Vegetable Patch

setting up the pump to fill our water tank

Just in case I was in danger of running out of things to do, a friend and I have decided to start a small project growing vegetables. I'm tired of the thought of living on a farm and having to buy in all of our vegetables, it can't be that hard to grow your own? right? well, it depends who you ask... So far everyone has an opinion, mostly consisting of variations on "it'll never work". Problems these cynics cite include: bad water / soil / too much sun etc. etc.

Luckily we weren't too drawn in by this negativity and have tried to follow the philosophy of 'its worth a try'. Knowing that it possibly might not work has also meant we are doing some experimenting, using different fertilisers (cow manure and  industrial stuff) and are watering some by hand and some with a home made drip irrigation system. Aptly called drip irrigation as every join / bend / even straight piece just drips the whole time from leaks as the pipe is all salvaged scrap pieces held together with glue, insulation tape and binding wire! However the upside of this is it hasn't cost a lot of money (we have had to buy some fittings) so we won't be going bankrupt just yet.

Our tap water on the farm comes from a borehole underground and is barely drinkable let lone good enough for watering plants. To solve this we have set up a water tank - raised on a stand to create pressure - and plan to pump water from a small lake (see photo above) filled with rain water into the tank. We're almost there but need some more fittings to make it work. The first time we attempted it, all the pipes jumped off at the connections and we got a bit wet...

We have already planted some chilli's, cabbages and beans and have made a small herb garden as well, with basil and a few other things

Chilli rows with water tank in background

Herb Garden

when cops drive...drunk

Local Police Car

There I was out for my sunday morning drive at 7am, when I noticed something odd in a field as I drove past. "This isn't meant to be here" I thought, upon closer inspection I saw that it was the local police car. Obviously they'd had a few too many drinks on the Saturday night and swerved off the road. It doesn't look like anyone was badly hurt, but there goes the local cops' budget for the year...

new arrival

Our new puppy - ShenDane

Unfortunately my favourite dog Levi passed away from what might have been a snake bite a few days ago. Shendane (he's a great dane from the Shengaan tribe) has been here for a month or so now, hence deserves to get his photo online!

 

Snouted Cobra - can you see him on the end of the stick?

Caught this little guy this morning on the path outside my house.

wholesale

 

Sophisticated Establishment - one of my new bread customers

Check out those wagon wheels, what a shop! well its more like a little bar actually or "Baraka" as they call them here.

After months of slogging away for more sales I've changed direction and moved away from trying to sell the odd bread here and there 'retail' and tried to find some wholesale buyers. So far so good and I now have 3 or 4 regular customers who take approx. 30 breads each. Of course, to enable them to make a mark up I've had to drop my price by 20% but for the number they are buying I think its worth it for now. My profit margin is slimmer but hopefully the volumes will make up for it. I'll let you know how it progresses over the coming weeks but for now all seems well :)

Orphanage

The orphanage - almost complete

I thought I'd give a mention to another one of the projects we currently have under way here. The Alulamile Children's Village. A place to provide a home, love and care to children orphaned in our surrounding community.

Construction is almost complete (when are builders ever  on time!?) but we are still outstanding some materials so I spent the whole of the afternoon yesterday drafting an appeal letter with photo's to show to local building suppliers in a hope of receiving donations that can see us through to completion.

Today some of my colleagues are off to Maputo to see if they can make any headway in getting the outstanding materials. I wish them luck! and hope they return with the car overloaded!

 

the worst 4 x 4 x far

 

another happy customer

Following last weeks flour theft episode (see previous post) I have been behind on stock of ingredients. Today I have a new regular customer - see pic above, a shopkeeper - who wants 30 breads. Great so make him the breads! If only it was that simple. With no flour today and stock only due in tonight from Maputo I have sent a friend off to buy some flour in the local town (at an extortionate rate). My friends car got a flat tyre this morning so he took the Land Rover.

Not 5 minutes later I get a call: "the bottom has just fallen out of the car!".

Great! that's one car in Maputo, one with a flat tyre and the other along the way with the drive-shaft sitting on the road... This could be an interesting day. I have to try and get the car rescued first, then worry about how I'll get hold of some flour...

rice factory

 

Local Rice processing Factory 

The above pic shows the interior of the local rice processing factory, full of bags of seed and fertiliser at the moment as you can see. My phone has a program that is supposed to 'stitch' together multiple photos into a 'panorama' view that's why the quality doesn't look too great. You can see the machine that actually separates the rice from its husk on the middle right of the photo. Its actually pretty small, but in a larger industrial operation the machines take up the whole floor space of huge warehouses.