permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

During a hard rain, I sometimes go for a walk around the fields to look how the water is flowing. I want it to stay on my field but not to cause damage.

We have planted sunflower along the fence from the outside, and inside the fence, we added lima beans. The area we put sunflowers gave us a nice harvest of organic material for feeding the soil.  The rain is raining so much with short breaks and I think I will make pathways to direct water to trees and the hedge, and stop putting it in the field.

My uncle from Hurungwe paid a visit. I had been the one to go to see his place but I did not make it, it still is a bucket list item maybe for next year. He is done with securing his garden from being destroyed by cows and he planted some live fence which will replace the branches, twigs... which will eventually rot. His next target is securing his seed source. In the past years he would sometimes buy from what he would get from his field, and in most cases he would get help from family members when his time for nursing his seeds arrived. The target is to have his produce take care of this, and he will send a draft of how he will tackle this. He helped us with our banana plants at the plot, which have not been producing fruit. The best time I had with him was dancing together, our meeting was not too intense, I think it is also something we are developing generally in the house, learning how to enjoy moments together.

With my mum's place, we have been focusing on time management as a primal target. Normal working time starts at eight for professional jobs and we have been aiming at consistently matching this, and we are not too bad now. The next step is to prioritise, planning in a way that makes effort beneficial.  The plants we are looking at to assess effort vs benefit are, maize, cowpeas, pumpkin, covo, and little focus is on chickens, I am not yet sure we have what it takes to care for them properly. Feed for the birds in the coming year, is the reason why we are putting sunflowers.      

Hi Rufaro, I'm new to this forum and have enjoyed reading your thread.  I think you could write a good book about your experiences!  It must be very satisfying looking back and seeing how far you have come, and that your neighbours recognise your successes by copying you.  It is a good farmer who leaves the soil in better state than they started (whatever their yield)!
I'm thinking about your 'sandy soil' patch in the field and wonder if it is worth all the extra effort you put in to get the maize to grow well there.  Maybe you could consider planting shrubs or trees that would dig deeper with their roots and provide shelter?  I have heard of the moringa tree, which is apparently being planted further north than you and has several uses, both edible and non edible.  One good thing about it is that it is supposed to be very quick growing even from seed, giving a yeild the first year, so you could quickly see whether it works for you.  It is just an idea for you.  I hope you have a good growing year this year.

A book! Nancy thank you...! Nicest complement!! I will be happy to have a good writer take it up, if it is a possibility/ something even worth considering.  

The sandy patch from inside the yard has greatly improved and it has indeed taken a lot of hard work, just to prove it can be grown on, just as on the good soil. The objective is to have so many things growing in fields, other than a traditional maize field with little to no trees and the current limited diversity on the plants grown. The other thing is with changing times, the big commercial farms we used to rely on for food no longer produce anywhere near what thy used to and a lot of food is imported, and very expensive in comparison with normal/ average income. If we could have small scale farmers grow food throughout the year, using the proper farming methods (pro-saving the earth), as opposed to waiting only for the rain, it will not only secure food, but I believe it will help in the water cycle balance, the reasons follow

having plants growing for most of the year will keep the ground moist and cool as opposed to only three months of growing and leaving the ground bare, the rest of the time

spreading water harvesting in multiple household will have a compounded effect on reducing runoff, further increasing water percolation and the volume of water that will be stored in the ground

once households pass the phase of trying to secure food, they can open up their minds to greater issues like the contribution of a single farmer's farming methods to climate change. It will be easier to introduce growing of trees, not only for food consumption. An example is in our field, last year is the only time everyone was on board with growing a thorny indigenous tree (more than 3 years since introducing permaculture), not because of its edible fruits, but because it grows easily, it fixes nitrogen and it will be a good wind break. It is like, as a family we are seeing past "we need food now", and we are investing in an environment of abundance (holistically) instead (permaculture is earning trust because of the past results). This year, we have many cow peas and pumpkin plants that have emerged, wihin the maize field, if we manage to have a good yield on these, it will take a little attention from maize, once we get the benefits from these crops. We can experiment with these in the kitchen as well as in generating income. I am sure there will be gradual changes in the quantities of maize we consume per year, I will be recording this also. This will help in devaluing the importance of maize as the main source of food and it will be a matter of time before fields will look like forest, with trees, multiple plant species, e.t.c. The only trick is just having one family successfully implementing this I think. Everyone else will tag along. This year, I was happy, I saw a second family using buckets to water their field, before the rain came. They have a well and not a borehole but it still is a good water source and they cannot afford an irrigation system yet (assumption). Since in the meantime maize is "the food" and it is pricey, instead of looking at what they do not have they are using the resources they have to grow the maize. They have labor, water, and land. It is not convenient to water using buckets, but, it is watering and it assures availability of food/ maize at the end of the growing period and it can be a stepping stone to building a convenient life. The money and time used to buy and look for maize/ mealie-meal, or to buy inputs and grow things that would have a high chance of drying up due to excessive heat and no supplementary watering to back the rain up, could be saved up to set up an irrigation system and eventually drill a borehole, if it becomes a necessity, until we develop and grow food adaptive to our environment. If an ordinary farmer with a well can grow the maize just as good as a farmer with a borehole and irrigation systems, it lessens the value put on maize also.  

The field is drenched in water, it is difficult to remember that only a few weeks ago it was scotching hot. We have started diverting water, starting with the vegetable garden. The maize is also being attacked by pests.

On a higher note, there are few cow peas plants that emerged, from the first cow peas planting batch, they have grown and they are beautiful. With how grass is becoming more and more scarce, this is the way to go.

We ridged the vegetable beds and created a path for the water going round the field and not through it. That way we give it enough time to sink without damaging our plants and excess of it will flow out of our yard.

As far as the pests, have you looked at what plants are not affected based on what is growing nearby? I'm guessing you've got some attractants (bait) combinations and some deterrents. Maybe do a test based on this?

Also, I'm curious about the setup of your fields. Would it be possible to do some swales at the top of the slope to catch some of that runoff before it goes into your drainage ditches? Then it might flow downhill and continue to water your garden after the rain stops.

Hi Lauren.

I did not quite understand what you said about pests.

The rain stopped again for sometime, and we got a little bit of sun today. The maize field is now good after redirecting the runoff, the water collects in the holes when it is raining, and when the rain stops it quickly sips into the soil.

The sight of some of the vegetable beds is not too far from disheartening. The leaves look like they are wilting. We bought some poultry litter, which we put in some of the beds with the hope of redeeming our vegetables.  We have also been putting cut weeds in these beds. We might be too late for this season because it is still raining and I am not sure how much the organic matter and manure will help for now. We will continue adding weed cuttings, if not for helping our vegetables this season, it will be in preparation for the new plants we will put. We have started harvesting the wilted leaves before they rot, and we will boil and dry them( common way of preserving these leaves around here), that way we will at least get something out of our effort. I had expected so much from the vegetable beds income wise.

The sun is out again today and we are loving it.  We have started harvesting maize form the part we were drip irrigating and boiled maize is such a tasty treat. The monkeys beat us to the maize again this year and today they meant business. They are not afraid of people anymore and they do not even run far when we chase them away and the moment we would busy ourselves with other things they were not wasting time and they were grabbing as much cobs as possible. We made a scare crow, so hopefully that will keep them away for some time.

I hope the monkeys can be seen in the tree included in the pictures.

You stated:

Rufaro Makamure wrote:The maize is also being attacked by pests.

From the pictures it appears that not all plants are being attacked. I'm wondering if the companion plants are having an effect here. If you have beans around some (just as an example) and pumpkins around others, and those surrounded by pumpkins are not being attacked, either the beans might be attracting the pests or the pumpkins might be keeping them away. By knowing which plants are being attacked and which are not, you can start to determine how to use the plants to prevent pests.

Oh okay I get it now, I will have a look and I appreciate the advise.

We are continuing with adding cut weeds into vegetable beds, we are still on the first layer, but we intend to put a lot, giving time for the layers to dry up and turning them in the beds. Some of the vegetables are now a right off, so we removed and replanted, in some beds. In the maize field, the tallest maize has started tasseling. We do not have to put as much effort in the field this year, we are now getting most of the weeds for the vegetable beds from the field. We planted maize on patches which had some beans as well as cabbages, so the whole area of our field now has maize.

Too much water has taken us by surprise and we have been affected, but there is an upside to this also. The resilience that we are building up in the maize field has been put too the test and though we are still developing, our field has done us proud so far. The upside is that, the situation resulting from too much rain, is giving us a practical platform to look at opportunity cost, in our daily choices, ( I discovered the term yesterday). It best describes one of the main concepts, which if we learn, will have a huge impact on how things will turn out, opposite to the usual, i.e., so much effort and very little benefit, if any at all.

Making the decision to scale down and only focus on our yard first, in growing things, instead of adding rented spaces has been a victory. We have more time, money and energy that we are concentrating on a manageable area. We still need to establish what we truly can sustain within the yard though, given the resources we have. I feel like even though we scaled down, we are still spreading our resources thinly, by trying out many things within a short space of time and this has a tendency of depriving the plants of important resources, like proper feed, watering time, pest control, e.t.c... We are both (mother and myself) at extreme ends. If I had the chance I would grow one crop until I was sure I can handle it and then add another only after I know I have mastered the first, then keep on repeating this approach until we get to the fullest capacity the field can handle. Mother on the other hand is not afraid of trying out various things, especially what seems to be selling more in the season. From the time we started working together, I have been seeing the pros and cons of being rigid with a plan, and I appreciate that there are some moments when plans change to suit the dynamic environment we are in. An example is with the maize we are eating now. I was completely against having it planted, because I was so afraid that, one, it will be too demanding labor wise since most of its growing time would be in  the dry period, and 2, it would also encroach into the farming season, and in someway we would have missed the full benefit of the rain in the whole field, since the maize would be almost mature, but still in the field. Well, both my suspicions came to pass, but the high moral, brought by the fresh maize cobs, is priceless. In the past days, since we started harvesting the maize, there is a different mood and the effort being put in recovering from the excess rain damage is beautiful.

I still think we are spreading our resources thinly as we try out growing/ doing multiple things, but I also know that we can only develop by trying out a variety of new activities. How to get an equilibrium between being too cautious in attempting to not waste resources on non beneficial efforts, vs, developing through trying out new things is the million dollar question. When I stumbled at opportunity cost, I got an idea on using this as a tool to help us in getting to this equilibrium. We have had choices we have been making the whole of our lives, we could try to revisit our past pivotal choices, and also try to imagine how if we had made our choices differently, how would we see our present state like. Then we can take this and mirror it into the choices we have made at the plot and their impact, looking at where we might be, had we not chosen those choices. Hopefully this will bring an awareness to, how much every time we think we have no option, we actually have and also, that, whatever choice we do not make, has its benefits that it goes with.

I have included pictures of the fruit trees that that have fruit on them this year. Also one most welcome development is that, my sister  who likes cooking can now make home made custard, thanks to the chickens for making eggs available, who knew that not much is needed in making custard. She is also helping with making mum acquire a taste for the mowa vegetable"amaranth" and all the other new foodstuffs we intend to introduce her too. In her last attempt she put it in stewed beef, adding multiple things including, okra (I have never seen this anywhere)...it tasted really good.

We have harvested a reasonable quantity of the comfrey leaves, left them in the sun for some weeks, and we made a fertiliser. We fed a small part of the maize which is among the shortest batch and we will be assessing to see if it will look any different from the others with time.

The onions from the sandy party we worked on were a lot better in terms of quantity and size as compared to the onions we would usually get, so the effort of feeding the soil paid off.  

We are still talking about opportunity cost. We briefly talked about past decisions, starting from mum’s parents and the decisions that my mother thinks her parents made that have shaped her life a certain way both in a positive and negative way. As we continue with the discussion, one of the things I am slowly realising is that, no matter what the outcome of my decision to put a professional job on hold to try and create a regenerative and sustainable home for my family will be, it is never going to be seen as an opportunity. Judging from the slow positive changes happening I do not think I will do anything differently if I were to go back in time. It’s just that the feeling that comes with this realisation is not a really good one.

We were now bouncing back from the effects of excess rain, even though we still had light rain almost daily. But for about fifteen hours now it has been showering non-stop and I have been looking through the window watching the water flowing outside. I am not going to the plot today, emotionally I feel so drained I cannot put it in words. What I know though is, tomorrow, I will be working on the second layer of organic matter for the vegetable beds, and see if we cannot beat this rain. The lima bean plants along the fence were drowned, I have already planted new seeds. The pumpkin plants are growing bigger and bigger, meaning there is a possibility of a different kind of harvest in the field end of this season, I am hoping it produces a yield that will provide food for more than five months.

Hi Rufaro,

I have followed your journey over the years and have always admired your efforts.

I have lived in South Africa for a large part of my life even though I now live in Australia.
I have an understanding of Africa and how it's very different from the USA and Europe.

I’d like to give you my 2 cents worth. You need to look at the big picture –

The facts as I see them – Zimbabwe is in decline, the value of the money is worth less every day.
The job you left, your destiny was in someone else's hands and could have changed at any time.

What you have done is taken control back, you are feeding your family and having excess to sell.

Growing food is not easy and you will have setbacks all the time but that is what life is about how
do you overcome them?

Simply don’t give up, carry on doing what you are doing, growing food and gaining valuable experience.

Concentrate on improving the soil, protect it like your child.

I work with soil using minerals and microbes endeavoring to produce nutrient-dense foods, it’s all in the life within the soil.

Rhodesia was the breadbasket of Africa and there is no reason that it can’t be that again
with the likes of people like you.

If you ever need any advice or help, or just want to talk, please get back to me.

Regards
Keep on growing and never give up.

Anthony