Permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

I am learning that toads eat slugs and it can be my solution to my slug issue. The problem is..HOW THE HECK DO I GET A TOAD INTO MY GARDEN? I do not see myself handling any toad any time soon. I don't mind it in the garden, it's the touching or lifting it that I cannot even imagine.

Rufaro, I hear the same thing in my community. We discard almost nothing, which is so important to me. My neighbors say "but the trash man comes three times a week, why bother composting?" "I can buy vegetables, so why should I care about growing them?"

All I can think is that there was a time when I also didn't feel passionate about this whole subject, and I can't be responsible for other people's priorities. I share what I grow, and I know passersby are always commenting on my fruit trees (that can be seen from the street). Maybe someone will see these things and get curious and try making changes of their own.

I hope your long beans do well. They are probably my favorite and most reliable summer crop. They take a long time to establish but produce so much, and do very well with unpredictable weather (which I know here in Brazil we're supposed to have this summer, probably you as well).

This week was filled with hosting of relatives. First it was my aunt and then one of my nephews was graduating and I was the one standing in for his mother.  I am glad I could be there for him.

At the plot mai Kumbi has onions and a lot of kale, so she asked me if I could get more customers, to add to those that are buying from the plot. I did but she was not happy about the prices we were offering, she turned my customers down and she found a different market. Her enthusiasm now is really commendable.

For the peanut butter business the issue of employees is not something we can overlook, so I am supposed to meet one woman who worked with Apo for years, but stopped. Now she is the one he calls when he has noone to help him and she comes when she is available. I want to find out from her, what it would take for her to help Apo for about three months continuously, as he works out the motor issue and also so that he can find time to go and buy  nuts

I had a successful meeting with the woman whom I think will be a good support for Apo. She told me her experiences with him and she said there is a lot of improvement that's needed when it comes to how he handles people who help him. She said she strongly believes in the potential this business has and she is willing to let go of the stall she has, for her to work full time at Apo's. What she asked for was for her to have her rent, transport to work, bills and food for the month. What she was promising was all her effort and concentration to see this thing grow into a proper business.

This meeting was something I ran through Apo and he was on board, that was before it happened. Imagine my surprise when I went to him and the moment I started telling him how successful the meeting went, he was crushing everything that had to do with this woman's engagement in the business. I was confused. If he didn't want her, I felt like he should have mentioned this from the get go and I wouldn't have wasted my time or the woman's time.

I called mai Kumbi today, wanting to make an order of flowers from her. She was so excited about the onion sales she is making. Her words literally were "guess what..." she said it like a little child who cannot wait to tell something really exciting.

There is a little pressure on me to quickly grow our capacity. I threw out the idea of finding space in the existing beds for okra. She is still skeptical about mixing crops and it's okay for now. I need to work on my sample garden bed which I will show practically, how we can benefit from mixing things in one bed. If we increase the  number of products we sell, our garden can get more out of our customers, (one customer can come for kale, onions, tomatoes...e.t.c) and we will be doing this using the same space and labor we already have. The amount we can get out of a single bed can increase, if we have different vegetable being picked out of it. Growing only kale or onions in our beds limits our capacity, and it's something I need to address as quickly as is practical.

One of the pots gave me my first harvest from pots and I was able to make a lettuce and tomato salad. The tomatoes are still from the plot.

I found a watermelon seedling, on the manure which came from the kitchen compost and I transplanted it. The potato plant which is growing on a pile of pruned banana leaves was bit by something as it was starting to flower. The plant was the healthiest I have seen so far on any potato plant and there was absolutely no spraying. I guess the microclimate that has been created on the area its on, is ideal for potatoes.

Rats have been eating the pumpkin plant leaves. I have covered the plant with mesh wire to protect it.

The beets and lettuce I had planted in a container have stunted growth. I have transplanted these and put them in the keyhole garden. I took a picture of the beetroots that I planted in the keyhole bed at the same time as these. The leaves for the keyhole garden ones are big and have a good green color, where as the other ones have extremely small leaves.

I have been giving mai Kumbi some peanut butter to sell. My objective is to have every opportunity for her to add onto her income from the plot. Those that come looking to buy vegetables, if they see peanut butter they can also buy it, this will be some money into her pocket, which will add to making the plot attractive to her. I did not explain this in detail though. When I asked if she was willing to add peanut butter to the products she sells, she was happy to. I was surprised to hear her say that she is giving one very old lady who is a vendor in town to sell. She says the woman struggles and she barely has anything on her table to sell. When I asked her how she intends to pay the woman back, she said she will get a huge bundle of kale and give it to her so that she can split it and add it to her stock. I am yet to see how this will work, if it does, we would have added a person to our circle of influence, in terms of improving sustenance. I still think we have an even bigger market at the plot which can be exploited, but I won't push this for now, as I wait to see mai Kumbi's strategy.

With Apo, I keep going back and forth between leaving his business alone and continuing to poke my nose into his business (that what it is really because he has never asked me to). I found myself asking him to meet with me to hear him out on the issue of employees. He came and I was glad he did, because he didn't have to. We talked at length about how if he really intends for this business to grow beyond a certain point he needs to create a system that does not rely on just him alone for every single thing. He does not trust people especially those he has already worked with. He does not quite get me and I also am struggling to understand how he does not see that he needs people. The meeting was mainly about the woman who I am hoping he works with, whom he always leaves behind when he goes away. She is a very sensitive topic with him. I do kind of get him, just like I get the woman. The two have done hurtful things to ech other from a business point of view, but this is not too different from most start up businesses that are around us that never grow beyond a certain point. This time around I want to experiment with them to see if we can change few things in the normal business culture, I have a strong feeling it will change the work relations of these two. There is exploitation of both the employee and the owner. In the current business set up, on one side when one goes to work they do not care about whether they are productive or not, what they want is a salary at the end of the month. There is zero accountability. Then the owners do not really care about the wellbeing of the employees. It does not matter to them whether the jobs they create pay the employees enough to cater for their basic needs or not, there is a minimum that is usually given to people and employers want to keep it there. In both cases the result is the business growth suffers and this is what I want to try and change.

Apo told me one thing that left me shocked. Isn't he had left his nuts in Gokwe, he went to collect them last weekend. When he left he had packed them in 90kg bags then when he went back he unpacked all the bags and put them in 50kg bags which he could load easily in a car. In one of the bags he found that nuts had been mixed with maize. He was lucky that he unpacked the bags when he was still in Gokwe and he confronted the lady whom he left the nuts with and she suspects her children sold some nuts and put maize at the bottom of the nuts to give an illusion of a bag filled with nuts.

Last week when I talked to Apo, we had agreed that when he goes to his home area this coming weekend he wants to sample how I think things can be done without him around and if he is happy he can consider working with the lady I am proposing. He wants the lady and myself to run things during his absence.

Instantly in my mind the thought I had was that, his daughter went back to school and he is trying to take a chance and find a way to leave people he is comfortable with, running or over-seeing things. He knows I really want him to consider having this woman as someone who can manage things for his business and he is using this to take advantage of the situation. When I asked if he will be paying the woman for the time she oversees things, he said he has an arrangement with her where she can use his facility to make her own peanut butter, when she has nuts. When she stopped working for him she started selling her own peanut butter, but she usually doesn't have nuts. He also wants her to do this during her Sabbath day and when I asked him if he was aware of the fact that she needs this day off, he said it didn't matter. From my meeting with her, church is really close to her heart.

When we spoke, even if I realised these things I was willing for the woman and myself to go and work for the weekend. I was comparing this to what happened with the motors. Although Apo had a plan of installing motors, he didn't think it was time yet and I believe he went because he didn't want to disappoint me. But when he had one installed his need to put motors on his roasters is unbelievable (the problem is the welder who is not available anymore).

I initially thought it does not matter what the reason is going to be for him to allow the involvement of an employee who will manage the production process while he focuses on bigger and pressing issues. The moment he experiences the positive difference that comes with a dedicated worker, I am hoping, will make him understand the point I am bringing across. So I was excited to get this coming weekend.

The few days I have spent thinking about this, has since changed my mind. We really need Apo, his business, if it grows, will definitely be a stable source of income for so many people, including me. What we need to figure out is how to work with him in building his business without enabling exploitation of anyone. I know he is not aware of the possibility of him taking advantage of people and because he has been over working himself yet struggling to breakeven, he is extremely sensitive to what his business can pay as a salary. We are willing to work with him, until he breaks even and he can afford to pay people decently. But he has to be able to value time and effort from the get go, in a different way from the norm, even if he cannot afford to pay properly for now. I need to get a successful business person who sees value in employees, to make him realise that this is just as important as the quality of his product.

I harvested a good bunch of spinach today, and I will be putting the spinach plants on a periodic harvesting plan. The harvest was a big one, I cooked some and froze the rest for a different day.

I plan to get leaves after every three to 4 weeks. Our lunch was sadza and spinach in peanut butter sauce, a meal that resembles the common sadza and pumpkin leaves meal. The target is to reduce costs beyond just the financial cost. I am taking into account the cost it takes socially and environmentally to grow and all in all access things, especially food.
Again, the maize I used is from the field, spinach and tomatoes are from the garden, and the peanut butter is from the peanut butter business. This cut down my financial cost significantly. Then, in terms of the environmental cost, all the feed is from kitchen waste, there was no transport involved, moving things from point A to B, yhe garden is right in front of the lotchen. Socially,  the time to work on the spinach was not too demanding, I could not say it took too much of my time or any other person's time. I did have to buy a wire mesh, which is a cost that I could not avoid. From a preventive health care side, spinach helps with the blood and I have been told my blood pressure  is on the low side, though it's in the healthy range, so spinach and beetroots are an intentional addition to the garden from a health perspective. I might be   able to lessen the need for going to the hospital by having access to healthy food.

I picked some lettuce leaves for breakfast today. We had buns that were baked by my sister. Lettuce added nutrition to the meal.

I met with mai Kumbi today, closing the month's sales. Again we increased our revenue. We increased by 26% from last month. The figures are still low relative to normal activities that can be classified as a business. I am glad that now we can buy a number of grocery items, that can push us a long way through the month.  We had rape and mustard leaves that helped us boost our sales of covo or kale. This coming month we won't be having these. What we did is to plant kale/covo in between rape and mustard plants. Kale remains in beds that we are removing rape, so this is what will add to the original kale beds.  I am hoping we won't drop in sales. I had thought that the beetroot we have been planting within the kale beds would have matured by now, but the beets at the plot are taking time to grow big. We are also getting one chicken each from our birds. They are not giving us eggs, and we both need meat for our households, it is a blessing in disguise. I think we did not have enough feed for this project and the chickens could not give us eggs consistently.

I am concerned about mai Kumbi's health, she looks smaller. I am suspecting her maize is finished and there is nothing I can do. We have to find a way to accelerate our growth, I know we will be okay.

This morning has been an eventful morning. It was not exactly exciting at first. My sister was late for devotion and she is not moved when she is not on time for things we agree on, and for 2 days now I have been watching this without saying anything. I am not good at time keeping either but we have been talking about how we need to change this, so we need to put an effort towards this, she is not. I cannot tell her how I am feeling because I am working on how to deliver issues I am not happy about in a gentle way, which has been something she has been complaining I am bad at. I have to figure out how to not be too blunt about this time issue. Because I have something I am keeping from her, it's been hard for me to converse with her, and she noticed it and she is also went quiet on me.

After yesterday, I decided to cut a banana bunch today, so that we can share with mai Kumbi. The challenge was that, I could not ask my sister to help me and the task took me long, as I was working out how to protect the pumkin plant as well as to keep away from the power line. Half way through my task I saw a chameleon on one of the leaves that I needed to cut off, as I was getting the bunch. I called my sister to help me remove it. She is terrified of them, but she came and she was supposed to keep the leaf steady as I cut it. I was under the branch, so any funny action the little creature was going to fall on me. We worked so perfectly together, in between so much screaming. I got the chameleon on a metal rod and it was staring right at me. Before, I kind of believed my feelings are close to zero, like, I feel indifferent about so many things that I see, as compared to those around me react to. I have removed chameleons but this one was too close for comfort, I was holding the rod and screaming at the top of my voice, I did not care what the neighbors would say, which is usually an important thing to me. I ran out of the gate bare foot my sister rushed to me at a very safe distance with my shoes and threw them to me. I was able to move the chameleon far from our house safely. The little creature got my sister and I talking, so I'm happy about that. I am also happy to experience feeling something (scared and knowing and expressing the emotion right in the moment like I did). I would love a lot of this, well not necessarily chameleons and being scared, but knowing how I feel when I am in the moment and being able to express it.

When mai Kumbi came she brought veggies for the week. It's now a lot and we have a consistent supply. I am sharing my part of the profit with my sister, the one I am staying with, this is because my siblings have allowed me to freely work at the plot without much trouble. Also it's only fair for her to benefit from her property. All this while she was not entirely supporting my approach to the kind of labor I want and what I believe they should get, even how I farm was kind of of an issue.

She has not said much, but she is becoming more supportive and her nonverbal actions are leaning more towards okaying what's happening, and it's  coming from within her.

The next step is to figure out how to make her see that as opposed to the norm, we can use the properties we were left with as a stepping stone to earning our living, as opposed to relying on  the properties to take care of us, without any of our own effort. This way, we will have something sustainable and fair. This means that we now have to work to develop things so that we keep on improving mai Kumbi's living standard, it will in turn push her to want to do more and growth will be inevitable, for both our families.