Permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

Exciting times ahead...! We grew shallots less than 2 weeks back, it was just a single brown head, now it is green already. We have decided that for a business, instead of just concentrating on selling the tangible product from the garden or field, we will focus on "affordability " as a product. I don't know if this makes sense but, there has been inflation which has now gone out of hand, instead of taking this as an obstacle, we can choose to take it as an opportunity,  we can produce a lot more products and concentrate on pushing volumes rather than just increasing the prices.

If shallots are growing at this rate, we can put a very cheap price knowing we can grow more fast.

From what you've discussed before I can't tell if you're focusing on seed saving at all.

Keep 2 seeds from every cob you harvest as long as it's not insect eaten or has other signs of weakness. A few full cobs that are completely healthy might be better than a few seeds from each, depending on your harvest.

Keep 1 bean pod from each bean plant, and so on. Collect only the healthiest, those that are not nibbled by insects or attacked by other pests.

If you haven't done this before, research it. You want to choose one or two criteria for each crop, and pick only the seeds that fill that criteria. As the seeds are planted on your land year after year they will slowly adapt to your conditions.

I think a too short answer on seed saving can lead to problems.
For example with kale, if only CMS hybrids are available, advising to save seeds will lead to problems because it does not work.
With inbreeding plants like corn, only saving seeds from one or a few plants will lead to inbreeding depression, and a highly reduced yield within a few generation

As seed saving is an art, and too much to explain in one post, here a short description from specialists, and the agrodok on seed production.
https://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedsavinginfo.html
https://www.echocommunity.org/resources/96ff0021-b918-4bad-8220-c2cf3991c83a

Yes we have been saving seed from almost every plant we have, grown but not in any professional way (thank youbfor the link). We got our first onion seed this year which was an experiment.

A friend talked about a possibility of arranging a rocket stove workshop next year. It is exciting, we will go a long way in reducing tree cutting. The impact of cutting trees was formally announced as one of the biggest contributor to why we have not received rain and why the heat is excessive.

I was fortunate to witness a gulley that filled up within a space of year. The hope that this privilege brings is so much.

Below is a link to the one small window I have into the possibility of changing the impact of climate change and other things that camevalong with development. I am glad and privileged to witness positive changes through human action in real life
https://softfootalliance.org/

I found a complete feed formulation for poultry on the internet, I cannot seem to find amino acid supplements, Is there something I can use to substitute these? Below is the feed formulation, the items in bold are the ones I have not found

Making a 70 kg bag of layers’ mash (18 weeks and above)
Ingredients
34kg of whole maize
12kg of Soya
8kg of fishmeal
10kg of maize bran, rice germ or wheat bran
6kg of lime
Amino acids
175g premix
70g lysine
35g methionine
70kg Threonine
35g tryptophan
50g toxin binder

Fish meal is just going to be the byproducts of fish, dehydrated and powdered. Bones, skin, whatever is left. If you don't have fish in your area other things can be used. Most amino acids are going to be found in your meats and meat products. The mix attempts to recreate the diet of a free range bird (to a certain extent) which would be eating bugs and other small animals as a normal part of its diet. Leftover eggs, bones, eggshells, dairy, small insects, all are going to be sources of amino acids. Vegetable sources aren't going to be as good, but still a possibility. Shells or seeds of pumpkins or gourds, some beans, quinoa or amaranth, etc.

Its been almost two weeks now since we planted the Faidherbia albida tree, and it is still alive. We also have some cactus we planted and they are also doing well. The other trees we tried growing without success are apple tree, snot Apple and mulberry. Soon our field will not be too bare.

We are now looking more and more into what is withstanding the high temperature we now have.  Our drip did not work this season and even though we water our maize it is clear we will have to put in more and more effort. Christmas Lima beans seem to be going well, we have started adding the plants around the fence. We are now covering the planted seed with thick grass before emergence, to avoid evaporation and hence hardening of the soil covering the seed. This worked with recent seeds l planted, l will use this method for all the Lima beans seeds.

We prepared the chicken feed using the formula in one of the previous posts, less the amino acids.  We have made enough feed to monitor progress in egg production and feather development for a week.  The number of eggs has been fluctuating and we got the most when we mixed feed with commercial feed. This time is the first time we have all the quantities available,  and we used some boiled hatchery by-products to substitute for protein. We used a little of the by-product to once again try breeding maggots.  (I have no capacity to send images at the moment,  l will add them in whenever I can)

Rufaro, did the rains ever start?

We had about 3 days when it rained. We would see it raining in other parts within our province, all we would go as far as was the cloud forming stage. One huge factor could be because of the amount of trees that were cut in our area this year only. When I can send images I will post how a bundle of firewood will be like and in a day, we have not less than 5 mostly women, carrying these bundles, this excludes carts filled with firewood.

Rufaro, has anyone experimented with solar cooking? It may help reduce the amount of firewood used, thus reduce the number of trees being cut down. Just a thought because I use a solar oven when I have good sun available.

I had my eyes wide open and my heart skipping a bit when I read "solar cooking", I will explain why after I answer the question.

We have seen houses having solar panels being installed, so yes there are some people using solar energy, the only thing that could be slowing the use of these in the majority of homes is their initial installation cost. I have seen a cone shaped silver thing at a friend's house ( soft foot alliance guys), which they explained as a solar cooker, but I do not remember seeing when they cook with it. Outside these examples I have not seen any other kind of solar cooking.

I have been thinking of a possibility of having trees being grown in my community, including in public places, of course this is something beyond me but there is no harm in dreaming. So, one or two days before you sent that message, I had shared with a friend, this idea which I have had for sometime now. Of having a competition through the city council of tree growing 'cacti in public places as these will not be cut down for anything and after researching on whether they can be effective in cooling the place and have some significant evapo-transpiration capacity, then other trees in personal yards as they can be protected better. The competition will have a good enough price as an incentive, which will be given after say maybe a year when the one person with the most number of surviving trees wins the contest. After this, the trees won't even need attention. During the year or whatever period, there will be meetings, maybe some lunch will be provided to the competitors, this is an incentive that I think can steal so many hearts away it will keep them interested and it is a short term thing to look forward to. During these meetings a more detailed education on trees and their impact can then be given. So at the end of the year we have trees,possibly a greater appreciation of their value, and with the introduction of rocket stoves, we could slow down the current cutting down of trees. This I call the start of growing back rain in our place. When you sent that message, it was when the thing filling my brain was, what if the electricity situation takes long to resolve, how do we tackle the root cause of why trees are being cut, a less expensive way of completely getting rid of cooking using firewood and I saw that, "solar cooking", for a moment I forgot about solar panels and saw an option as potentially accessible as the rocket stoves.

Insulated box, covered by a repurposed window, with tinfoil covered reflectors? There are a lot of designs online.

Earlier corn shelling was mentioned, is stumbled upon these two similar designs that might help speed shelling things up a bit. The first one you can make at home, for the second one you'll need tools that can be found in any autoshop. The design is similar but the shop one is more durable:

https://d-lab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/4%20CornSheller_DoIt.pdf

https://d-lab.mit.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/3%20CornSheller_BuildIt_SM.pdf

Edit: How are you holding up with the load shedding, is it still 15+ hours a day?

Yes it is still 15+ hours