Sorghum Growth Stage Very Uneven

The top photo had earlier rain than the bottom photo,the germinating rain was very uneven across the 620ha of sorghum so we have a large difference. Some of the smaller plants suffered some waterlogging, wait and see how it recovers.

Barley Growing Well

The barley is looking good, the individual plant (top photo) which was the first plant I pulled out had 40 tillers, the bottom photo has my boot in the middle of the 75cm row (somewhere). The barley was dry planted in late Oct and germinated on the 4th of Nov. This crop is 49 days since germination.

Spray Pattern at 10 litres per ha by Air

This is some water sensitive paper that I attached to a leaf of sorghum while applying some fungicide by air. I should have put a reference item like a match stick in the photo. The water sensitive paper is about 6cm by 3cm.

Spray Plane Landing

110mm of rain over the past 10 days

Everyone though the short rains had finished then we had around 110mm in Dec so far, getting a bit wet in the sorghum on top of a full profile of moisture. Its very wet, as the photo shows it was a dam filler which is good for the 2000 tilapia fish we stocked in this dam, it was pretty low prior to this rain. 

Removing some Twiga from the Sorghum

 

 

I found these fellows wandering around our field yesterday afternoon, we have a fence we are working on at present and the giraffe must have taken a wrong turn.

192 People weeding Nutgrass

We have had locals doing some weeding, it works out costly enough per ha, although lots of employment. If you click on the Photo you can see a bit better.

Trials up (7th Dec)

 

Sorghum up and away (1st Dec)

I took this photo on the 1st of December, the rain was a bit inconsistent across the 600 odd hectare field. So we have some just up and some a little more advanced.
 

Wheat Harvest in Australia

I returned to Australia for most of November, the photo above is of harvesting what may be the last crop I ever grow in Australia, although you should never say never.
Also loaded a container with spare parts and cleaned up a lot of lose ends, my Dad particularly was a tremendous help, I would have needed two months without his help, thank you also to my Brother Craig and my Mum.

Planting Sorhum Dry

The short rains should be not far away and so we started planting this week, we planted about half the 650ha although we have to wait until Monday for more fertilizer to be delivered, it was held up at port.
I am planting at 60,000 seeds per ha hoping for about 45,000 established plants per ha. (4.5 per square meter) This equates to around 2.2kg of seed per ha.
The photos show the residue from the previous crop, the profile is full although it has not rained for over 4 months and so the top is dry.
When what is known as the short rains come hopefully in November they are as it says usually short so you really want the crop in the ground.
On Average if there is such a thing as average November receives around 100mm for the month, that could be between 50mm and 200mm. Wait and see.
 

Office taking shape

Some office furniture being made on site, I bough the rough sawn timber from a sawmill and have a Fondee (tradesman) working on it.

Wow that is a hole

An Aardvark had renovated his home while the crop was growing. The actual entry hole is just in front of James on the above photo.
Unknown to us was an underground cavern (maybe living room) the harvester broke through and bottomed out and there was still 200mm of clear space under the wheel when it came to rest.

Bagging Sorghum

This is the first truckload of bagged grain I have ever delivered, Samson, Robert, Gideon, Patrick and a fellow who came with the truck loaded 27t on board the truck.(hard work)
Patrick who is a casual said to me after loading that his energy had "left him", we now just get 10 outside casuals to load each truck. For the Aussies, excluding the bags which are provided by the end user, it cost about 10 bob (Kenyan shillings) to fill and sew the bags and another 10 bob to load on the truck.
This is about $2.50  per t so it is not such a big expense, just takes some coordination.

John's Birthday

Terror Attack in Nairobi

It is very somber here in Kenya at present, the attack by these deluded people on the shopping center shows just that they are deluded people.

Military targets can be understood to some degree, shooting small children??? they have no cause and will die for nothing. They think they will be martyrs when killed, they will only be remembered as poor sick individuals who has so little imagination and purpose that all they can do with their life if use it to kill kids and their mums.

I am only a new boy to Kenya although what I do know about them is this type thing will not weaken Kenyan's, just the opposite.

I would love to send a message to these individuals "You have wasted you lives for nothing"

All our family are fine, Annie and the kids have sat in the Art Café coffee shop on a number of occasions and had lunch when at Westgate shopping center, fortunately they were not in town on Saturday.Others were not so fortunate.





 

Two boys playing

John and Wiz were "helping" with some concreting.

Zebra's and Harvest

 The sorghum is finally ready to harvest, if you click on the photo you will see a mob of Zebra that I flushed out. I knew there were two in the crop, turns out some of their friends were in there to.
More on the harvest, only to say the cold weather (6 to 8 deg C overnight lows, best guess) in July has had a devastating effect on the pollination thus grain fill, I knew it was affected although it is not good. Great quality grain, just not much of it.
More on this later.

 

 

Sorghum Almost Ready

We sprayed out the sorghum by air on Thursday

Finally The Big Barley Harvest

It would be hard to believe how much trouble harvesting 1 ha of barley could be

 

Above is what happens when a bolt falls out of the sieves.

You can take the Aussie out of Australia but you cannot keep him off a Dozer

Andrew Frost spent an enjoyable hour so on Phil Tilley's pride and joy (D5LGP), our four Australian visitors left to return home yesterday, it was great to have them stay.

Some Trials Hand Harvested

 We cut the field peas off with garden shears and just rolled them up. Notice the cracks in the soil, it used the soil water up well. I think it has been 12 weeks with out rain now. Notice the Canola in the foreground, it died.

 Hand harvesting the Field Pea trials, 52.2kg takes a while. We planted 2.2 kg of seed. Two Australian friends, Andrew Frost and Geoff O'Neil were a good help.

The field peas yielded 1.69t ha on the 350mm spacing and 1.46t ha on the 750mm spacing.
We hand harvested some barley and it yielded 3.25t ha. We will machine harvest the rest on Monday.

Trials

The Trials are showing up some interesting things, the Canola has almost died, the field peas look good, the wheat looks like about 2t ha and the red sorghum is only just filling.

We will hand harvest the Field peas this week and hand harvest our trial area of the Barley to see the ratio of green weight at full grain to dry harvested weight.

I will post the results when they are done.
 

Sorghum looking OK

This is the Red sorghum with the white in the background. (click to get a better view)

Birhday Party at the Orphanage

 We had a great evening with the Kids, John and Wiz loved seeing their old friends, lots of laughing and playing. This Picture is Grace, James and Susan (James Girl) organizing something?

Barley almost ready to Harvest

We should harvest the barley next week, we will hand harvest our trial parts, then machine harvest the rest. (the whole 1 ha trial, wow that should take about 6 or 7 minutes with the Case.

Camp Blue Sky

Gracie and Maddie (visiting from Australia) spent 6 days at a summer camp called Camp Blue Sky, they had the best time, I wished I had been able to go. There was about 170 young people there and is run very well. Grace said she will be there next year for sure.

Boys, Sorghum and Maize

John, Wiz and I picked some green maize this afternoon, Wiz unwrapped them as John and I drove home.

Another Field Day

No photo's as I just forgot to take any, we had a group of extension Ag officers who work with smallholders from a few hundred km away come and I gave them the 101 on black soils in low rainfall situations,ect.

I decided to make this field day a bit interactive and so we had one crew dig a soil pit, only 600mm deep to have a look at how much water is left in the top 600mm as well as root growth ect.
The others cut and harvested Barley and Sorghum side by side (adjacent rows planted same day)

We measured the green material and if my math's is correct there is 24,000kg per ha of material (cut 100mm from ground level) in the sorghum and 20,400kg in the barley.
My gut feel is that both the sorghum and Barley would be between 30% to 40% dry matter and that the dry grain yield should be about 60% of that dry matter.

Stuart's Quick Math (I borrowed this term from my friend Steve)

Sorghum 24,000kg ha (wet weight) * 35% = 8400kg of Dry matter * 60% = 5040kg ha grain ha

Barley 20,400kg ha (wet weight) * 35% = 7140kg of Dry matter * 60% = 4284kg ha grain yield

The next stage of this trial will be to hand harvest when the grain is dry the rows beside the green harvested ones and check what the relationship is between the wet (silage) weight and final grain yield. It will also be very interesting to see the comparison between the Barley and Sorghum that were planted the same day side by side.

As the Sorghum is only starting to grain fill and the Barley is a full grain, just starting to dry down I suspect that the barley is at the peak of its dry matter accumulation, the Sorghum is only at early grain fill and I would think may gain more dry matter. If I have time I will measure the sorghum at complete grain fill to see if this is correct.

I invite any and all comments/corrections to the above and would value peoples thoughts.

 

The Aphids Have to Die

We sprayed the Sorghum earlier this week for aphids, they were moving from lower in the crop canopy into the heads and I think would have caused us a lot of trouble at harvest with honey dew, Honey dew is the plant sugars that the aphids release and can be a real problem come harvest. It basically sticks the heads together and can be very painful to harvest and handle if bad enough.

James being a Boy

Hannah Barden Arrives (home)

Plough Disk BBQ Lunch

Grace and Maddie, back together again

John is Part Aussie for Sure

 

Picnic Day

Hannah brought over from Australia some great bubble guns, John and Wiz loved them.

Picnic Day Sunday

 

This is Graces Friend Maddie from Australia, I was doubling her on my bike when a group of Twiga crossed the road in front.

Sorghum's race to the finish line

Virtually all the sorghum has now flowered, I had a dig yesterday, if I had to guess at how much water was left in the profile I would say about 100mm plant available. I guess we will see how the crop finishes.

Barley looking strong

The barley is looking really good, even on 75cm rows (30 inch)

Trials still growing along

The Field peas on the right of the photo are flowering well and starting to put on pods, the canola just to the left of the field peas is going alright, just throwing some flowers out, I think it will hit the wall with moisture before it can finish to seed, the wheat next over to the left is looking OK, some animal ate some of it last week, then red sorghum on the far left, just throwing its head out.

Moving the Fuel Tank (on farm)

We moved the diesel tank into our workshop building this week, we put it on the second floor, it has its own room, we will pump full in and gravity it out. We had to move it about 500m to the workshop, looks odd but worked well.