Back to Australia until January

Annie, James,Grace and I are off back to Australia to complete the school and crop year. We will be packing things up for the full time move in the middle of January.

Its been a busy five weeks here getting things moving and although things often don't happen as quickly as we may all like there is still good progress.

The 16 ha (40 acre) Research farm is sitting waiting to be developed and when we come back in January it will be high on the list. There is great potential to make a huge difference in the crop yields of the small holder's who just for some information can I am sure achieve much higher and more importantly for small farmers (1 to 5 acres) more yield stability from season to season. i.e avoid the feast/famine cycle.

Thankyou to you the readers of our blog for your interest, it is encouraging, I will give some less regular posts until January 15th when we return to Kenya although I will show some of our Australian crops and harvest as this may be of interest to those outside Australia.

An interesting thing is who has been reading this blog so far, there has to date been people in Russia, Uganda, Canada, US, UK, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa and of course Australia.(Blogger has a Stats page that shows me where the audience is coming from)

Can you smell Monkey Poo

I jumped in my ute today and drove up to our Shamba (farm) and noticed that I felt wet, those dirty monkeys had left a great deposit on the drivers seat.

I have now joined both Grace and James in the "not happy with moneys camp"

Annie and the Kids thought it a great joke. Very Funny!!!!!!

Birthday party at the on farm Polo ground at Sunset

We had a great small farm gathering for our new friend Tim's birthday.

Tim and Diane live about 100m from our house and are missionaries from Canada who have been in Kenya for over 25 years.

The Team helping us burn

How many people can you fit on one very small tractor? At Least ten it appears, we were burning off some country to help the clearing crew.

We are about to go out again this morning for another burn.

If any one thinks this photo was staged is was not, TIA (this is Africa)

Once again you can click on any photo to enlarge.

Caught in a Traffic Jam on the way home from town

Armour for tractors

We had a local fellow make a double thickness cover out of canvas for the front of the tractor as the thorns were scratching the paint.

Had a local air conditioner fellow out from Nairobi, he arrived with his gauges and gas bottle on his motor bike, he cost $44 to re gas our car.

Not bad for two hours travelling,gas and labour.

Monkeys still being a pain, getting into rubbish as well as one regular at daylight running around on the roof which is just black plastic on the underside and grass thatch on the outside.

James gets a haircut

Family in our new bed

Sunday Safari

We have our first ever Australian visitors here at present, from Dubbo of all places. It is great to have them here.

We took them on a tour of the farm and conservancy in the old land cruiser that has three hatches for wildlife viewing in the roof.

Today Monday, Annie, Grace, James and I had an interview at the school they will be attending,

all went well, if you click on any photos on this blog then they will display in a larger format.

Clearing in action

This photo is of some of the locals employed to clear the land. They are all happy it seems. Its friday today and I am going down to see them shortly. I am taking a couple of big boxes of biscuits to have with their lunch which will probably be a maize porridge and a cup of tea made on milk. The contractors have a cook employed each who feed their people.

The Soil on our Kenyan Shamba (farm)

Sorry for the lack of posts of late, yesterday Annie and I flew to have a look at a backhoe loader to buy in Eldoret.

It was to rough though and so we came home empty handed.

The clearing is coming along (slowly) and I will post a photo of some of the 60 to 80 locals clearing the land by hand as soon as I can.

We hope to visit the school where Grace and James will go next year early next week which should be interesting.

This morning I will be out checking out the clearing and talking to the head fellows who are managing the two clearing teams.

The international grain market appears to be going well and with the number of "issues" around the world in relation to weather/crops there appears some up side.

Our and The Mckay's farms at Condobolin are about to be advertised for auction and we expect an auction date of Mid Oct. The crops there look as good as last year and have stacks of subsoil moisture under them.

The landscape,in the dry season

You can Click on any photo to enlarge for more detail.

Sunday Lunch

We had a BBQ lunch out in the paddock, we were marking out blocks with the offsets for the clearing crew.

Someone asked in a comment on the rainfall here, it is about 500mm PA with about 440mm falling from Nov to May.

The soil type is what the locals call black cotton, it is a black soil that cracks and has smooth river type stone through the profile.

We get our new second hand Landcrusier ute tomorrow. It will be good not to have to borrow the conservancy's wheels anymore. They have been very generous to us.

Breaking New Ground

This Photo is of the first hour of preparation on the Kenyan farm.

The Plough is an Ennor 56disc offset manufactured by Craig Ennor in Australia.

His company did a great job of manufacturing and containerising this plough.

Our next door smallholder farmers, some of whom use cows to plough with were very interested in looking over the fence.

I had some fellows today looking disbelievingly up the 3km dead straight runs.

Daniel from Sprayer Barn back in Australia was and still is a great help with the auto steer.

The Trimble RTK system is running well.

Another note on the plough, Craig added some nice big "Made in Australia" decals on the plough. Nice

Our New House

This Photo is of the house that we will be living in through most if not all next year. We have set it up and it is very comfortable.

Annie has done her thing again and has made a great home.

It has a thatched roof made from grass from the farm.

The upstairs windows you can see are in our bathroom with our bath longways looking outside.

Only problem is we rely on solar hot water up there and it is very overcast at this time of year.

The Kids rooms are downstairs with Annie and my room upstairs.

We are currently trying to catch a big black rat that keeps eating the soap. He is a worthy opponent. See how we go tonight.

Annie and Grace at school in Kenya

Annie and Grace hard at work, we have just found a work ute, a 2004 landcruiser for 2.1million kenyan shillings, thats about $23,000 Aussie dollars.

We had a thankyou BBQ for the workers on the conservancy that have been helping us put our gear together.

We ended up with 60 to 70 people on friday evening.

Every one had a great time and for people who earn about $4 per day a sausage sizzle was something special.

Phil Tilly the manager of the conservancy said at the thankyou BBQ that he did'nt know he had that many employed on the conservancy.

Our son James with a Lion on the farm, don't be fooled by the smile on his face, the lion had just roared and scared him spitless.

These Lions are 100% wild and are being protected from cattle farmers who are not that happy with their cattle being lion fodder.

To be through a chain wire fence from a Lion who is very vocal about wanting to eat you is very unnerving. I had goose bumps 10mm high, Annie Grace,Hannah, Jake and I were well behind James.

Jake proved himself to be a Lion whisperer, he spoke to the Lions and they calmed down. I still think they would have eaten him though.

Lucy, rugged but strong

This is me with "Lucy", the conservancies manager Phil Tilly who is an Aussie allowed me to use his beloved for a while until I found some wheels.Phil and his wife Tim have been wonderful to us all.

Today I caught up on emails and continued working on getting the tractor and guidance ready to go. Our Ennor plough is hopefully being released from port tomorrow and so Wednesday should see us putting it together.

Our 12 year old daughter Grace set up a washing machine box with a stick and string with a banana as bait. She hid behind a fence and waited and waited,she went inside the house for two minutes and when she returned she saw her monkey escaping with the Banana.

At this she charged out the gate with a 50cm machete vowing revenge upon the cheeky monkey.

Our Daughter Hannah and Jake Lewis arrived a few days ago. It is great to have them both here.

Hannah is on her gap year and its great to have all the family here to start our African life.

Anyway I must post this as the generator gets turned off at 10.30pm and as we have no back up system yet all things electrical cease to operate. i.e internet.

Annie,James,Grace,Kelly and Mootoa with the tractor fresh out of the container

Two new Kenyan friends

Gear arrives in Kenya

Well,we are here in Kenya for a month or so,our main plan is to put the machinery together and start developing the land, show James and Grace where they will be going to school and generally get things organised so that in Jan 2012 it will wont be as crazy.

As per the photos we had some help from a couple of great Kenyan fellows to put the tractor back together.

We are settled into our house which is a two story african style place, we have power from about 8.30am to 10.30pm with a few bits missing in the middle.

We have been welcomed very warmly and we are all busy.

During the week we bought, a 1999 Toyota Prado,we hope to find a ute/pickup next week.

There are still 30 Kenyan fellows clearing the land we will be framing,we plan to ramp it up to close to 100 next week. It is taking a lot longer than I had hoped.

James is keeping the fire going that keeps us in hot water,we will employ a gardener/helper soon. (James say's the sooner the better)

Grace has made friends with some african girls who live on the conservancy, she took some books to their house and read to them.She is a teacher like her mum.

We have just got the internet on last evening and so I can now update this blog.

Annie has made the house very comfortable and is very happy to have a 4w drive car, she has always wanted one although I don't think she thought she would have to move to Kenya to get one.

Our plough from Australia is in a container at Port in Kenya, I hope to have it by Tuesday and put it together and get it working ASAP.

Containers Arrive In Kenya

Well, two of the three shipping containers have arrived in Kenya on farm. One left on the water (I hope).

We are all about to head to Kenya in the next three days, lots of work to do there. Assemble machinery and get into developing the farm.

I will post some photos once we arrive and start.

The Move to Kenya Begins

Well it's really happening, yesterday the three containers that we have prepared for our new Kenyan farm left for port in Australia.

Annie, Hannah,James,Grace and I are planning on being in Kenya in August when the containers arrive there.

We will put the tractor and plough back together and start developing the 900 hectares or so that we will be farming.

We are still planting our winter crop here in Australia at present, its the end of May and I would like to be finished planting although anyone who is in agriculture knows it isn't a perfect world, we will hopefully be finished by the end of the first week in June.

Our Kenyan company is up and running, lots of brain work involved in setting up in another country.