item we did misplace early on but overall that was pretty good for us. 

  • Having major stress moments that escalated to family conflict. Face it traveling unknowns don't always bring out the best, plus time changes, sleeping on planes, cultural stress, language barriers, nothing 'normal', sitting in on agricultural talks, expectations of self and others, different beds...all for 28 days. PRAISE the LORD we did very well. Thank you for the prayers!
  • Missing school for a month-but we learned a lot so we'll just count it.
  • Leaving Patrick to deal with the cat. She did fine and had 2 kittens the week before our return.
I jokingly called this our Triple A trip = Amazing Asian Adventure. And it fully lived up to the name.

We learned a lot. 

Several times I just smiled and told the Lord 'wow'.

 I can hardly believe the life and blessings that I'm experiencing. 

Even the tiger-we saw her from across a lake. Yes, you could tell it was a big cat and with the telephoto lens could see stripes. 


I thanked the Lord for the sighting while being a bit disappointed while we were driving back toward the national park gate. 

Then we took a fork in the road, saw some deer, then 2 wild dogs in the road!

We still haven't seen African wild dogs-and it was unusual that these were not with the pack.

Onward, we went to where there were a few jeeps parked and we watched a female tiger just relaxing in the shade. 

Then after a while with our jeep turned around she started to move.

We and many others got to watch her head for a small water pond, take a dip, shake off, walk down the road and through the jungle a few times! 

We got so close that the jeep had to move a couple times. 


Thankful for our 'real' camera as cell phones were collected and locked up before the ride. 

So many blessings. 

Our Creator is amazing. His world so complex and fascinating.

I'm so very thankful to have met wonderful people and heard a bit of their stories and dreams.

I'm grateful for all the memories we made together with Fritz.



Sunday, January 12, 2025

Planting Trees and Field Visit by Cory

 

We have been busy planting soybeans, beans and fruit trees, to extend the demonstration fruit grove.

Mangos survived and most of them produced well even in the worst drought in100 years, so we are planting mango with an alternate fruit every other tree except in rocky or poor drainage areas.

The alternate fruits are mostly avocado and some apple.



Planting mango and avocado seeds and also some trees from the nursery





Planting beans between the older demonstration fruit trees.



Small apple that didn't get pollinated (was seedless) but tasted good.



Friday Kris and I toured the Jembo fields with Patrick.

This first planted field had to be plowed and replanted due to very poor germination from dry weather.



Only the late planted fields had very good germination but there is a high risk of failure if rains end early.

The tractors have not been available so it is good that local labor is abundant and low cost, at least for this year.




Some of the gaps in the corn have been planted to sunflower, which is normally planted later than corn.









At least soil fertility and nitrogen levels look good so it looks like we won't have much fertilizer cost.

Kris: This week we are looking forward to international visitors coming from the International Conference of Wesleyan Churches held in South Africa this weekend.

Fritz and I will do our last week of school for the month as on Jan 22 we head out for our Amazing Asian Adventure-where lots of learning will take place, just not from text books.

We continue to work through the long to-do list: getting paperwork for our anti-malaria medications [just getting them took a lot of steps and a lot of Mrs. Samson's time], making copies of paper-work to go; on-line applications for visas, lining up rides [thankfully all hotels are booked], working on what-to-pack lists, watching videos so we know what to expect, do's and don'ts. 

We also will be preparing folks here to take care of the trees, fields, plants, plant nursery, house, truck, and cat. 

Thank you if you prayed for Anna who's dealing with the fires in California. She's doing ok. Finding places to stay with friends. This next week classes will be on-line so: starts her last term; one last final from last term; and a job interview. 

Sunday, December 29, 2024

Christmas

Angel appearing to the shephards

We celebrated Christmas at the Jembo Church.

Start time wasn't announced but a teacher told us probably 9 or 9:30.

Cory was the 2nd to arrive at 9:25 and music started at 10. Service started about 10:30.

There was a skit of the Christmas Story and for the sermon time the church was divided into 3 groups with the assignment to study 20 minutes either how Chrismas relates to love or judgement or righteousness. And then to have one appointed from the group present to the church. 

 Service went until about 2:30, when lunch was served with a choice of chicken or pork, broth, cooked cabbage and the staple Zambian food "nshima", which is plain, thick corn mush.

December is a very busy month in Zambia, mainly because most people farm and are busy preparing fields, planting and weeding.

On good soil, weeds can double size every few days, it seems like every day in our garden!

But young leaves of amaranth (pigweed) is good cooked like spinach when it is growing fast.

We finished planting corn Friday, there were 15 oxen teams working that day, some just plowing to control weeds.

Photo of a field that will extend the fruit grove, being planted to soybean.

Next we can plant mangos, avocado and maybe some other fruit trees.

Soybeans  and regular beans are also going between the older fruit trees.

Some planted no-till and some areas need ridges to help keep rainwater in the field.



With rains being less than normal this year for most of southern Africa, we should probably be planting a lot more dry beans, which mature early and get a good market price.


Termites in our living room!

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Re-Planting and plans

Plums
A year like this year reminds me how I like growing fruit trees more than most other crops.

The rain after Thanksgiving was followed by hot sun and very low humidity.

It dried the fields so fast the hard crust prevented most of the corn germination.

More rains fell in areas around us but we didn't get any until Dec. 17.

Most of southern Africa is drier than normal this year and we are in an area (between 4 & 5 on the map) of abnormal heat and abnormal dryness.

We remain thankful for all those praying for areas experiencing drought. 

It is looking greener all around and we saw our first chameleon of the year just last week. 


We have been busy replanting some of the fields.

Another good rain the 20th but lightning took out the utility power part of the water pump again and only the solar part works.

I suspect having the control box in a house a few hundred feet from the well is at least part of the problem so maybe we can find a "two wire" pump like we had in Haiti that never had problems with all the lightning.

We are trying a hand - push planter/fertilizer that allows for zero till soybeans around the young fruit trees.

It works well for the soybeans (Except that I am too tall) and should be a fast way to plant corn with better placement of fertilizer than using oxen to open furrows and a second pass to cover seed and fertilizer. 

Due to the poor rain, the oxen-covered seed did better than seed covered by people using hoes.



A dug up corn seed that was trapped and twisted under hard soil crust - a risk we didn't know about for the soil here in drier than normal weather.


What a difference a week makes.

Last Sunday and this Sunday, a small patch of early corn that was mostly eaten by cattle and replanted and not watered as much as it needed.

The regular squash died but Italian type (Lagenaria) recovered.






Dragon fruit/Pitaya first bloom but was water stressed or needed a pollinator and didn't set fruit.

Fritz and Kris finished up school for 2024 on this week Wed. They plan to take a couple weeks off and start again Jan. 7th.

One month from now on Jan. 22 we will be leaving Zambia for a 28 day trip to visit 3 agricultural projects: Indonesia, Cambodia, and India. 

This past week we worked on plans: international tickets, 2 domestic flights on the Indonesian side of the island of Borneo [this took Cory working on-off for days due to booking and credit card issues], hotel rooms, plans with leaders. 

Should be an adventure! Now we are working on getting needed anti-malaria medications and needed paperwork to bring it with us into the various countries. 


Golden Delicious Apples
We plan to celebrate Christmas on Wed. by attending church with the rest of the Jembo congregation. 

It remains to be seen what the shared meal will consist of as many families had not yet paid for their meal as of worship time this morning.

I don't know that I'll ever get used to celebrating Christmas in the summer-even if we would live in the Southern Hemisphere for decades. 

I think our childhood firmly engrained the idea that Christmas should be cold.