Annie and the Boys in a Mung Bean crop (Green Grams)

Will, John and Wiz getting up close with a Dorper lamb

Boxing Day Fun

Barley and Mung Bean Progress

Some Visitors and the Barley

Edergerton Uni Visit

We had about 90 students from a Uni out at our farm today, they were very quite at first but after a while asked some good questions. The above is not the greatest photo, oh well, its the only one I have.

Mung Beans (Greeen Grams) Growing Along

Boys Helping Collect Some Stones

I found this pile of about 30 or so stones while I was planting Barley in late Oct, Gideon and the two small boys came out early one morning and helped me pick them and some other piles up.

Field Peas in the Commercial Trials

180mm Paired rows on 750mm centers, Field peas planted at 80 kg ha (limited seed) plus 70 kg DAP

Mung Beans Up

We planted about 30 ha of commercial size trials, this picture was taken about five days ago as the Mung Beans (Green Grams) were just up, the trials have Maize, Sunflowers, Field Peas and two Mung Bean varieties. The Mung beans were planted at 28kg ha seed, Sunflowers 35,000 seeds per ha planted, Maize at 30,000 seeds per ha planted all with 70 kg ha of DAP.

Barley Up And away

We planted 320 ha of barley in the last week of October, due to our planter limitations we have planted three rows per 750mm center, one down the tyne, one down the gauge wheel coulter and one scattered 150mm or so leading the tyne, we managed to get a great germination on the tyne and coulter although relying on the soil throw to give some seed cover was never going to be a great idea, about 20/40% of the spread came up, the barley was planted at 50kg ha with 70kg per ha of DAP.
If you click on the photo it will give a much better view, lots of soil cover, wait and see.
Medium plan is to move to a  9m JD 1890 on 250mm spacing's, this would be ideal for the narrower row crops like Barley and Mungbeans.(Green Grams)

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Murrum (Gravel) floor in the shed

We have spent about 10 days carting Murrum (Gravel) here and there, we had 10 loads here and five there mainly on roads ect and while we were at it we finished the shed floor off properly, the night guard spent each night watering it and we then compacted it. It took about 25 loads or so just for the floor and shed apron, something I have learnt about building roads ect is it always takes a lot more gravel than you think. We use our Daewoo to dig and load it so other than diesel and a bit of wear and tear it is very economical.  

Three Silly (but fun) Kids

Grace, John and Wiz playing with their Dads glasses
 

Barley seed cleaning

We cleaned and treated about 45t of barley for seed last week, Syngenta have a really good small seed cleaner that they supply if you use their seed treatment products, the system is bag in and bag out so we had about 10 casuals from the small holders next door load ect. The ladies then sew the bags and we store them in a shipping container to keep them away from mice and rats.

 Some hard working fellows, 45 t of Barley in bags fills a 40ft high cube container to capacity, we don't use the standard 90kg bags that are common here, instead we use smaller 50kg bags, it is hard enough work without a 90kg bag.

New Clutch for the truck

Our truck has only 160,000km on it from new and I was a bit surprised we had to put a new clutch in it, some earthmoving friends Wahid and Kashif showed us how to do it, it took about 2 hours to remove the old one and about 4 to replace. 

Barley harvest complete

We had to pull out the welder a few weeks back, as we deliver barley direct to the malt house in Nairobi we had to build a screen, I could not buy slotted screens and so I went to the industrial area and bought eight 2 meters by 1m 3mm round hole screens, I had a engineering shop weld two sheets end to end and then they rolled them as we do not have the gear to do this. We then built the drive, installed internal spokes and baffles to retard the grain flow and to maximize the screen area that makes contact with the grain, we borrowed the hyd motor off our sprayer and the loading auger off the simplicity air seeder,these both run of the tractor hydraulics.
After a number of modifications it worked well, we are removing about 1 to 2% by weight, the retention (amount of barley above a 2.2mm screen is running at 97 to 98%) which considering the below average rain in crop is good.
We also last week put a aspiration system on which consists of the hyd driver fan off our simplicity air seeder and a snazzy manifold we built that helps the light material to be sucked off as it enters the screen. 

Sunflowers Impress in Trials

We harvested our trials a few weeks back, the sunflowers did very well, Some results below.

Thomas Blue Field Peas (Dry Peas) yielded 1240kg ha
DHO2 Maize yielded 4200kg ha at 22,000 plants per ha (2.2 per sq meter)
Fedah sunflowers yielded 1800 kg ha at 45% oil
8889 Sunflowers yielded 3200 kg ha at 50.3% oil
Mung Beans (green grams) yielded an impressive 2450kg ha
We still have various varieties of maize to shell and weigh although it is drying down at present.
So all in all some interesting findings, the Mungbeans and Sunflowers were very impressive given these trials had only 52mm of rain in crop (plus a full profile of moisture)
We will plant some 10 ha trials of Sunnies and Mungbeans on the short rains to get a field scale idea of their suitability or not for commercial areas.
Also the Linseed (Flaxseed) and two new barley varieties are still in the trials and we should be able to harvest it shortly when they are ripe. The Barley was planted on a couple of plots that didn't establish (red millet and Quinola) and so we planted them about a month after the rest of the trials, they received 20mm of in crop rain and so it should be interesting just what they yield.

Yield Moinitor, recals itself

 

Well, it would be nice if it were true that the barley yield was 10.3 t ha, alas it decided to read three times the actual yield, the moisture was spot on, it must have been around me to long and has a bad case of possitive thinking.
I will reset it tomorrow and come back to reality.

Harvesting Field Peas

I harvested the field pea seed increase block yesterday,they yielded just over 1.2 t ha which with 69mm of in crop rain and being planted at 50% of the normal rate of seed was ok.
The local beans that are like a Rosa bean yielded 1.4 t ha although they were hand harvested and planted at the full seed rate.
The Trials are in the background,we are harvesting the 16 crop types/varieties/row spacings as they ripen, lots of weighing and records to be kept.

Sunflower, Mung Beans (Green Grams) and Linseed (Flaxseed) in the trials

Barley harvest has started

I harvested a truck load or so late last week, I checked our farm grain moisture meter against the malthouses unit, the grain moisture was 13%, should be right by tomorrow (Monday)
I will harvest the "ThomasBlues" field pea seed increase block first thing tomorrow (early morning to reduce shattering losses. Then into the Barley full on if the grain moisture is ok (it needs to be under 12.5%)
If you click on the photo you will see on the left of the photo the 180mm (9 inch) paired rows that are 750mm (30 inch) from the center of the pair to the center of the next pair.

Imposter Found Out

My big boy James via Skype suggested that the young Cheetah I ran down was actually a Serval Cat, upon closer inspection via a google search it appears he is right, it also explains the disproportional aggression shown from him, he was a medium size Serval and not a very small Cheetah.
Although the two very small critters were Cheetahs and so I maintain the running down a Cheetah story, the fact their eyes were still closed and were only able to roll and not run is an aside. 

Two baby Cheetah in the crop

I found these two little fellows in the sorghum I was harvesting, fortunately I saw them and then left this piece of crop for a few days, I checked two days later and the were gone, I assume their mum relocated them, they still had their eyes closed. (click to expand the photo)

Unloading in Bulk, then bagging for delivery

 

New trainee harvester operator

Grace our 15 Year old had some lessons in operating our Case 2388 harvester this week, or as some green eyed farmer friends from Australia call our harvester "The Old Coke Can"

Ex Gular Rugby player Runs down a Cheetah

Ok the heading did not mention he was a young Cheetah,I was harvesting the last strip in a patch of crop when I saw this fellow, he took off over the harvested crop area towards about 10 eagles who were dinning on a fairly big bird on the ground about 100m away in the direction he was running, I chased him down (just) and once I had hold of him was very unsure if it was such a good idea as he was super aggressive. I released him in the bush nearby and so I hope he found his mum.

One of the slums around Nairobi

Veiw Over The Rift Valley

 

I took these Photos last week while traveling to a field day at a farmer friends place,my phone camera does not do the Rift Valley justice,its pretty impressive

The last two weeks

The above photo is of a friend who helped build our new low cost chemical vat, it will be used for loading the sprayer and mounted on a 16,000 lt tanker trailer.

If you click on this photo there are at my count 12 raptors waiting for a meal of Quail as the fly in front of the harvester







 

Last Wednesday the 18th we ran another field day, probably the best so far, Tim who looks after the trials now and extension into the smallholders has done a great job with the trial site and the 100 things that make up a field day. The Picture above is of us uncovering two lambs that had been in an underground oven Kiwi style,it all went well thankfully. 

The above fellow is Gideon, he came to us as a excavator driver but he has many more abilities than that, this picture is him in one of the sunflower varieties in the trials.He is one of our rising star's.

I had to chase 5 Eland from the Barley on Sat 21st June, I took this photo whilst doing so.

My darling baby girl, I showed Gracie the Trials on the weekend.

Tim who is in charge of Trials and extension speaking to a smallholder field day held on Sat the 14th of June at our trial site.

This .6 ha of field peas are podding and looking good, they were planted at about 50% of the rate they should have been as we only had a small amount of seed.The variety is "Thomas Blues"

Looking along one side of the trials

John Boy, or Little boss as he prefers, sitting in front of a trial of Green Grams, that's Mung beans to an Aussie. They are very impressive, virtually no soil cracking under this crop, so there is plenty of subsoil moisture to bring it home. (I hope)

My Darling Big boy leaving home,James and I at the airport

Boys in the barley two weeks ago

135 tillers on one barley plant???

Samson pictured holding this barley plant found a lone plant with about two square meters of space to itself.
He washed the roots with water to see how many plants there were and we could only see it was one, still not sure on this, seems a bit to many after 90 days growth (Mid last week)

Sorgum Harvest