No, this is not a water storage

Progress on the foundations of our workshop have come to a halt, as can be seen from the picture, we have some issues to deal with, we have dug out one grain shed and workshop foundation so far. We have gone down to the gravel and will fill them back up with gravel so we have solid foundations to build on.
No big drama, we will just pump it out when the rains stop in about a month.
More rain this week, probably have had a total of 225mm on one part of our farming land while the other has had about 150mm(this is over the past month). On average (even though average does not exist in its pure form) we would expect another 100 to 150mm over the next 30 days. I am just about to drive over to our farm across the conservancy (about 8km) to see if there is any chance of planting later today. looks wet again later this week so I am very keen to get planting.
What we must remember is that once we hit June it is unlikely to rain and in July it almost never does.

James and Rugby

James played in a knockout type day on Saturday, they played 10's and came 2nd out of 6 teams.
The winners scored a try on full time and so it was a good final, our boy did very well. (although I would say that) he did do well, me being his dad aside.

Still Raining

Well, more rain this week, we would have had about 125mm in the last 20 days or so, to wet to plant at present. Planter ready to go, I have decided to plant on a Double skip configuration.
Our planter has an effective planting width of 9m with 12 rows at 750mm spacings. So if we double skip on these spacings we really only have a gap between the rows at 750mm and at 2.25m which is somewhere between single and double on 1m rows.
I have done this because once we get into June the rain will stop in 95% of years and so we will be grain filling from subsoil. What they call the short rains should start in late Oct/Nov and I am contemplating planting the other 600 hectares on the first short rains (Oct/Nov) as we will be carrying a decent amount of subsoil moisture forward from now.
Annie went to a Dawn service for ANZAC day help in Nairobi.
You should be able to enlarge any of the Photos on the blog by clicking on them.

Pre planting Spray

We are spraying today, and yesterday, it is still a bit wet to plant as we had some more rain over the past week, we have had about 40mm on one end and somewhere around 60 to 80mm on the other.
Still have not got rain gauges dotted around as I think they would "walk". Once we build our workshop which is still in the foundation phase we will be right to have more equipment on site.
Waiting, waiting to start planting, I have one small (I hope) GPS problem to solve and we will start planting as soon as it dry's out a bit.

The Rains are Here

Well today we had a nice storm, probably had about 30mm over an hour or so.

We had about 20 to 30 mm last week as well so we will get planting ASAP.

Four by Four Challenge

Last weekend the Conservancy hosted a fund raising event for wildlife conservation. Just under 2000 people came through the gate. I dont know exact numbers of cars competing, must have been about 30 to 40.

I had a funny trip a couple of weeks ago, I gave a a Masai herdsman a lift on the farm and after starting a conversation with him realized that the only common word we both could understand was Cow, try having a conversation with just Cow! Both of us persevered for a while then just gave up and sat in silence for the remainder of the drive.

Another Birthday

Grace had a great birthday, we had a special dinner at the lodge that is on the conservancy on which we live.

Grace had a new friend from school home for the weekend, her name is Megan and she comes from Tanzania. Grace has school friends from many East African countries. Its is a very rich environment for both James and Grace.

Annie's Birthday

We had drinks at sundown on the Polo ground just up from our house about a week ago, this photo shows us with some friends from the conservancy celebrating Annie's birthday.

The car in the back ground is a Ford model T or is it an A. My apologies to the car buffs for not knowing this.