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.