permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

I am not wondering why you grow this particular type. I trust it's the best you can have.
But these Painted Mounains I could try to send you if you have the luxury of doing some experimentation away from the others.
It could well be that I'm dreaming, that Zimbabwean seed producers have tried everything already, or it could be that Zimbabwean seed producers do not care and haven't tried everything, but people are forced to buy whatever is for sale. I can imagine both.
In tiny Europe we created citizens breeding projects, to regain control over seed supply , because industry is interested in creating weak plants that need lots of chemical inputs. The seed companies and chemical companies merged, forcing farmers to sow bad naturally performing seeds and buying increasing amounts of cides.
We want to create strong adapted varieties through mixing them up, having them cross and sharing seeds amongst like minded folk.
There was a big international conference about seeds in Antibes(France) in October. People from over hundred countries attended and many from African countries as well.
It seems to me to be an important topic as climate change is taking it's toll and African agriculture is rapidly changing and old varieties are dissapearing.

Okay, I get it now. I didn't know the seeds that are being sold, intentionally make people dependant on chemicals. I would like to try out different varieties but can it be a little later in the coming years, if the offer will still be open, when I am sure that, the conditions around me will allow for this trial to be successful. I will explain why:

There is little flexibility in terms of embracing new ideas and with maize, it's the backbone of households at the level I am at. What will be in mind when one is looking at a maize field is 'sadza' which is eaten in the afternoon and in the evening. If it's maize 'sadza' it is white and yellow sadza I hear was eaten in 1992 when there was a drought. Because of it's importance, how it's cooked and how it looks cannot be compromised. Which makes it a little hard for me to temper around with the staple food if I am to be taken seriously. Food is not something that is experimented with a lot and there aren't many varieties to meals. Most homes have mostly sadza with chiumoullier/ kale and some meat for at least one meal from January to December. Sadza can be made from smaller indigenous grains and this can be of a different color, though modernisation made sadza from smaller grains so unpopular it is eaten occasionally if at all. Rice is a starch that's common but sadza usually is made available just in case people do not fill full.

Because I am still building my name for me to be listened to, I know at the moment if I bring a different maize variety I am likely going to be an inappropriate ambassador for such a change. But once I gain enough respect and trust from those I am working with, it will be easier to try out a new maize variety.

Other crops are easier though, because they are not of that much value. For instance the seeds I received and mentioned in my past threads are drought resistant and for some I have never seen their produce before. Adding a crop that's completely new, but that promises to bring some stability in terms of food accessibility is easier with where my project is at now. What I need though is to strengthen the trust by having many wins with my permaculture approach ideas, for me to convince everyone to try out a different maize variety. Which in essence is taking their mind away from the end goal which is white sadza and opening up the idea of food as a range with wider spectrum.

I enjoyed my first experience of hand pollinating a pumpkin female flower.

Your Sadza sounds very similar to the corn meal mush that I eat most days, though mine is not cooked so long and is more a thick porridge. I use my own corn which is a mix of colors, mostly purple, red and yellow seeds, so my food looks pink or purple when done. Your customers would probably not appreciate it!

Not just color but texture and flavor can be very different for different varieties. I can well understand people not wanting to mess with their basic food.

It's raining, and the rain came right on time, during the silking stage of the first maize plants. The pumpkin fruit is being bored by insects and it is frustrating, I am not sure of what to do, the second pumpkin plant looks wilted even though it's raining.

One of our neighbors also planted cow peas in their maize field this year and I couldn't help noticing.

Our vegetable shopping was from the field, for our Christmas soup. The time also that we are starting to harvest is so good, it's bringing variety on the table so early. How I intend to bring a change in how we eat is that, as we harvest the now common vegetables, I will be adding one indigenous crop. This year we have started harvesting nyemba leaves and pumpkin leaves. If I am consistent with this, these two crops will be a norm for our plot and as time passes, it will rub on to others until there is enough of these other crops in the market and we will be changing things silently.

The big choumoullier beds are going to have different squash types planted in them and we are removing the choumoullier.  It is thanks to the pumpkin leaves that were tasty but were so few.

My wormery was a success. I decided to stop putting kitcken waste on the banana tree because it seemed to attract a lot of rats. Now I am putting the waste in a closed container and it is working, I am getting my first compost from it.

Another thing is, the trees that are successful, they actually look nice. The tree that's not been accidentally cut from the field is the avocado tree from the trees I have tried to grow since last year. So I will put familiar fruit trees first and again once we start to harvest leaves for our organic matter, it will be easier to explain benefits beyond the fruit. At least the growing of grass has been embraced now.

Try putting paper or plastic bags over the fruit to prevent insect damage. Putting ash on the fruit may also prevent insect boring. I use plastic drink bottles over my corn. Very helpful against birds and also insects.

The universe is giving as usual. I am entering 2025 in style. I got a jumpsuit from my sister and an old wig which was lying in the house was ironed by a neighbor who happened to visit for the holidays, and everything is so convenient because there is a family function again on the first. I already have pretty shoes.

I entered this year looking pretty and with family. This year we spent new year's eve at a relative's and there were many family members. We had fun with fire crackers, and watching the kids' excitement.

When I returned to the plot though, Kumbi the young man I work with had been chased away from home because of something he had done. With how bad our economy is there is a very slim chance that he would have gotten a job to sustain him. Also because of how bad the economy is, it would have been hard to have someone provide shelter and food.
Chasing him away was a little easy because it would have transferred a problem from our hands to the next person. I thought this was not solving the problem, so his mother and I negotiated with his father for him to come back,  since he has been so hard working for all the time I have worked with him. We intend to find out exactly what happened so that we will know how to help him. His father allowed him to come back but we are yet to hear his side and map a way forward.

It's raining consistently and in appropriate amounts. The maize is growing so well and not just in our field but everywhere. The system I am working to create has grown a little. Before, all the focus during the rain period was on the maize and there was little room to concentrate on other crops. This time we still have maize which is not taking up too much of my time, we are building more on growing cow peas and finding how to create it's importance to everyone involved in the project it's success will help in adding organic matter to the maize field as well as fixing nitrogen naturally. I also have added pumpkin to the mix and I will admit that for now, it's a struggle to figure out how to grow it. After learning how to help pollinate it, the next stage is finding how to deal with pests. We have tried covering with cloth and now I have covered every fruit with plastic bags. I briefly sprayed with a mix of mint and onion after one pumpkin which had grown relatively big was eaten by something, I am suspecting mice, because the bite sizes were big for a tiny insect. I just need one pumpkin so that I can get seeds, it's from the seeds I received and my thank you has to be a success, so I am desperate. The other two crops are bottle gourd and long Thai beans, which are growing well on their own. The bottle gourd was attacked by some pest, so I have that to work out also. But all in all I'm proud that there is some growth in the number of plants that are in the field and it's still based on permaculture principles.

We haven't talked to Kumbi since he came back, because he was sick.

The corn certainly does look very nice!

The spacing looks fairly wide. I suspect the pumpkins would get enough sunlight right among the corn. I grow corn, beans, pumpkins (squash), cantaloupes and tomatoes under the corn.

I had planned to meet with Kumbi's mom so that we could plan on how to deal with him, unlike just having him come home and expect changes without deliberate actions. It rained in the morning and I had to cancel my meeting with her, since it meant her walking to my place and because she is still not well I could not have her walk in the rain. I also could not go to the plot because I feel like I have been bending way too much and it's sending a wrong message, so through small things like having her once in a while, walk to me for meetings could be a small message hopefully to show that we all need to sometimes get out of our way for each other, it is not a one way street. When I called to cancel I had a few things to tell her from my observations one of them was how we need to pause on pruning the pumpkin plant leaves for relish on those that have started flowering at least up to when there are some pumpkins. Some of the vines are being stripped of all the leaves and it seems like it is delaying them from developing. I did manage to tell her things I needed to say but I was chocking mostly and I have no idea why it is so difficult for me. I hope it will not get in the way of our actual meeting because in the meeting I need to say some hard truths, if we are to help Kumbi. We need to live the life we wish for him and it will come with multiple changes.

Mai Kumbi decided not to come, though it's no longer raining, to some extent proving what I am seeing. She decided to cancel the meeting saying she was waiting to hear from me for her to come and yet I had clearly mentioned if it does not rain our meeting will proceed. It is exactly what her son would do, where you tell him something and if he has a different thing in mind, he would just do what he thought and when l asked he would say he heard something else.

I did call for our meeting to take place tomorrow and there is no better action than this, to give as an example and have her see that we can point at Kumbi or blame evil spirits for what he has done, but we cannot rule out the fact that our children just follow our footsteps. If we change and have the kids see the change, who knows what impact it will have. I really hope she comes and I am not happy at all about what she has done but it is also an amazing opportunity for me to put my point across.

Mai Kumbi came and we had a highly uncomfortable but fruitful talk, which mainly focused on how we need to prioritize honesty in how we work together. We also agreed on a way forward on how to work with Kumbi, I do wish the best for the boy and I hope his relationship with his father will be mended.

I got a new phone and it was right on time because the one I was using was no longer working. This phone solely rest on the alternative regenerative system that I am developing. I raised the money for the bulk of last year and the money is all from regenerative projects. I mentioned my intent to buy a phone, to my friend who suggested buying a phone from outside the country was best because, I wasn't going to get a good phone as most people are not selling good phones. I have no one I can ask in the diaspora and through her boyfriend and his friend I got a really good second hand phone from America. There is a friend who was raising money at the same time as me to buy a phone and he got his around the 30th of December and already his phone has problems with network. If I did not have time, I would have never spoken with my friend about my plans and if we had not created a relationship, which we have been building in the past few years, she and her boyfriend would not have bothered to help me with getting a good second hand phone. The money I would have worked hard for would have bought a broken phone or something in this line, which would have meant circling around one point resources wise, not out of choice. So the gift of time is something I'm noticing a lot.

We hosted the guys who helped me get my phone at our home and it was a success. It's been weeks since I had this day in my head and for some time the most dominant fact was where I am status wise and one thought was to go out for lunch, but it was not practical. When they came they were so humble. The time we shared, made our house and all the surroundings that I had thought in my head were not good enough disappear and I was not self conscious anymore.