Swimming outdoors at -12 Deg C

Annie and I spent the weekend with our Canadian friends in the Rocky Mountains. Had a dip in the pool one morning, note the snow in the background.
We have now traveled north about 4 hours to where the conference I am speaking at is being held, Annie and I went for a walk late this afternoon, it is so cold it hurt.

From Kenya to Canada - 20 deg C

First Day at the boys new School

 

 

Our little boys started a new school last week, they are enjoying it although they are getting very tired by the end of the week.
Above at the top is Hannah our daughter who is over here from Uni in Perth helping out, she has been a great help.

Crop Progress

This is Jake Lewis in the latest crop of sorghum, it is looking fantastic, we should hopefully be harvesting it by late March.

Tech Problems

Sorry about the lack of updates, for some reason I cannot upload photos to the blog??? I hope to work out why soon. Any suggestions gratefully received.
I have some good photos and so it is very frustrating.

First Load of Sorghum

Well, I was wondering if it would ever happen, only two truckloads harvested although I hope to get six trucks today, as we are still building our grain handling set up it all has to go straight on a truck.
The picture is of myself and my friend "O" as he is known.
 

Merry Christmas John

Click to play

Poping into head

This is me (Stuart) in need of a haircut in our latest sorghum crop, this is about 55 days since emergence, looks good to me. I planted the latest 600ha on a "solid" configuration as I thought we would get some in crop rain. Its a bit variable across the field although most of the crop would have had around 100mm since it was dry planted in late Oct.(it had a full moisture profile under the top 100mm of dry soil) 

First Kenyan Christmas

Boys and Bikes at Christmas

Christmas morning and the boys scored a push bike each, James our big boy is here helping Wisdom just before John came to grief.

Crop Progress

The Weighbridge is alive

Duncan our principle building contractor and his offsider read the first weight (my Prado) on the weighbridge.
Having a big concrete pour this week, we have 25t of cement powder to kick off the foundations to the grain shed, much much more needed. We are mixing it ourselves rather than getting ready mix. We have a 400lt mixer and it is earning its keep at present.
Harvest of the first sorghum has been a very frustrating story although some parts coming from Australia on Saturday morning should get us going.

Pa and Wizdom

Annie's Mum and dad are over staying with us at present, this photo is of Derik (Pa lamont) having a look over the newest sorghum planting with Wisdom his newest grandson. The crop is around 40 days from emergence and is just popping a head out here and there. 

Sorghum is growing well

The Previous photo of the Sorghum just emerging was taken on around the 10th of November so this is about 24days later than that photo, I am happy with the growth. We have had around 80mm since it was dry planting into a dryish topsoil in late October, the profile was full under that so the 80mm has consolidated the profile from top to bottom. Nov is on average the wettest month with an average of 90mm of rain. We actually had more like 60mm in November as the other 20mm fell last night (Dec)
December average is around 50mm and if we get another 30mm that would be heaps until hopefully a bit in Jan.With the cooler temps the plants in this environment seem to be very efficient on the water use. Time will tell though. Also the most recent 600 hectares was all planted on a solid configuration of 30 inch or 75cm rows,this was due to my view that we would recieve adequate in crop rain, wait and see.

Boys and Sorghum

The little boys came out to the farm with me this afternoon, both did some driving, only time on the road was went they crossed it.
I could'nt work out why wisdom (in the blue shirt) went very quite (top photo) I had said we were going to go "home" after checking the Sorghum, after asking him what was wrong he ask me if I was taking them back to the Childrens Home, the bottom photo is a couple of minutes after I reasured him he would always be our boy and that his home is with us.

James,John and Wisdom,three brothers

This Photo is of the three happy boys when John and Wisdom just arrived to start their new life with us, the darling boys had little backpacks on and all they had in the world was in them.
Annie had organized their room to be so welcoming with some special things like Teddy's to give them extra comfort.
Annie was at work teaching today and so I had the little boys, the Cummins mechanic comes first thing in the morning and so I hope we can have a win on the harvester engine issue.
 

Annie, John and Wisdom

These are our beautiful new sons, Wisdom and John, we have been working very hard to get the mountain of paperwork done to get approval for a temporary placement leading to full adoption.We hope to have them living with us within days.
Wisdom is 5 and John is 6 although John is tiny. We will do our best to grow him out.
I had a crazy week with a very quick trip back to Australia to sort out some business.
I have returned on Thursday night and Friday our new second hand Combine/harvester decided not to want to start, something wrong with the CAP's fuel system (bad idea Cummins). I hope to have someone who can help me here on Monday.

Flying Field Day

We ran a field day and we ended up with five plane loads and two car loads of commercial farmers from different grain growing areas around Kenya and one (who drove funnily enough) from Tanzania.
Had a good day, it was a real encouragement to not feel like the only commercial farmer around which is how it feels sometimes.
We have been waiting on parts for our new secondhand harvester and although they are in Kenya it is a long process to get them through customs.
I gave up today and will just do what I can with what I have and hope it holds together, 600 acres of Sorghum is ready and I am very keen to get it off. No grain storage built yet and so all sold off the harvester to an end user.

Next 1500 acres of Sorghum just up

Taste testing Sorghum

This is Ava she is the daughter of some wonderful Canadian friends who came and stayed with us. They are a credit to Canada.

Sunrise at the farm

Those Birds

We have currently got about 2 to 3 million birds eating our sorghum, our 41 bird scaring people are helping although the damage is real. The above photo is of a small group.
I am starting to get creative and so lets wait and see whether we can sort these freeloaders out.

 

Planting Sorghum Again

We have just finished planting about 600 ha (1500 acres) of sorghum on our second field. This is our son James on the tractor. We have Sorghum only 2km away that is about two weeks off harvest and here we are planting.Full profile of moisture in this country, we dry planted into the top dry 100mm of soil and only days ago received about 30mm which should join up the moisture and germinate the seed. Wait and see. We also flew a pre emergent on after planting and so the rain was excellent to incorporate this and activate it.

Harvester Arrives from Germany

Our new second hand harvester arrived a week or so ago, very happy with it, we have currently got it pulled apart to repair some damaged sieves although everything else looks very good.

Field Day

We had a good field day about 10 days ago at our farm, we dug a soil pit to show the root exploration, explained a bit about the different properties of the different soil types plus lots of other things relating to our sorghum crop. We are gaining some good traction with much interest in what we are trying to show. i.e that cropping can be successful on these heavy soils in the lower rainfall areas.
 

800,000 Flying Rats

We have had some serious bird numbers on the sorghum over the past two weeks, on Friday I had the Government bird man come and visit our farm to access them.
He made an estimate of 800,000 which believe it or not is not as many as there could be.
We tracked the birds (red billed Qualia) to their roost about 10km from the crop and are "Exploring" our options.
We have added some more bird scarers, we have 41 people now who start at daylight work until about 10/11am when the birds stop feeding and then start again mid afternoon.
The birds can eat 10 grams per bird so they could be eating 8t per day, I don't think they would be because of the bird scarers, as they don't get much undisturbed eating time.Still they could be getting 4t which is still bad.
One good thing is that they only will eat the sorghum while the grain is at the milky dough stage, this reduces the risk time which is good.

Looking North at the Trials

This photo is looking north, if you click on the photo and expand it you will see in the back ground the trials.
From Left there are Desi Chickpeas,Kabuli chickpeas, the big bare area is where the mung beans should be (if powdery mildew had not wiped it out) then a different white sorghum variety (Sila) then two Corn/Maize varieties on the far right. All the trials are 4 hectares although the mung beans are 8 hectares.
The foreground is the later planter white Sorghum.

Another Birthday at the Orphanage

I went over to one of the girls 9th birthday this evening, Annie and Grace would have come although Grace fell off a motorbike about 30minutes after arriving home from School, no serious damage, although it really scared her.
Every time we visit the children at the Orphanage there is a revolving door of boys in particular who just want to be hugged.
It shouldn't be that amazing I guess as they really crave a fathers (and Mothers although there are many more women on staff) love, with 23 kids it is difficult for the staff to spread themselves around. In saying that they do a wonderful job at caring for all.
It's a very challenging thing to drive away and not feel very torn.

Birds,those coots (a coot is a undesirable thing)

We have had 25 ladies chassing birds off about 600 acres of the most advanced crop. More later on this.

Crop Progress

The crop is moving alone, the bottom photo is of one of the good size heads that are mostly on the secondary tillers. They are better heads in general to the first ones.Hmmm