Fire at the farm

Well, Annie and I had just dropped the kids at school on Monday and we had a phone call that a fire was going hard on the conservancy.

After about six hours with 70men and Annie plus the tractor and plough we finally stopped it.

Not before about 2000acres or so of country was burnt out.

One of the magnificent houses came within seconds of being burnt. A good result from what could have been a disaster.

It burnt the full 16 hectares of the research farm site which I would not have done although in some ways will help in developing the site.

Ploughing New land

I took this photo while I was ploughing the other morning. I have been starting early and then handing over to one of our team, his name is Francis his father is Masi and his mum is a Kikuya. (he is tall) My spelling is Im sure not right.

James (not james our son) is filling the tires of the tractor with water at the moment as we are having trouble getting the power to the ground and we will run our first night shift tonight I hope.

As you can see I have been just running on raw GPS as it is fine for ploughing and I don't have to worry about the base walking during the night.

I was towards the top of our paddock/field and as you can see the altitude is 1660m there would be about a 40m fall over about 5km so there is a gentle slope. Note the Latitude at 1 degree.

I think this says it all

Road Grading

This is the old grader of a contractor we have working. They have done 350hours so far, sounds a lot although there is about 30km of roads/Fence lines to build.

We still have a lot to do as we are laying 5m by 100mm of gravel over about 28km.

Thats a vast amount of Gravel although in the next 30/40 days our aim is a more modest 8km then we need to build a 2.1m wildlife fence ASAP. We have decided to just grow 400hectare this season as to gravel (Murum) and fence it all is undoable.

Progress so far

Well, this morning I was out and about just on light and on the way to the tractor and plough I saw Wilder beasts, Warthogs, Antelope of various kinds and five Jackals before I reached the paddock.

The clearing crew have finished and I have kept 15 of the fellows on to do a final check for Whistling thorn stumps etc.

Lots of activity on the machinery front with a contractor having a road grader and 14t wheel loader working as well as our exervator plus our tractor ploughing plus the conservancy has one of their tractors helping as well.

It is almost 10.30pm and Annie is fast asleep beside me in bed, the wonders of wireless. There is a Wilder beast just outside making a racket. He sounds like he is in our yard although I don't think they could get through the fence.

They moo a little bit like a cow.

We have ploughed about 100ha in the past three days which doesn't sound much although we are only able to plough at 7km as I don't know whether it is the altitude making some of the tractors horses a bit short of breath or if as I suspect it is just heavy pulling.

I trained Francis who is one of our team yesterday on the tractor and I think the auto steer has him still in disbelief. He is going well with it which is great.

Those Crafty Monkeys

The Monkeys have been giving us a workout, last weekend we were all in our lounge room talking to Hannah and Jake in Perth on Skype when Annie noticed out of the corner of her eye a Monkeys sitting in the next room beside the fruit bowl with an apple in each hand. He took off up the stairs dropping one apple as he left and out an open upstairs window. Not content with that he sat in a tree out side our window and enjoyed the apple. Lesson 89 in Kenya "don't leave even up stairs window open" I don't know who got the biggest fright, us or him.

The Picture is one I took this morning in our outside shower. James has a worm farm in a bucket in there with kitchen scraps and the Monkeys were having a nice breakfast until they were found out.

Our New life begins

Well, I apologize for the extended delay in posting this first post. We have now been in Kenya for just over two weeks although it seems like a lot longer with every thing that has needed to happen.

Grace and james have had two full weeks at school, they board During the week even though the school is only 55km from home. It can take between 1 to 2 hours one way as we have some crazy traffic and roads here.

James has been fishing here in a dam on the conservancy on weekends and catching lots of Talarpia which are an excellent eating fish.

Annie has been busy making our house a home as per the Photo of Annie and Alex our Garderner come painter painting the kids rooms.

We have employed three men over the past week to help with the development phase and most probably will stay on after that.

I flew down and back to Mombassa (the port city) during the week as well to look a Truck, we have about 13,000 to 15,000 cubic meters of Gravel or Murrum as the locals call it to dig and cart onto our roads/fencelines to give us all weather access. We will then use the truck to cart grain direct to Millers in Nairobi which is only 30km away. Freight in Kenya is as if not more expensive than Australia which seems odd to me.

The clearing crew have just finished yesterday, we gave them a cow as a cut out/appreciation gift and Grace and I went down at 11am Sunday morning (today) and they had eaten the lot, Considering it arrived on the hoof at 6pm on Saturday they did not muck about. They were very happy today.

The container with our precision planter in it will hopefully arrive at Mombassa port shortly as we have some time pressure to make things happen.

I hope to plant our first crop by mid March although we have much to do before then.

Last days in Australia

Well time in ticking, we are in Perth on our way to Kenya, our oldest daughter is starting Uni in Perth doing Biomedical science and we are just settling her in.

The clearing in Kenya has progressed well from all reports, we will be straight into it when we arrive, we are aiming to plant about 1000acres in Feb/March, lots to do before then.

It has been a trying season in Australia and quite disheartening to finnish our Australian time with a weather damaged harvest.

Annie, James, Grace and I are all very expectant about our new life in Kenya, James and Grace start school next week in Nairobi and will attend the same school which will be good as they weekly board and Grace has never done that, James is an old hand though and it will be great to know he is there for his little sister.

Anyway, I will post the next post from Kenya when we get established, hopefully our internet connection is still operating at our home. Time will tell.