Forage moving along nicely (about day 37 from emergence)

Forage for silage, 30 days after emergence

35 days after planting, this grain sorghum needs a drink

Deep planting Grain Sorghum a few weeks ago, lots of dust

Our Kabuli Chickpeas packed and ready for sale

Kabuli chickpea emerging from 15cm deep. Mighty effort.

Analysing Forage

This is Bernard, one of our farm team, learning how to operate our NIR forage analyser.

Some 2018 Photos, sorry for the long period without posts

Taking delivery of our new Krone baler from Rovic Africa

Forage Sorghum up and away, 14 days after planting

The Boys and I checking plant populations in Mung Beans

Busy Week

We started dry planting this week, we planted all the Green grams (Mung beans) plus half the Desi chickpeas.
Last night we had 30mm of rain and today at midday I dug up this Green Gram and found it had a small shoot after only 18 hours of moisture. (Well done little fella)
We will hopefully plant the remaining area of Desi and Kabuli chickpeas over the next week to 10 days depending on weather. You can click on the photo to get a better look.

Planting 2018 started

We started planting Mung beans this week.
We are planting into dry top soil, although we have good moisture from around 20 cm to 1 meter deep. Hopefully the long rains arrive in good time.  

We have had some deposits in the bank (Moisture bank)

As the graph shows, we have had some rain in late October and then a decent bit in the middle of November, these rains are know as the "Short Rains" they usually fall over the month of November.
The "Long Rains" fall from about the 20th of March to the 20th of May, not really long except by comparison to the short.
We received 49.5 mm for October which did little for our soil moisture although 155mm in November  has our soil moisture probe reading 37% or so at the moment.
Our saturated soil % is around 50%, with the "lower Readily Available Water" (LRAW or Wilting point) being an average of around 18% over all the soil depths.
In our soil type plants are able to extract down to 30% (LRAW) at 80 cm deep, whereas at 20cm the plants can use down to around 12% (LRAW).i.e deeper you go the harder it is for the plants to "pump" water up.
We are a good chance of filling up our soil moisture before March when we will plant our next crop given some more rain which can arrive anytime before then.  

Rainbow over our family chapel

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Wonderful few days at Sosian Lodge

                                                               Kids Camel Train

                                                          Jonny Barden enjoying a ride

                                                       Found this Leopard having a rest, quite amazing to see him up close.
 

Some photos of the Desi chickpeas before harvest

2017 major field day

We held our major field day yesterday, we had 223 people attend.
Annie and her team did a great job of catering for morning tea and lunch.
Our guest speakers did a great job as well as "team Ausquest" well done to you all.
We also recieved a totally unsolicited donation to our trials and field day operation from a farming family in central NSW, this funded our 2017 major field day and part of our trials for 2018.
My hope is that our field days provides a small spark inside those attending that opens up oportunity for themselves as well as others.

Desi Chickpeas looking well

Yellow Beans in the background looking "yellow"

Mung beans (green grams) in the foreground with some of our trials in the background.

NDVI imagery

We had the team from "Crop Nuts" out this week to do some NDVI images.
They "flew" one 425 ha field of Desi and Kabuli chickpeas.
They will present the images in poster for at our Agronomy field day coming up shortly.
Thanks to Nick from Hardi Kenya for providing the aircraft.

First field day using 100% Kamba language (Samson spoke)

We had 46 smallholder farmers visit today, great group, Ausquest's Samson did all the talking in the Kamba language.
We looked at our commercial chickpea crop then we visited our Admin managers crop of yellow beans.
Showing that it's possible to practice conservation farming on a 1 hectare field and produce great crops.
David's yellow beans look very good considering we have only recieved about 50% of our annual rainfall to date. 

Great visit yesterday from Strathmore Business School

Forage Sorghum X Sudan grass trials moving along

Fun on the Dam with Dogs and Junior Bardens

This may surprise possibly no one but two feral dogs in a canoe make for a very unstable experience. 

3 ha trial of Yellow beans nice and heathy

Chickpeas up and away

Mung Beans (Green Grams) looking nice

These Mung beans (Green Grams) sat for around 30 days while waiting for a germinating rain.
They are up very evenly across this 573 ha field.

2017 planting in progress

We started planting a week or so ago, running 24 hours with a fairly smooth run, sort of dry planting although we recieved 10 to 14mm last week which was neither your arm or your elbow. (Not dry but not really moist enough either)
Clouds building up each day and so Friday would be a great day for the long rains of 2017 to start, I have put my order in.