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.

Busy Saturday

 Wiz and John came with James, Grace and I to the Tournament, they had fun on the equipment.

 James fought a Black belt, James is currently a Blue and put up a good fight, the other fellow won though, still a good experience.

 This is Gracie fighting, she also did really well, she was very effective in defense.

8.30 on a Saturday night and James, Grace and the above three were out for the night while watching TV. John was getting a DVD and a ornament fell and hit him on the head, not as serious as the bandage around his head would suggest, his big sister just likes playing Doctor.

Sorghum Progress

The sorghum is looking really good, the black ground is starting to crack open a bit, I would estimate we are at 50% of the heads flowering, it is about day 78 since germination today. I had a dig and found good moisture down at about 30 to 40 cm. It will be a race to the finish to see if there is enough moisture to fill all the heads. 30mm of rain would be nice about now, bit unlikely although not impossible.

Aussie Visitor's

Karl and Tanya, two new Aussie friends are staying a few days on their way to climb Kili, they have been a real help. The Trials have really grown over the past weeks. Our First canola and field pea flowers are just showing.

Uni Student Field Day

We had about 40 3rd year agricultural engineering students on the farm today, they were a great group, smart and keen. It was time well spent with them.

Weather at the moment

We have a min/max thermometer and it has been a consistent min 12 max 26 Deg C for a few weeks now, the days a semi cloudy. We are flying some Potassium Nitrate on the Sorghum tomorrow morning, I had a visit last week from an Indian fellow who showed me the potassium deficiency starting to show in the leaves.
If Potassium is short then the plant sends it from its reserves lower in the plant and can cause lodging and in severe cases that I have seen in Botswana can look like it has been sprayed with Roundup.
The Sorghum and barley is moving quickly in head at present.

James (and Wiz) and his Team win their sevens tournament

 

NDVI Images via a Drone

We had a drone fly our Sorghum crop today (400ha), it was reprogrammed to fly swaths that captured NDVI images, once the crop nuts team have produced the map I will post it. Fascinating stuff, when the battery runs low it fly's back and lands beside the reprogrammed landing place. The team from Crop Nuts do a great job. This will show us things in the crop we cannot see. The resolution was 7.7cm.

Our Little John Boy is Sick

Our Little boy John became very ill, very quickly. He is only 15kg and so he went downhill very quickly, we took him to an good hospital who gave him great care. I don't know if Gracie was playing with her brother or just enjoying the oxygen. He is on the improve now, he gave us a scare, we all love him so dearly.

Our landlord with our new anti-poaching unit

Small Holder Crops Next Door

Our small holder neighbours have some interesting approaches to their cropping, here they have beans with Maize on super wide rows.

Panorama of the crop

Click to see

25 Wheeler

Saw this disabled man getting a high speed lift, he was doing about 60km hr in Nairobi on Friday morning. James and I had a chat to him at some lights and bought some Bananas for him,from a road vendor.