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.

Trials Looking Good

James Enjoying the Sorghum

Click to see a full view

Barley beside Sorghum (Fri 24th May)

The barley is just about to pop into head, this photo shows the barley and Sorghum planted the same day.

I think this WAS a big Puff Adder

We have 117 people employed weeding out volunteer Sorghum from Sorghum (to many plants), one group found this fellow, they claimed self defence. Click on the photos to see his fangs.

Removing Volunteer Sorghum Plants by Hand

I asked my right hand man, Samson on Friday to organize 60 people to hand rouge about 450 acres. When we arrived this morning (Monday) we had 106, probably a good thing, get it done quicker.

Sorghum Looking Happy

I did some more plant counts today in the Sorghum, they range from 40,000 plants established per hectare to 60,000. Or 4 to 6 plants per square meter. Very happy with these numbers.

Barley Looking Good (whole 1 ha of it)

Above, my boot in the barley

Above, Barley on 75cm rows (30 inch) almost row closure

 

 

Small Scale Trials

 

Above, Wheat

Above, Field peas

Above Canola

Great growth over the past 7 days (the crop not John)

I took a photo of James (on right) and John together although a sorghum plant leaf was in front of johns face and James had his eyes shut, so this photo was my back up. I took it today Sat 12th May.

Two happy boys

The Current Crop At 35 Days

 

 

 Above Photo is of photo of the sorghum I took a couple of days ago, it has got a real go on lately

 

Above photo is of the barley we planted the same day as the Sorghum in the background, there is only 1ha of barley, it is really just to see how it grows in our environment.

Above photo is a couple of barley plants, between 10 and 20 tillers per plant (day 35) seems to be going OK.
We finished planting the small scale trials this week, we have 9 different variety/crop type trials plus 6 different nutrition (foliar) trials in the commercial Sorghum area.

The Bull Fighter and the Boys

On Friday we applied some liquid fert to the commercial sorghum, Sergi the pilot who is from Spain did a great job. We also put some broad leaf herbicide on a small area around the trials that did not get the pre emergent pre planting.
We had to lay black plastic over our small scale trials that contain broad leaf crops.
John and Wiz enjoyed having a sit in the plane with Sergi, the boys are always saying they are going to be pilots when the grow up.

Purpose,so clear yet so cloudy

The older you get the more unsure of the things that were once so clear, it is a good exercise to strip away the "stuff" to peer behind the curtain and see what is really there, although this is easier said than done.
Quiet contemplation has a lot going for it.
 

Power Has Arrived

Something I thought may never happen has happened, we have mains power,well not just yet although as can be seen in these photos from yesterday, the poles are going in, they hand dig the 2 meter hole then using ropes and about 8 men they manhandle the poles from the ground and stand them, they were having their lunch when I came by and so I didn't get a picture of the action, I will try this week, still plenty of poles to go in yet. They can do about 20 per day with a 90 meter spacing.

Muddy Boots And My little Assistants

John, Wiz, Alex (our gardener) and I spent yesterday afternoon planting trials, spraying some different treatments on trials.
We planted some sorghum that has not been released as yet that we got from a NGO breeding program, our row width is 75 cm (30 inch) in our commercial crop so our small scale trials use the same. So to work out how many cm of a 75cm wide row gives us 1sq meter it is 100 divided by 75 equals 1.33 so according to my (sometimes wrong) calculations every 1330cm or 1.33m of row equals 1 square meter.
So the small scale trial rows are 13.3m long ( 1% of a hectare) we then planted four rows per variety.(4% of a hectare)
I then found a great planting tool, a pen, they are 14cm long so Alex (our gardener) and I used pens to space the plants at 14cm and using the blunt end make a hole, so per 1.33m or 1 square meter we planted 95 seeds if we assume a 80% establishment then that is 76 plants established or 76,000 plants per hectare. It would be about 25% more than I would aim for with Australian sorghum's in this environment although the sorghum's I have seen here don't seem to have the individual head potential.
If you click on the photo you will see some volunteer plants in clumps these were lost heads at harvest back last Nov/Dec. We sprayed pre planting with RU and Primagram which should ( I hope) give these freeloading plants a headache at least.
We have had just on 400mm over the past 25 days, a bit excessive and about double average for March/April/May combined.
 

Sleeping Babies

I only just downloaded this photo (from last week when we went on safari) of these female elephants in a circle around their babies while they sleep. I had never seen this before and thought it amazing. If you click on the photo it will expand and you will see all the sleeping juniors

James,Eye to Eye With a Big Fella

Gracie and John looking for lions