Rufaro Makamure

Oh my god Su....! I am so excited for you. I love peanuts, I love peanut butter, I think I will love peanut anything. I am hoping you will enjoy them as much as I do.

Yes we did grow some, well it was my mother mostly showing me how to grow them, when I was telling her how we could grow them in the same field as maize. Most of the information I will share with you is thanks to Apo, he helped with his knowledge. They are very easy to grow.

You need to make sure your area has loam to sandy soil, because they do well in loose soil. Also they require warm temperatures. When preparing your soil, you can work in your soil feed, compost or any manure you have, and this should be enough to take care of your plant until maturity. People put fertilizer but when we grew them, we didn't put any and they turned out well. You can mark out lines with a depth of 5cm and  around 30cm apart. These will be your rows. You can drop your peanut seeds about 10cm apart within the rows and cover them. When they start to flower, they form pegs, which are root like things that shoot from the stems into the ground. When you see these forming, you can mount some soil on the peanut plants to cover the pegs, this has a tendency to increase your yield, (almost like what is done when hilling potatoes, only with peanuts you do it once). The only other thing that you have to make sure you do is to weed. Because they are such a low plant, if weeds are not monitored they will reduce the yield significantly. Your soil has to be well drained.
They take about 3 months to mature and you see this when the leaves start to turn yellow. Harvesting them is just pulling them out of the ground, but they can be difficult, with the ground nuts remaining in the soil as the leaves and stems are pulled. You can dig them up if this happens.

I will send you how to cook nuts.

Twists come from the oddest things. Last week when I visited Apo, we talked at length about what we were seeing as a huge draw back in his business and we both agreed that we needed to start shifting from a fully manual system. The part of the process that he chose to start with was the roasting process, and the main reason was that it is the hardest part of the whole process, because of how hot it is for someone who has to rotate the roaster manual for the whole time the nuts are roasted. Having the roasting area outside makes it a lot more difficult in the hottest months.

Today when I went to celebrate with Apo, for the money we have for one roaster, I  was shocked to hear him propose we buy more nuts instead. I was both confused and disappointed because we had a lengthy talk about this. He has unprocessed nuts rught now, that are queueing to be processed from people who come for his services with their own nuts, he has even stopped processing his own nuts so that no one goes back without being served. This is something I thought would make us choose efficiency over anything else in how we should use this money because the volume of nuts coming his way this season is more than he can handle. He wants to get the peanuts before their prices increase, which I think makes sense, but I still don't agree with it being of more priority than putting a motor. If he buys nuts now, they will be parked as he works on nuts from people who are coming for his services, which is going to keep the capital locked in the nuts. If he has the motor installed it will be like additional manpower and it will speed up the processing of the peanuts and it will help with the backlog he has and it will also allow him to process his own peanut butter. We currently don't have any peanut butter to sell because he doesn't have his own, even though he has peanuts.  So we might get the nuts when they are slightly higher than they are now, if we go the motor installation way, but I believe it's a sacrifice that has to be made. To just explore the possibilities, we started looking around for things we need to put a motor on the roaster and the first task was to look for someone who is experienced in industrial machines. We got someone and what he was saying was strangely affordable, and Apo became a little excited, but the problem is an electric motor to fit into a motor sprocket with chain transfer mechanism, is not common anymore and the time it will take to find  the components we need might be longer than we both want. This time is making Apo choose buying of nuts first. He is now more open to the installation of the motor being of higher priority and if we are able to get the parts we need to fit on his roasters in a short space of time, we will work on the motor installation.
I had a good ending to our discussion now I need to figure out how we can get the things needed without taking too much time.

At the plot we have consistent supply of tomatoes and some greens. The images of the new beds they started, with no fertilizer application are really good. They are working so hard now.
At home I am doing experiments of my own and the rats are again a problem. My work on mixed cropping has been destroyed. I realised the fastest way to try things out is if I have a real life sample to show, and the rats have drawn me back so much. I have started fencing some of the plants on the smaller pots, once I buy a longer fence, I am definitely  covering the key hole garden area.

Today, I  have an achievement that is not necessarily tangible, but it is worth noting. I managed to get some funds to continue to work with Apo. It involved knocking on multiple friends' doors, something I just started practicing, and being coldly rejected of any help by most people I reached out to.

The last time I wrote, we had made progress in getting help to mechanise the peanut butter production process, which is currently manual in a way that has made it fail to grow. The problem is that everything froze because I was failing to get any feedback from my friend I am working with on a concern I had with the upgrade. The proposed approach to upgrading the system is too big for where the small business is. The upgrade involves buying completely new big machines which are ideal for the business in the long run, but for now, the personnel and the environment might limit the success of such a system.

At the moment small steps in upgrading the system, utilising the existing equipment, can be helpful in that it will be extremely economical, it will also allow the people in this system to grow and to be ready to manage a bigger system. It will also allow the business to find ways to blend in our very complicated business environment, which, in my opinion, is unkind to thriving businesses, especially if their pockets are not deep enough. We still need to keep things at a family trading level as we improve the system's efficiency before we can even begin to consider going big.

I can write my thoughts well, but my biggest issue is not being able to articulate myself well in a conversation. Everything gets twisted, and nothing seems to come out right. One other thing is, how do you tell potential help to scale down their assistance a little. I did try without much success. I ended up going to Apo to find out the prices of putting a motor on one roaster so that I can look for help. The amount was equivalent to the amount I was holding onto, that I could not use because it is my friend's the one who has been helping me with this project, and he seemed to not have much time to entertain down scaling the upgrade idea. Well, today he did give me a go-ahead to use this money, but of course, it's not specific to anything, we still have not talked about the upgrade since its proposal. I now have the chance to have a motor put on one of the peanut roasters, which I believe will bring significant changes to the small business. I will show my friend that with a few dollars, we can make a huge difference through improving efficiency whilst prioritizing stability as we develop things. A sudden growth might look profitable, but it involves so many different aspects that can easily be overlooked, for example, the ability of the business owner and his employees to manage the introduced growth. So I will be going to Apo to start working on putting a motor on one roaster.

Mai Kumbi surprised me. She sent vegetables again this week. My sister and I harvested a bunch of bananas from our yard, which is adding on to the week's food supply.

The two vendors that I have added to the vendors to help with peanut butter sales are still asking for it, although the sales are still very low. One of the elderly vendors said he does not need any money from us for selling our peanut butter because to him, we are just like his children. I am not sure how to be with him. He keeps on saying I do not know how to accept a miracle. I have stopped insisting on giving him a token of appreciation, but he has left me with an itch to want to work with him in a beneficial way and as usual my brain has ideas swirling, and maybe when the time is right we will do something more than peanut butter selling together. He also gave me hope that we can be humane to each other for no reason at all, so he is definitely someone I want to develop with. As for the upgrade with Apo's business, my idea of growth is gradual and step wise growth. I am not sure if my friend sees it this way, and I did send him an audio, hinting on this, and it's getting to a week with no comment on this. I am afraid to ask him about this because I do not want to push this opportunity away.
I think slow growth can help us look at the business holistically and create an opportunity to grow the business into some really stable investment opportunity as opposed to if this business gets big sudden changes, which could shock the existing operations and risk destroying even what Apo has built for himself so far. I have to communicate this, but I do not know how without appearing as someone who is getting in the way of a big sudden growth.

I put pumkin, bottle guard, and long Thai beans in the keyhole garden from the seeds I received. I will keep on trying them until all conditions are good for me to grow them successfully. We are in winter, which might not be the best season, but I figured, if I have tomatoes growing, I could be lucky. If it doesn't work, I will try again in the summer.

One other random thing is that we used lemons, mint and guava leaves to help my sister fight off a flue which was promising to be a very bad one and she was not too affected by it. Everything we used is from within the yard.

Thank you Lisa.

It's been a while since I have written anything down and the reason is because I have changed my strategy a little. In the past years, I would jot down ideas and trials and sometimes I would win and sometimes I would lose. I realised that there is a level of accountability that we need to get to from a result oriented perspective. As a result I will be writing down things only when a product or idea is a success, only then can I explain how I got to it. So today I harvested  spinach from the keyhole garden, a space that has proven very difficult to grow things in, consistently. I am experimenting with the soil as well as with mixed cropping. I will use this in the future as a real life sample of how our beds can be at the plot if it works. The area is protected by a plastic since its winter. I placed some okra, garlic, peas, spinach, beetroots and tomatoes. I have sprinkled tomatoes with orange water and also mint water, and this has saved the tomatoes from a red spider mite infestation.

For the plot I met with mai Kumbi and we agreed that if she still wants to stay at the plot, she has to find what she can offer in return for accommodation without being pushed. She wants to slowly move away from her flower business and she wants to try out farming as a main income generator. We agreed that for some months, we will plan together what to grow, but the execution of the plan is on her.  It obviously made me very happy because from the beginning I hoped she would see the value in growing things the regenerative way. She is running everything with her family and I have taken a step back. We have gotten to a point where I have to be accountable to my family over the property that I am responsible for and mai Kumbi and her family need to prove they want to grow things without any external push. The beginning of June marks the first month since we met and she brought the sales they made and also some produce from the plot without me asking. She even brought a book so that we start writing down how much we make monthly and this is a very big step to me.

The fact that I dont have to be at the plot for some time is helping me focus on the peanut butter business. The sales are steady, and sometimes we actually run out of stock, because Apo is overwhelmed. He is running his system mostly manually and there is as much as he can do. A friend has promised to look into what it takes to automate his production process, so I am excited about this. Once we have a stable supply of peanut butter we have the potential to grow. This growth if all goes well has to come at a point where the plot project needs to be funded for, and is ready for growth. If mai Kumbi really proves she wants to farm, I  will have to channel what I make from the peanut butter business into growing our farming project. That way with mai Kumbi it will be a fair give and take relationship.

PS: the products are very small, for now its just consistency that I need us to have.

I have managed to find two more vendors to work with, as I sell peanut butter. Their sales are still extremely low, so I will only tell if I will be continuing with them after a few weeks when we asses how the sales will be.

Apo has not bought nuts yet and he says he needs to buy the nuts directly from farmers and he is waiting for the price of the nuts to drop. He will go to the rural areas, for some time, so that he can get nuts directly from farmers. This is a strain on him since he will be needing to monitor whoever he would have left behind, to process the peanut butter from the field. For product consistency, if there are any challenges, he will have to come back and process the peanut butter himself and then go back into the field to continue to gather peanuts. For now, before he goes into the field, he is harvesting the maize he grew, which is quite a lot.
I appreciate that his focus is no longer just on selling the product at whatever price to make money. He is now looking at a means to mantain the price of the product constant even in the midst of some chaos economically. This in my eyes is the building of a steady business, where the focus is on the customer's needs holistically, not just focusing on making money, (which is indeed a very important part of business). I did share my concern with him though, on the need to be consistent with our peanut butter product availability, for us to gain trust from our customers. He is aware of the negative effect of sometimes having a product and sometimes not. He is confident that his market will not be affected much by a shortage of the product for sometime. As for my market, he said it's a small one, he can buy nuts from our vegetable market and make sure I always have some stock.

For the plot, my sister helped us to get our pump fixed. The man who came to fix the pump, had said the control switch for the pump is what got damaged and since he is the expert, he is the one who bought things he needed for him to fix the pump. Unfortunately the switch he bought is not the right one for the pump and he is having challenges returning the switch to get the right one. I am a timid person and in such situations usually, I am left with the cost. Mai Kumbi is different she will fight to have things done, she is pushing the man to find money for him to replace the switch he bought. We still don't have a booster pump, but through working together we have a higher chance of getting the pump fixed.

A couple of ideas have been coming my way. I am still waiting to hear from the man I talked to about working together on marketing the peanut butter to those in the diaspora. As I wait I am looking for a second vendor to work with.
The lady we leave our peanut butter with has been consistent and sales from a vending point, are proving to be better than the home deliveries we are working to establish.  I guess we truly are creatures of habit, sales are being made more through a way that most people are familiar with. I am also going to approach a women's church guild  and propose for them to buy peanut butter from me and for a certain number of bottles bought they get something towards any fundraising activity they have going. I  had hoped to also work with one guy who works outside the country and every time he comes back home he donates to an orphanage, money that can buy them food for a short period. I thought instead of a yearly once off donation, he could put his money in the peanut butter business in the orphanage's name, meaning the orphanage will have stepped up in financial value, monthly they can then have peanut butter delivered to them throughout the year from their interest, this way the kids get to have peanut butter monthly for a whole year. In turn the peanut butter business will have acquired a sure customer which helps in stabilizing the business. I forgot to mention that Prisca's mother now grows more peanuts than she used to, because she has a ready client in Apo. Another uncle of mine has also grown peanuts as well. Apo's business is a backbone to key things. Providing income to people, driving farmers from making maize the central crop and potentially being a support and a ticket towards financial independence for institutions like orphanages that rely mostly on donations, by allowing their money to work for them longer. If most farmers close to my town supply Apo, it shortens the distance nuts would travel to get to Apo. In the past year, He would get nuts from Harare, that would have been imported from South Africa. This will also be an input towards reducing our carbon footprint.

I have had my concerns with the keyhole garden because it seems to attract pests. It's worse now because we have  more kitchen waste than usual since we introduced more fruits and vegetables in our diet and this has increased the amount of organic matter we put in the kitchen compost. I looked at a bird on the tomato plant, picking on pests, also a bee on the pumpkin flower and I liked the picture I saw. The garden is not just for us but for animals and insects meaning I need to think of less harmful ways to make the place productive. Spraying pesticides will be my last resort, even to keep slugs away. The central part that I left for putting the kitchen waste is overfilling, so part of the space for planting is now holding the excess organic matter. When I learnt about how shells help keep slugs away and planted some seeds, there are two bottle gourd seeds that I put very close to where the excess kitchen waste is. I did not put shells around these but they are the only ones I covered with sand. I am surprised because of all the seedlings, these survived, from the slugs. The one that died, it was me, I accidentally snapped it when I tried to wrap the plants with a cover to protect them, an idea I quickly left. I am wondering if it's the sand or how close the waste pile is, that's keeping the slugs away from eating the bottle gourd seedlings. I will try putting sand when I plant next. I plan to plant grown seedlings that have a tough exterior as opposed to seeds this time. So I am nursing long Thai beans, water melon, and okra, away from the garden. I will transplant them when they are bigger. Maybe I will still be able to grow things even if there are a lot of slugs and other pests.

I got a call from Prisca's mother (my aunt), Prisca, whom I taught last year. She sent me nuts and fresh mealies. Her son, who had visited  her, was passing through Gweru, which is my town, and she thought of me. When I was young, my parents were in the generation where families shifted into urban areas. Before them, men would be the only ones who would go to work in towns and occasionally go to visit their families in their rural homes. My mum's mother would visit with multiple parcels of things she would have harvested from the field because in towns, we wouldn't grow anything, we would eat store bought food. Harvesting time is called 'zhizha', so my granny would say I brought 'zhizha' to town. A lot of things have changed, and the giving spirit has faded away.

It meant so much when I heard my aunt saying, 'I sent you zhizha.' It sounded to me like an awakening of a faded culture. She would send some food when her daughter was with me, now, she didn't need to send me anything, but the moment her son mentioned Gweru, she thought of me. Apo has also been sharing his green mealies with us and as a result we did not need  fresh mealies from the plot, so mai Kumbi and her family's green mealies' quantity was increased, because it included our portion. So, just like how some not so wise decisions have bad ripple effects, good deeds as well, have their own ripple effects.
Things are getting hard, but those who have been giving did not focus on tomorrow's insufficiency. They just thought of us and gave.

It's been a while since I have posted anything. Well, the plan was to post when my little keyhole garden had a lot of plants, but I guess this will take a little while. Rats are back, and I am just going to get some help with these ones. There is a new problem that I had underestimated, slugs. They look tiny and slow, but when they eat emerging plants, they clean the space. I have had two attempts of planting seeds, one of which I had added eggshells around the garden because I had read that this helps, but I was wrong. Now, I am going to have seeds germinate in the house, and once they show life, I will transplant them. The slugs seem to attack plants more, just after shooting out of the ground.

The pump at the plot is not working, and I feared this. It's raining so it buys us time.  Mai Kumbi now skips going to her flowers job because of the increase in transport fares. She is really invested in the plot now. She wants to start on growing the onions. I am thankful that we can afford plants for some beds.

I am still working on growing the peanut butter business. The big challenge I am facing is that my customers seem not to have peanut butter as a monthly grocery item. There is not much response when I post it on social media, but when people bump into me with it, that's when they usually buy. So the flow of my income is not steady yet. I did make a proposal to someone who stays in diaspora who came back home to visit relatives. A lot of money comes from diaspora, and I hope to get customers from the diaspora who will buy peanut butter for their loved ones back home. I always assume that in first world countries, there is a culture of consistency, especially with grocery lists, so dealing with people who are exposed to such habits might mean consistent monthly orders. So I asked for some help, to get connections of people, with families within my area who can make orders directly to me. I am still waiting to see how this goes.