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. 

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!

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. 

Thanksgiving and More Planting by Cory

 Since we are in the southern hemisphere, it was like the last week of May here for Thanksgiving week.

The 2nd half of November was busy  planting corn and close to 50 acres was planted.

Some risk exists planting this early in that the rains could be sparse. 

The yield potential is higher this way and less risk if rains end early. 

It is already December and last year rains ended Jan. 20, causing almost all the crops to fail. 

We enjoyed 2 inches of rain right after Thanksgiving so the corn should all germinate now and be off to a good start.

There is plenty of hand labor available.

This income is very welcome during a year when many do not have money to buy enough food.

Rented oxen teams do the heavier work of making the planting trenches and most of the seed covering.

Next week we plan to prepare some fields for soybeans and sunflower.

Many thanks to Patrick and the church district overseer for organizing the day labor.

There is also a man and his dog chasing quail or partridge-like birds at dawn and dusk as they like to pull up the young corn plants and eat the soft seed.

We enjoyed celebrating Thanksgiving with the teachers, Patrick and Austin, a Bible student who also teaches Fritz Tonga, and his wife.

The night included a short devotional, a video explaining the history of Thanksgiving and each shared about something we are thankful for.

Rev. Samson's wife, who works at the Jembo Hospital reported that a recent survey of 1,400 children in this area only found 5 with malnutrition and only one of those was severe.

This was much lower than anticipated due to the drought.

The area north of Livingstone had a slightly better harvest than this area but famine is worse there now.

We are thankful the Jembo Agriculture Project is now on the Global Partners Website:Jembo Agriculture Project to help with costs getting the farming established while resources are scarce.

The average small farmer in Zambia gets about 50 bushels per acre of corn but good seed has the potential to yield 200 or more bushels.

In many areas the soil is too acid, like the reddish-brown soil in this Jembo field (pH 4.5) but not many people apply lime to reduce the acidity.

Corn will also need a lot of nitrogen fertilizer mid-season.

Mixing fertilizers

We will soon be buying soybean seeds, which are expensive but soybean and sunflower don't require much fertilizer.

Planting Season by Cory

November 9

The soil test showed a need on most of the fields for dolomitic lime to provide calcium and magnesium and to reduce the acidity of the soil. 

We aren't prepared to apply the recommended thousand pounds per acre but could handle about 200 pounds per acre spread in the rip lines where the rows of corn will be planted.

The weekend after the lime spreading we had good rains but lightning burned out the utility part of the campus water pump.

We installed the new pump we planned to install in the new borehole but it seems to be defective on utility power and it has given many maintenance challenges.

It can pump now with solar power so we have water when there is sun.

It has not worked well to fill the storage tank so everyone on the campus, including us heads to a pipe between our house and Rev. Benson's to fill buckets with water when it is pumping. 

Tuesday or Wednesday would have been good for the tractors to plant but the farm institute was busy with their inauguration celebration of the new government supplied equipment and promoting its use for small farmers.

It was a long program with some traditional dances and talks by the seed companies, and a nice mid afternoon lunch at the end.

By the time the the tractors were ready to plant or fields they found the planter didn't dig deep enough in fields that had dried.

So we wait for rain again.

In the meantime we did some hand planting. 

28 people worked close to 6 hours to slightly deepen the rip lines, plant seed and fertilizer and cover the seed on 3.3 acres.

If the workers had long handle hoes it would have been much easier work.

So today we had 2 pair of oxen open planting furrows and they did 4.4 acres in 4 hours.

They will work again tomorrow and then the planters will be hired along with 4 teams of oxen to cover the seed.

Patrick and Cory planted fruit trees in the orchard to fill in where trees, mostly avocados, had died during the past two years.