permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

The onions have brought so much excitement, and it's such an incentive for developing a productive culture. The bulbs on most of the onions are not as big as I had hoped, so we are just going round, picking on the  onions that have fallen leaves, meaning they will no longer grow. We will give the rest more time, to grow bigger.
Even though the onions might not give us what we had hoped income wise, the attitude towards work at the plot has improved even more. For example, termite mount soil is being piled in advance on the side of beds that we intend to grow beetroots in, ( the bed that we spread this soil with, before planting beetroots has seedlings that are looking really healthy). Then the plan was that, once we remove onions, we will put beans in the all the onion beds, and already mai Kumbi and Kumbi, are planning to start collecting termite mount soil again, in preparation for this,  which will be spread in the beds, and it's their initiative. I need to quickly come up with a boost in the quality of life, in the present time, to keep these spirits up.

We will not be selling the onions now. We will be waiting for the time when the onion prices are high. This was made possible by my sister, who has promised to buy our onions with current market prices, but she won't take them. A few months from now, when the onion prices are good, we can sell the onions and pay her her money back. This she did, so that we can cover our current living expenses and benefit from our produce in the present time, since we don't have the capacity to hold on to our produce as yet, for us to waiting for best times to sell in the market.

We have started curing the onions, and as usual, my first thought was that, whatever I do, I need to explore using recycled material. When I went to our local scrap yard, I found out that the price of scrap was ridiculously high, and I ended up buying a simple fence for this.

Onions look great!

I need to make something like that drying frame for my corn.

I am going to buy chickens for home consumption. Meat is a really important part of meals, and a significant part of income, in relation to how much someone earns, is channeled towards meat. I have decided to buy chickens (broilers) for home consumption for my family and for those at the plot. This came about as I was thinking of an incentive to keep the excitement level high at the plot, and I was looking at the abundance of mulberries from the two mulberry trees in our yard. Most of the fruit is just dropping and going to waste. This is a resource that's slipping through our fingers, and it is about to change.

I have started collecting the mulberries, which I will be drying, and I will mix the dried mulberries with maize and have this ground. I will do more research on proper mixes with maize grains, and this will buy me more time with the guys at the plot. Already, mai Kumbi is really excited about the whole idea. She has started drying leftover starch from her household, to add to the mix and again this was her own initiative.

I got to the plot just after 7am, and two beds had already been planted with beans, (we are planting beans where onions were). Mai Kumbi planted before she left for work, and as she was planting, the son was watering the other beds. By 10am, the family was busy with their life, apart from plot business. Mai Kumbi asked me for plant spacing before she planted the beans. It means that they now trust me.

how exciting about the chickens! it is mulberry season here too and we will be going out to collect this weekend (make jam and baked goods with the fruit). I know many people pen their chickens underneath the trees, they seem to love the fruit (as well as the insects it attracts).

The beetroot beds have responded well to the termite mount soil. The leaves are green now.

I am now concentrating on the keyhole garden. The pumpkin plant has been growing, but the flowers dry up when they are still coming out. I have covered it from direct heat, I am managing watering a lot more, and I soaked banana peels so that I can use the water, incase its got something to do with the nutrients. There is some soil I will be adding gradually,  so as to bury as much of the pumpkin stem as I can,  with the hope that it will grow more roots and take up as much of the nutrients as possible.

I am growing seeds from scratch indoors, my first attempt is with cucumber, I am finding the seedlings a lot more difficult to grow outside from scratch either because of rodents or lack of nutrients or just plant diseases. This will give me time to work on the soil before I put the seedlings down.

Broiler chicks were not easy to get. Rearing chickens is the most popular way that most households are earning extra income for them to survive, so chicks are on great demand. The queue to getting them in all proper shops meant we needed to book and wait for our lucky shot at getting the chicks.  Mai Kumbi booked some chicks,  she  was told to get the birds after a week, and when she went there at 6 am the queue was already so long and she couldn't get any because they were finished. She ended up getting back our money and went in the streets and bought some chicks that aren't broilers.

I wouldn't have advised her to buy these ones, it will be months of buying chicken feed, yet I just wanted us to take advantage of the free mulberries to supplement stock feed. The idea was to keep chickens that we wouldn't have to keep for months. I had already started selling peanut butter, physically (I started selling on WhatsApp a while back but sales flattened)  since the beginning of the week. It is now possible to actually sell because I am done with home schooling. In the coming week exams will be starting, so my aunt's daughter went back home to prepare for the exams. If I get good sales, it's going to help with this little situation of ours and so much more with regards to the plot.

"CAN WE MAKE A CHANGE?"This is a question that I have been asking myself a lot this week. My answer came when I least expected it. I was lying on the bed thinking of the sorry  glances that I am getting from those who know me when they pass me as I sell peanut butter. I know exactly what they are thinking because I was once in their position. If ever I would see an ex-classmate or someone I grew up with,  selling in the streets, I would see poverty and misery. To an extent, it truly is a reflection of this, and when I  accepted my state economically, it has made selling so much easier.

Some of my selling good experiences are not making things better. We are on survival of the fittest mode, and I am not one of the fittest in this context. I am stuck in survival of the weakest, where everyone  watches out for each other. On Sunday, some women took some peanut butter, the biggest sale I have ever made, and they would give me my money the following day. I have been to their place more than 5 times now, and I don't think I am getting any money from them. I am frustrated, but I am considering this as money that I dropped and lost. This is what made me lie on the bed asking myself if change was possible.
I was startled by a call from my sister asking me what permaculture was, and inwardly, I was thinking here we go again. I have explained this to her a number of times, but my sister is so polite that she will look down upon your work in the most polite manner, but you will feel it and I thought this was one of the times. I told her that in agriculture, it's when you design things to be the most productive you can be while mimicking nature, which will result in sustainability and eventually lower costs. Then she said, " I want you to do a permaculture  design for me at my place, and I will pay you for it." I was stunned, and I did not know what to say. Suddenly, I remembered the plot progress and the growing business relationship I have with the peanut butter guy,
which I will talk about in the next thread. This is change that is happening. Right now, all I need to do is to design a beautiful goats pasture for my sister. I know that if it is successful, the people in her circle who will see the design might also want it, and that's how I will be spreading permaculture.