Rufaro Makamure

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.

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.

Rats ripped the mesh wire I put around the space, where I am dumping my kitchen waste. These little creatures do not give up, I  am not about to give up either. I have to make this little garden work while at the same time isolating our biodegradable waste from any access by rats. This is not only to benefit from the nutrients, but if it works, maybe another family might adopt the method, and if I  am lucky, multiple families will take this up. If it spreads, it will mean less food for rats in my neighborhood, which, in turn, will reduce the rate at which they multiply.

We have started harvesting our onions at the plot, and I am yet to see how much we will get from our harvest.

I once mentioned how I am using waste from our dogs, where I take one year old decomposed dog poo, and bury it at the bottom of the keyhole garden. This was better in my mind than dumping the waste outside our yard or leaving it for the garbage collectors who will dump it at a dump site near other people's homes. But at the back of my mind, I still felt uncomfortable putting the waste in my garden. I am happy to say I found a new system for the dog waste. I will still be throwing it in pits that I dug inside our yard, and I use leaves or whatever is available to absorb any stench. When one pit is full, I use the second one and wait for a year before I take the decomposed poo from the first pit. Now, I am spreading it on our small lawn patch. The patch is surrounded by blocks that are quite high, meaning it's going to take years before I can fill up the lawn patch with the decomposed waste. It's been a few weeks since I started working on the lawn, and already, it's greener than before, and this is in the dry season. I am so glad that I am responsible for the chain of the dog poo waste, where it's not polluting the environment in any shape or form at any stage.

I went to the plot today, and the termite mount soil seems to be changing things, though it does not show much on images. My plan was to rush to the plot 3 times a week to carry soil from the mount in preparation for the new bed we will be planting more beetroots. Mai Kumbi said this is a task she can do because she is not doing much at her flowers stall. This means I can concentrate on another plan that can add to our income, or just improve our quality of life, so that I keep this family very interested and invested in this place. I can only do this if the quality of life they have a chance of living while they are at our place is better than they can find anywhere else.

The beetroot bed is looking good. I added soil from a termite mount because, Even though the leaves are green, the plants look smaller than they should. There is a space right in front of our yard that is being turned into a shopping mall. I was greatly disappointed, but yesterday, I decided to make the best of what is available, and that's how I decided to take the soil from the termite mount which is in this space. If this works. We can feed so many vegetable beds.

I visited my sister over a week ago and mulched her beds. I had never thought to ask if she wanted to have her beds mulched, I just assumed she had no time to mulch. When she came she was not too excited because she wanted her garden clean. She did not remove the mulch and a few days ago she called and told me how her view on mulch has changed because she noticed the great difference in the rate of water evaporation between  beds with a thick mulch over those that either had no mulch or those that had little mulch. She said she is likely going to be mulching from then on.

I had the first harvest of pumpkin leaves, from the pumpkin plant and it was a serving for 3 people. I am still finding things that do not attract rats to my garden, and I already succeeded with mint and onions. I have harvested mint once, and I am drying the leaves that I get and storing them for making tea. As for the onions it's been weeks since we have been using them in our cooking. It's still a very small garden, but I am just proud that it's an addition to our easily accessible productive space.

We have harvested the biggest banana bunch since we have started getting bananas from our banana patch.

I have been selling peanut butter so that I have a source of income that is a little bit stable. There are some pressures that come in my life financially that slow down progress at the plot, and this is my conscious attempt to reduce these. The business is growing slowly, and growth is slow because of my marketing belief. What I do is to let people know I have peanut butter, I do not necessarily become aggressive, with a mission of convincing people with no intentions of buying  my product, to buy it. I want to fill up an existing need, as opposed to creating one. Those that taste it, come back for it, and the number of people is increasing steadily. There are areas that I am looking at, adding on to the quality of the product:

Finding a way of keeping the prices stable.
Maintaining the quality of the product.
Making sure it's always available.
Reducing the cost of production ( including recycling what we can).

These are things that are out of my control, and the peanut butter business owner is the one who can control most of these things. Already, the price of the peanut butter rose a few weeks after I started selling, and the quantity within the container was reduced. I asked if I could still buy at the same price, and he agreed. I have started asking my customers, who are my neighbors, if they can give me back their empty containers, and some of them are willing to do this. I can go with these containers back to the peanut butter guy at no cost, on his part.

The fortunate part is that we have a relationship, which is making us look beyond just making money. I started buying extra peanut butter to fill up the bottles to the original level. This reduces my profits, but it has helped in keeping my product a stable and consistent brand, and I now have regular customers.

It became obvious that I needed to meet with the peanut butter guy to see how we can help each other out, to make our businesses genuinely stable, including looking for cheaper sources of nuts or capital to stock up nuts and as a result, prevent effects of fluctuating raw material prices in the market. A few days ago we talked about things that make any business in  our environment so difficult to grow and we came up with a map on how, from his side he can stabilize his business, which in turn will make my small business stable.

Some days after our discussion, he met someone from Women's Affairs who saw his project, and she thought it was a really good one in comparison to business they usually try to help. She wondered if he had women he was working with so that he could be assisted in growing his business. She had seen the bottle neck in his production process. The person he thought to call was me, and this was because of the talk we had. For him, I was already involved in his business, but it was just not formal. If he starts getting help, it means stability for my small business, too. So I am considering being a part of this. Of course, it will be after I hear what it  means to be involved and whether it aligns with developing a regenerative business.

The beetroot looks good now. Today I added fresh duck poo into some water and poured this into the beetroots. Because of how sandy our soil is, it is wise for us to keep feeding our soil, so in addition to the weed tea, for the beetroots, we will add the duck soup weekly.

I went to check on the beetroot today, and there is some change, but I felt it could be better. I realised that the hearts of the plants were under the soil, which is a result of watering. Since the soil is sandy, it kept burying the plants. I exposed all the plants, and I also poured duck soup mixed with ash. And now I wait.
For the bed, we are going to put the next batch of beetroot, I have worked in some compost and ash so that the new seedlings have better soil to start with.