permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

Thank you for the encouraging words.

Rufaro Makamure wrote: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.

Ooh why not? What would you have gotten out of the professional job that you do not get out of your present circumstances? You would have been away from home all day, giving your work to someone else for much less than it's value always wishing you had more time with you mother and family. and time is one thing none of us can make more of.
I have a masters degree but I do not use it at all, I work as you do on the land and sell vegetables to pay the bills. the ability to make the decision to not earn a (high) wage and instead be home doing what I want when I want is an amazing opportunity that many on here wish they had. You can be there for your mother and your community and in slowly regenerating the land you steward you are also being there for the entire planet. If everyone did what you are doing then we would not have 99% of the world problems we have right now.

Skandi, if I'm understanding Rufaro's words correctly, she's not talking about an opportunity for her, but others seeing what she has done as valuable or important. It goes back to the social expectation that only work for "others" is valuable and that those who work the land are wasting their social value. Similar to the way people in the west see women as "useless" who choose to raise their own children. If some action does not lead to the social recognition of others, it is considered meaningless, even if it feeds her family.

It's not easy to work past that, to put your own value on your actions rather than accepting the value placed on your work by others. I keep fighting that, and keep falling back into the same trap. I know what I'm doing is important, but others don't set the same value on it so I have this constant battle of what I should be doing according to society and what I am doing. The battle leads to exhaustion and depression if I let it. The expectations of society are so deeply ingrained that it's sometimes hard to even see them, let alone fight them.

It is raining, but our afternoon has been a hot one which is really good. We have been turning the first layer of weeds and putting the second layer in the vegetable beds (we are no longer cutting, it was time consuming). On the beds we have been working on, the pruned vegetables’ leaves are growing big. There is a side that we have not yet worked on at all and the difference shows. Most of the lima bean plants and the tomato plants are not redeemable.  

I found that writing in this thread helped me in planning and creating a road-map for what I wish to achieve, and there is some exposure in learning how things can be done differently. I would like to involve mother and possibly have her share how she is running her homestead with others. I need some help though from anyone, to start a dialogue, of some sort with her (within this thread), as I think this is more engaging and it will give the conversation more weight, as it will be bigger than just the two of us. Her name is Rabecca.

We harvested the mature maize and we are using the greens to add to the mulch for the vegetable beds. Boiled maize will be in season mostly in March/ April (with the exception of the commercially grown, which is always in season but pricey, and always the first few cobs are the tastiest. We have our cousins (still young) who are spending their christmas holiday with us and we usually serve boiled maize for lunch, the satisfying thing is how eagerly they wait for lunch.  

We are now working on the third layer of weeds, for the chou moellier (so it turns out that all along I had been spelling this vegetable as chomolia instead of chou moellier, a type of kale) beds and the weeds are blending with the soil beautifully. The maize has cobs and some of the pumpkin plants, which grew by themselves now have fruits. We have also started harvesting the cow peas leaves, though the plants that germinated are few. I am still sowing cow peas every opportunity I get. The lima beans along the fence that we sowed is germinating well, one edge of the field which we are also using as a path of excess water has sweet potato mounts, and these too are looking good.

This season we have received plenty of rain. We've had a tropical storm since December, which resulted in floods and it is still raining. We have seen challenges that come with flooding but also we have seen our maize field's resilience and it is heart warming to know that stability is possible even when there are erratic and extreme weather conditions. What I will not sugar coat is how demanding it is to reach this stable point. With our vegetable area, I have lost count of how many layers of weeds we have put so far. Most of the plants did not make it, but what consoles us is how the density of earth worms has increased in the beds. We are no longer adding weeds in some beds (We seem to have put so much), the plan now is to grow cow peas as the live mulch, to protect the earth worms from the sun, when it does come.  

I'm curious if you've studied Zephaniah Maseko at all? He was in Zimbabwe as well, and I believe the foundation he started is still around. Called the Rain Farmer.

Oh yes!
I know about Zephaniah Phiri Maseko. I first heard of him when I did my PDC classes. I think he really did great things and I respect what he did, unlike these days where information is more accessible, his youthful time was a lot different, having him approach farming like he did is pretty amazing. His home area is relatively close to where I stay and it is among the places I wish to visit some time in the future.

The cow peas seeds I planted are now germinating nicely. I am anticipating an added value to cow peas this year at least starting with my family, if we manage to harvest a lot of the leaves as well as the pods, which is a highly probable thing. I have included pictures of the harvest that we have made so far, from the scattered plants ( sugar beans, cow peas pods, as well as both dried and fresh cow peas leaves) and all from the same space as the maize.

This season has been intense. But one thing I am discovering about farming or life in general is that, every season has it's highs and lows and in most cases as you experience an incident, it seems to be the most intense, so I suppose after sometime, there will be something else that will overtake this season's experience. One memorable incident which has made me believe in miracles, happened when I was getting back from the plot, one particular day. On this day, it started raining heavily when I was still in the field and I had to wait for it to die down a bit for me to head home. There is a route I usually use which has a small river (normally a dry place), this one was out of question, the river would be full after such a heavy pour and so I took a long route, which has no river. Along the way as I passed some people's houses, they were scooping water out of their houses, then I knew I was not to underestimate how much it had rained. I got to some road and it had turned into some kind of river, and this was the road I was to use. I saw three men who were way ahead of me who seemed to have a hang of things so it gave me courage to continue, there was no one else in the vicinity. I got to some section which was really wide, with water everywhere and I had the confidence that I could cross since the men whom I had seen had passed in a fairly easy way.

As I walked, it seemed to get deeper and deeper and I was failing to understand how a road could be deep in a bad way.Just when I was in real panic mode and was kind of stuck, at that moment some man came from behind, with shoes in one hand, and he just grabbed my hand and started walking with me. He opened his mouth to say something and I smelt alcohol and all I could visualise was the both of us falling, I assumed he would not have good balance. I started pulling my hand away and at the same time unconsciously taking the deeper route. He did not let go, he was pulling me in a non negotiating way and he seemed to know where exactly to step. As soon as we got to a relatively safe space he just let go of me and did not even look back for me to see his face or say thank you.

Worms have been magical, we are now mounting weeds on the cow peas in the field, hopefully plenty of worms will breed around the plants, this has turned out to be the easiest way of feeding our plants. So we will see how the cow peas (nyemba beans) will do. We have not put any other kind of manure other than piling weeds. The cow peas in the vegetable garden looks great, and it looks like it will turn out into a beautiful live mulch. We tried putting sugar beans in the vegetable beds, but these ended up outgrowing choumoellier plants, so we are putting a pause on this.

 

We had a second lock-down soon after New year's and one of the children who had come for holidays to our place did not get a chance to go back home. We have spent so much time together at the plot and all the while she will be asking so many questions, especially about how we are growing things. Why we mix different plants, why we do not use fertiliser...e.t.c.  She stays in a rural place, so she knows a lot about growing and farming in general. I always try to explain the best way I can, but I can tell she does not get much of what I say. I am not too worried about her understanding things now, I think, to have her just seeing what is going on and asking so many questions and storing this in her subconscious mind is good enough. If she ever in her adult life considers farming, I know she will have more to chose from, from her knowledge base, also if she hears about the different farming alternatives as she progresses in life, some of the things will be more than theory.

Today though has been different. We were harvesting bottle gourd and she asked me how many bags of maize we were expecting from the field, and mentioned the number she thought we would likely get because of how small our field is in comparison to what she is used to. Her number was two 50kg bags. When I told her we are expecting not less than 6, 50kg bags she was astonished. We had a long talk about how it is not about the size of the field but how properly managed a space is and today she was all ears, but still not believing. I forgot all about this but later on in the day, when we got home, she checked with my mother if I was being truthful about our past harvests, and she came back to me again. I then remembered I have everything on this thread, when she saw the pictures and the recorded yields she believed and still remained super surprised. I hope the maize dries up quickly and we get to shell the maize and see how much we harvest in her presence.  

Rufaro,
And the other great thing is the other crops you are growing, not just maize!  If one thing does less well one year, hopefully another will do better.

Nancy Reading wrote:Rufaro,
And the other great thing is the other crops you are growing, not just maize!  If one thing does less well one year, hopefully another will do better.

Not the least of which appears to be a young mind.

rufaro I just spent the last 2 hours reading your entire thread from start to finish. all four years and this has been the most exciting, beautiful project I have ever seen. What you wrote here gives me hope for the future. I am blessed to have been born in the richest country in the world. And yet still here injustices are rampant and the effects of climate change are begining to take their toll (The fires we had last year, I will never forget the months of drought and the way dark clouds rolled in and darkened the city with ash and smoke). I cannot stop wildfires, I cannot stop global powers and the ultra rich. But I can plant a garden. I can mulch my yard and plant fruit trees. I can talk to my neighbors. and I can prepare us for change.