Desi Chickpeas looking well

Yellow Beans in the background looking "yellow"

Mung beans (green grams) in the foreground with some of our trials in the background.

NDVI imagery

We had the team from "Crop Nuts" out this week to do some NDVI images.
They "flew" one 425 ha field of Desi and Kabuli chickpeas.
They will present the images in poster for at our Agronomy field day coming up shortly.
Thanks to Nick from Hardi Kenya for providing the aircraft.

First field day using 100% Kamba language (Samson spoke)

We had 46 smallholder farmers visit today, great group, Ausquest's Samson did all the talking in the Kamba language.
We looked at our commercial chickpea crop then we visited our Admin managers crop of yellow beans.
Showing that it's possible to practice conservation farming on a 1 hectare field and produce great crops.
David's yellow beans look very good considering we have only recieved about 50% of our annual rainfall to date. 

Great visit yesterday from Strathmore Business School

Forage Sorghum X Sudan grass trials moving along

Fun on the Dam with Dogs and Junior Bardens

This may surprise possibly no one but two feral dogs in a canoe make for a very unstable experience. 

3 ha trial of Yellow beans nice and heathy

Chickpeas up and away

Mung Beans (Green Grams) looking nice

These Mung beans (Green Grams) sat for around 30 days while waiting for a germinating rain.
They are up very evenly across this 573 ha field.

2017 planting in progress

We started planting a week or so ago, running 24 hours with a fairly smooth run, sort of dry planting although we recieved 10 to 14mm last week which was neither your arm or your elbow. (Not dry but not really moist enough either)
Clouds building up each day and so Friday would be a great day for the long rains of 2017 to start, I have put my order in.

On Farm Road Building

With our land sitting weed free in fallow, we are building a 3km access road while we have a moment.
We dug the black soil out of this creek crossing down to gravel/Murrum and then put 270 ton of large rock as a base, then topped it with crusher dust.

Next years crop water is in the bank (moisture bank)

This screen shot (click on it to expand) is from a moisture probe located in a field that grew Mung Beans (Green Grams) in 2016, harvested in Aug 2016.
The graph shows that there was exactly the same % of moisture in the soil profile at 60cm on 10th of November 2016 as there was on the 1st of Sept 2016, you will see a small increase around mid November as we had 132mm over the second half of Nov which found its way down.
People are sometimes sceptical about the medium to long term capacity of these heavy black cracking soil to store water over time, tool's like this help us learn so much about soil moisture, infiltration rates and so much more.
Our soil can hold a lot more water although only time will tell how much we end up with, we will aim to plant in the first 15 days of March, the long rains usually come between the 20th of march and the 1st April. (the long rains happens over 50 days most years) i.e start around the 20th March and finish on around 10th of May.

A New Season Begins

After zero rain from the 10th June to the 10th of November we have recieved 132mm of rain for November, this has added some valuable soil moisture and caused plenty of weeds to emerge.
We are spraying these at present and looking forward to planting our next crops in March 2017.

One Of Our Next Door Neighbours Ploughing

Started harvesting Chickpeas

We started harvesting our latest (Desi) chick pea crop a few days ago, they are yielding between 1.3 and 1.4 t ha which considering we had zero in crop rainfall is quiet Ok.
The quality is very nice and they will be on supermarket shelves soon.

Day 80 since planting with Zero rain, chickpeas still looking good

Some Visitors Today

Truck Load of Mung Beans fresh from the field

Harvesting KS 20 Mung Beans

Visit from Nairobi University Engineering Students

Chickpeas planted on 15th June

Japanese visitors to the farm last week

 

Visit from some farmers from Northern Kenya

We had a great visit from some farmers from Northern Kenya a week or so ago, lots of discussion and great interest in conservation farming, the top photo is us looking at Kabuli chickpeas and the bottom is of the latest Desi chickpeas that were planted in mid June.

Chickpeas up and away

We finished harvesting this field of wheat one day and planted chickpeas the next (370 ha), our workshop has been a hive of activity building the above land roller to make harvesting the chickpeas a happier experience. (to be painted next week)
The Chickpeas are two varieties from Tanzania, with not much (probably under 20mm total rain) expected over July/Aug/Sept and Oct they will have to show themselves the tough plant I think they are. 

Spraying out Sweet Forage Sorghum for a Trial

Double Crop of Chick Peas

18 hours after finishing this fields wheat harvest and we are planting chickpeas back into the wheat stubble. We don't expect any rain for the next four and a half months so. We have a full moisture soil profile and so let's see how we go.

2016 Wheat harvest has started

Sweet Forage Sorghum

About to harvest some wheat when the ground dry's out a bit