Barley Eating Baboons

This troop of baboon are enjoying the little bit of spilt barley on the road, they run off whenever someone comes along then back in a few minutes.

Nature Opening the Door for the Rains

There is a lot of talk of El Nino recently, which in many parts of Australia's eastern side is related to below average rainfall, the converse is true in Kenya and the region, it is more often than not above average rainfall when an El Nino event is occurring, with greater volatility as well.
In Spanish the term "El Nino" refers to "the Christ child" or "the male child" whilst "La Nina" means "female or girl child"
Heavy black cracking soils (called "Black cotton" soils in east Africa) like we farm in Kenya crack open due to the clay particles contracting as they dry, this then effectively opens the "Door" to filling up the soil with moisture, it also allows for some recycling of shallow nutrients and organic matter to fall and reduce a "Stratification"  of nutrients on the surface.
Nature is the ultimate zero till system!!

Now that is well used

Saw this little hammer in the industrial area, notice my boot beside it, nice repairs (click for better view)

Manitou out of action, A team steps up,140t loaded by hand

Manitou Loader blows a head Gasket

Am in the industrial are of Nairobi, the fellow is about to pressure test the head off the engine.
He is cutting "bungs" or stoppers out of wood then hitting them in to seal the inlet and outlet ports to pressure test.
Then they will shave the head to get perfectly level.
Looks crazy but it works. 

First Commercial Wheat harvested

Some small plot trial results

 

Soya Bean planted 4/4/15,  plant pop 24 plants per square meter,variety was DPSB19 yield   1.12 t ha 

 

Mung Beans (green grams) planted 4/4/15 plant pop 27 plantrs per square meter variety was KS20 yield 2.51 t ha

 

Soya Bean planted 4/4/15, plant pop 26 plants per square meter, variety was DPSB8 yield was 1.27 t ha

Yellow beans planted 4/4/15 plant pop was 15 plants per square meter, variety "From Village next door" yield was 2.54 t ha (nice)

Soya Beans planted 4/4/15 plant pop was 17 plants per square meter, variety EHI3600, yield 1.62 t ha

Kabuli Chickpeas, planted 8/04/15 variety "from Tuskys supermarket" plant pop was 14 per square meter YIELD WAS 3.64THA

Soya Bean planted on the 8/04/15, variety was Nyala, plant pop was 25 plants per square meter, Yield 1.76 t ha (highest Soya yield)

 

All in all we got some interesting ballpark information (they are not replicated trials) from this seasons trials, Kabuli chickpeas , Local yellow Beans and Mung Beans (Green grams) look like crops we will take into commercial production.

New Buhler Grain Cleaner

Our home built for $3500 rotary grain screen just could not get us into specification (99% above the screen,.i.e retention) so we either wasted lots of $ on freight and grading losses to send the grain 200 plus km or we bought a grain cleaner, fortunately for us one of if not the biggest companies in the world of grain cleaning, flour mill machinery plus plus (google them they do just about every food processing gear including chocolate), Buhler just happened to have one of their TAS 152A-2 cleaners in the country, sitting 50km away in Nairobi, it is made in Germany and the quality is beautiful.
We have set it up temporally for now but when we finish building our grain store/shed we will move it to be able to clean direct from the 25t delivery pit and into the store/shed, it will clean wheat at 50 to 60t per hour so it will allow us to clean all our grain straight of the harvester.
As we deliver direct to end users we need to provide a clean product ready to mill or malt.
 

Barley Harvest Photos

We have been harvesting barley for about 10 days, slow going with the crop on the ground, currently yielding 3.7 t ha.
We are also harvesting the Mung Beans (Green Grams), we will put them through the cleaner tomorrow and bag into 50kg bags for the local market, will know the yield once we clean them as we did not weigh into the shed.

Obama called, I said we were too busy with harvest for him to visit

Photos from our major 2015 field day

Click on any photo to expand, team Ausquest did a great job on the day, thanks also to Annie, Grace and her crazy friend Tara + the two small boys of course. Just on 80 people attended.

Chickpeas in the trials

These are Kabuli Chickpeas, I have been very impressed with their lack of disease, they are podding up well, probably a bit on the low side for mechanical harvesting although not terrible.
 

Yellow beans in trials looking good

The Top Photo is of Yellow beans on the left and Faba beans on the right, the Yellow bean plants are only about 40cm high but loaded with pods (bottom photo) we would have to hand windrow them and then machine harvest with the Combine if we grow them commercially as the pods are very low.
Wait and see how they yield.

Veiw from the farm office

The most advanced barley (in the photo) is at my best guess around 5 weeks from harvest, the Mung beans are podding up well, we have had 214mm of rain in crop in the crop above  and about 165mm in the Mung beans and dry planted barley which is still at the grain fill stage.   

No Chemical Resistance with Group P (people)

We have about 120/ 130 casuals hand weeding 160 ha of Mung Beans, we planted them dry and although we had a grass control option in the form of a herbicide we did not have any broadleaf weed control options.
They are doing a good job, it is all paid by the row, thank goodness for straight rows.
(Click on photo for a better view) 

Spraying Barley (Dry planted 57 days since emergence)

Yesterday I was applying 10kg ha of Potassium Sulphate together with 250mls of Tilt, barley was planted dry with a full profile (1meter of wet soil) but about 15 cm of dry soil on top, this crop has had 155mm of rain since emergence. It is looking very strong although time will tell.
I would estimate there was approximately 180/200mm of PAW (plant available water) in the soil at the time of emergence, add to this the 155mm of "in crop" rainfall of 155mm =335mm less 110mm to allow for evaporation (French/Schultz method) and we have 225mm available for grain fill.
The general range of WUE of wheat and Barley (water use efficiency) is 10kg per mm of grain to 20kg per mm of grain.(can be a bit higher or lower)
So with 225mm available for grain fill at 10kg per mm = 2.25 t ha (2250kg per ha) poor WUE
or at 20kg per mm it would yield 4.5 t ha (4500kg per ha) which would be a good WUE.
Only time will tell. 

Planting Mung Beans

We are just planting our latest 160 ha of Mung Beans (Green Grams), we have another 160 ha we planted dry about 50 days ago, they are up and look OK, we split the planting so we could spread out harvest as well as a bit of risk management, the earlier planted should do better (maybe) although the latest Mungs are being planted into a meter of moisture, (about 180mm of plant available water at my estimate)
Wait and see, we have put 10kg ha of potassium sulphate on as a foliar spray twice to try and get the flowering and pod set more even, the varieties we have tend to flower over a longer period than I would like, this obviously results in some pods being fully ripe/dry with others still very green, this is from my limited knowledge on Mung beans a bit of their nature although we are doing what we can to tighten this period up. 

Trials, looking tidy !

We have our two major field days coming up in early June, one for commercial farmers and support people and the other for small farmers who live locally, our trial site is looking good, we are missing Tim our Canadian, things happened a lot smother while he ran the trials.

A freind from Nairobi in the Barley,the crop is pushing into head

Click on photo for larger view

John and Wiz playing in the Barley

Barley at around day 63 from emergence, coming into head

Seed treating Mung Bean Seed

We treated some Mung Beans (Green Grams) on Saturday, we have 160 ha already planted and will plant a further 160 ha this week.

Mung Bean Progress (Green Grams) Day 33

Tall Friends over the fence

Yellow Beans in our small trials (local Village variety) plus Faba Beans (bottom photo)

Click on Photos for larger View

Barley Enjoying the recent rain (70mm for the week)

Barley looking good

Over the weekend we received 55mm of rain, I took this photo on Thursday last week (pre rain), the crop was already pretty happy although 55mm is very welcome.

Some Visitors to our farm

On Friday we had a very interesting visit from a group, we showed them our trails and crops and had a good chat for a few hours.

2015 Trials

These are some of our small trials we just planted on the 4th of April, we have Faba beans, Mung beans, Snake beans, Yellow beans (local), Lab Lab, Soya Beans * 5 varieties, and two varieties of Barley plus Chick Peas. If you click on the photos you will get a better view, this years trials are planted in the middle of our early planted barley.

100mm to daylight

This was a barley plant I found that ended up way to deep, most was planted at 60mm or so to get into moisture, this fellow made it only just.