Mount Kilimanjaro from the farm

If you click on the photo it should expand and you can see Killi, with a good deal of snow. Seems bizare to be in a climate that never gets below about 10 Deg C.
Our house site will look the same direction. It is around 170km away.

Drying the Prado out

Well, that was a bit silly

On my way to pick up James and Grace from school one friday,ended up getting my Mac book pro a bit wet. they dont like that. I was not pleased to find a Toshiba harddrive inside. Thats it back to a HP laptop for $800. My Prado smells a bit damp. 

200mm of rain last week

Well no photos at the moment, last week my prado was submerged in a water crossing together with my computer . I was trying to get to Nairobi to watch James play rugby on Friday and miscalculated a creek crossing.
Still too wet to plant; maybe Monday or Tuesday.

Zebra Crossing

I had to hunt this group of Zebra off the farming land, as a no tiller I couldn't have these fellows wandering all over the place.

Looking East (towards Aust) Kenyan Coast about 300km away

If you click on any photo in the blog it should expand, the planter in the foreground is parked on a rise on the conservancy with some of the farming country about 1km out, with a number of small holder farmers next door behind that. You can see a storm coming across in the background.

Still Wet, Waiting Waiting

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.

The Monkeys strike again

Well, we have the internet back after 8 days without it. Turned out a large part of the problem was that the monkeys had bent the internet receiver over to the point it would not receive.

Anyway back on air now, a mob of emails to deal with.

We have been busy with Annie making the most of having many of our household things from the latest container, our house now looks more like our home.

James and Grace are doing well at school, they only board during the week and so its great to have them at home for three nights a week.

Grace enjoys driving around the conservancy on the weekends. James has been fishing although the fish have not been biting as well lately.

We have 7 employees at present plus various contractors, once we get planting done and the 8km or so of fence up we will probably cut back to 3 full time. Thats separate to Alex the gardener and Margaret who works in the house.

Still no rain, although it seems close now.

Annie is excited as she is on the chase for a second hand wardrobe, she has not got a home for her newly arrived clothes yet.

Anyway I do apologize for the long period without posting, blame the monkeys. Every morning we can hear them just on daylight running over the roof. All the roof is, is Hessian, black plastic with thatched grass. As you can imagine it sounds like they are going to fall through.

The previous photos show the planter as it was being put together as well as ten or so of the conservancies workshop men relocating the Simplicity air cart bin.

Planter Progress

Finally Our Container Arrives

Well what an epic, finally it arrived. Earlier this week I flew down to Mombassa to the port to see if I could get a handle on what was what.

Spent the day waiting,waiting at the bonded container park.

Still dry as a chip here, it looked promising a week or so ago although still waiting.

I am still sick with the tick fever, if I was a dog I would have put me down yesterday.

We hired a crane from Nairobi to unload the container today, they did a good quick job which was great. We will now start to put the planter together, it is in this container.

Egyptian Cobra

Found this fellow in our gravel pit, he took off and I drove around in front of him. He rared up and fanned his face and neck (if snakes have them) out like you see with the snakes that come out of baskets in the movies.

He was supper fast and ended up going down an Aardvark hole.

7 ft Egyptian Cobra

Bit of excitement for the afternoon, our son James was painting a door on the back veranda and heard a noise, it was a 7 to 8 ft Egyptian Cobra slithering about 10ft from him.

I ran out and saw him clearly, he was huge and fast. He took off I hope not to see him again around the house.

I took a photo of another fellow of the same variety a couple of days ago although he was in our murum/gravel pit a long way from anywhere.

I will post the photo when I download it.

Kelly and a classic

This Photo is of Kelly the mechanical foreman, he works with the conservancy on which we live.

He is also a great help with mechanical and electrical issues and a wonderful fellow to boot.

The car is a goer he had just driver about 5km from another part of the conservancy.

Sorry about the lack of posts, this tick fever really knocked me around.

We have now finished putting about 150mm (or 6 inches for the old fellows) of Murrum/ Gravel five meters wide by 8 km long.

Still waiting on our container with the planter in it. Maybe this week.

Starting to get the crop inputs organized and delivered to the farm.

Our next earthmoving project is to level our workshop area and build a grain shed before harvest. The Area is 3.2 ha and in most of Aust it would not be a big deal. Our site however has a 10m difference from one end to the other in only 250m and so there is some serious dirt to move.

I had a fellow do a Topographical survey a week or so ago and so I will be keen to get the numbers on how much dirt we need to move.

Tick fever and Progress

Well things on the farm are coming along, only 3km out of 8km of gravel/murum to go,takes a lot of loads when each truck only does 12 meters.

Grace and James have had a week at home for their mid term break, we had our first sniff of rain over the past couple of days. One local tells me that the long rains will start properly in two weeks. Wait and see.

By the end of this coming week we should have the fence line/boundary road finished and so then onto the fence.

We hope to see the next container by weeks end and then start putting together all the bits of the planter ready to use. Soil testing this week also to get a feel for nutrition status.

I have been ill for about ten days and on Friday was told by my new Dr that I have Tick fever, I have got some medication and hope to feel better soon.

Lots of Ticks here, they plunge dip the cattle once a week for them. I may have to join them.

James Tries out for Kenyan under 19 rugby

On Sunday James was asked to try out for the squad for the Kenyan under 19 rugby team.

Turned out that he was just too young at 16 although they allowed him and a couple of other under ages to have a run which was good.

The Photo shows James third from left, there were 160 young fellows all pumped up to give their best shot.

I am no Rugby guru although I thought the standard looked good. Hopefully he gets a shot next year when he will be old enough to qualify.

Japanese Restaurant, Nice

Nairobi has some fantastic restaurants, we had dinner on Saturday evening at a wonderful Japanese restaurant.

First time at a top quality establishment for all of us, Japanese is so expensive back in Australia, not so here.

Twiga Grazing

These fellows were out enjoying a look over the farming land. We are still about 30days away from having the wildlife fence up and so until then its a bit like a Zoo out there.

God must have been having a fun day when he created these fellows.

The Fence will be 2.1m high and will be using Weston fencing components from Western NSW.

Although Giraffe are much taller than this they are not famous for high jump.

I have seen one jump a standard fence, very messy. (he was OK)

Hello and goodmorning to all this blogs readers.

Zebra at Dusk

I took this snap on the way back across the conservancy in the evening. It is about 10km from the farming area to our house. Early morning there are lots of silver back Jackal's plus all the usual animals.

Progress is coming along with 200ha ready as far as land preparation, we are still running 24hours on with the tractor with a bit of swapping between the plough and grader board.

Road Building

Today we started carting 4000 or so cubic meters of Gravel for our road and fence.

The picture shows our exervator and one of the four trucks being loaded by a contractor with a JCB wheel loader.

It will hopefully be done by early next week although this type of earthmoving operation is way outside my experience and so I guess we will wait and see.

We have ploughed 200ha twice and just about run over it with the grader board to level it. Looks good, we will tonight move onto the first plough pass on the other 200ha.

Cattle Movements

We came across a mob of Cattle on one of the major roads just south of Nairobi.

It is not unusual to see 200 or 300 cattle in around the city.

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.