permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

Thank you.

We have harvested and dried a lot of cow peas leaves, we are now selling some. It's been about four days since I put a notice to let people know we have the dried leaves. One packet was bought on the first day, which was great, then things went on hold, not even to just inquire about the price. I know it's  still early but I am getting  nervous. To make it worse, my brother visited and made an innocent comment on how it is embarrassing to have cow peas leaves being sold at home. If we consider the norm on success locally, he is right, but looking  at it differently it's difficult to understand that a kind of food  defines success . It has only intensified the pressure of selling  a lot  of the leaves. I still have high hopes because quite a number of people around are either from mum's generation or moved from the rural area to the urban area. They are likely going to buy, simply because they are familiar with cow peas leaves as a tasty relish. The other leverage  is, choumoellier, the common vegetable  is scarce because of excessive rain we got. I am still on the second packet.

Hi Rufaro,

Not sure if cow pea leaves are so called normal food in Zim. You may need to educate the locals by making up a pot and giving them a tasting. If they like it they will buy it, if not it may be a crop not to grow in the future. I believe it could also be feed to life stock. Ignore all  negative comments you hear and just get on with producing food.

Cheers
Anthony

We have intensely used weeds this growing season and tinhough we got most weeds from within the yard, we also borrowed from one of our neighbours. We have been getting some of our organic material from our neighbours, either stuff they wish to burn or we would offer to weed on sections that would be sprayed by herbicides. It seems we will no longer be getting weeds from our neighbours anymore because the last one who still did not find them useful is now using them, since this February. It is a little disadvantage because it means less organic matter from nearby, but looking at the big picture it's one of the best signs that we are changing our understanding of farming and we are seeing the value of using things that nature has offered freely. It also means 4 fires less, annually. We all used to burn weeds and maize stalks during land preparations and of the four families (houses adjacent to each other and are farming), we have been gradually changing. Also an increased surface area being fed with organic matter are minute contributions to the bigger fight on climate change. One neighbour has a composting area where he has been piling his maize stalks for over 2 years now, with the other two, this  year weeds have been piled under trees and the other one is in the process of mulching his maize field.

My young cousins have been sending updates of what they have successfully grown since they returned home from visiting us. They are celebrating their first cucumber and a few spinach plants that germinated and they are mulching their kale/chomolia bed (they stay in Bulawayo which is 165km away).  

We  are finished with shelling of maize. We got 5*50kg bags and we have been eating green-mealies for about 3 months now. This year we decided to eat our maize from the green-mealies stage without too much restriction. We decided on this when we had guests and realised, we could easily substitute sadza with fresh maize and still serve an enjoyable meal. So we have been eating green -mealies since December and we are still eating them. We had 3 different sections of maize  with different sizes and on one area we replanted maize, soon after we harvested the first batch, this is where we are getting green -mealies for this month. Our field has given us so much, maize, nuts, beans, eggplant, okra, eggs, grapes...e.t.c.

Rufaro, it is good to see your family eating the fruits of your labour! I wanted to tell you that Wangari Maathai, Vandana Shiva, Masanobu Fukuoka, Wendell Berry and our own Dr Redhawk all have Ph D's. I have one too. It comes in handy occasionally for farming, say if you, need a dayjob quickly to cover a capital expense. Not much help in feeding the worms, though. Still, in my country we say "I cannot be insulted by fools". If people have a problem with educated farmers, it is their problem, not yours. Your family is eating well. Let fools criticize :)

We got a bigger booster, pump, from someone on this forum!
Knowing that kindness, trust, and care for a fellow human being exists brings so much hope.
I feel like when things really get tough someone is there to support me one way or the other, be it its, time, moral support or financial. Thank you!!!  I will work to not disappoint.

We  have  cleared our  field, and we cut all maize stalks and put them in the vegetable beds. Choumoullier is selling so fast we are opening our beds for selling only two days in two weeks and we run out. It is difficult to send people off because they will be asking for even the smallest leaves, which if we comply might lead us into killing our plants. For  the beds we could not mulch using maize stalks, we are replenishing with grass. There are areas within the beds where cow peas plants and pumpkin plants are growing successfully, there is no need to mulch because their leaves are covering the ground beautifully. This means we have the potential of saving time we spend looking for mulch as well as spreading it. This alternative of a live mulch means there be reduced scrambling for mulching material with neighbours as well, since organic matter is finding more use in our homes. I am not sure how resistant to the cold our live mulch will be, I guess we will see.

Our cleared field is not without life this time, it has beans and cow peas. I love this scenario because it's the best excuse to keep working on the soil throughout the year. We are mulching and as a result we are adding organic matter, which will help improve the soil structure, provide a good habitat for micro-organisms and reduce evaporation from what could have been bare ground. l will include a patch of an area we did not grow anything on to show how bare it will look as months pass by.

*Dried cow-peas leaves are selling slowly, emphasis is on they are selling, our mulch will not only save time, but will give us a little income occasionally.  

We used our pump for the  first time today and the difference in the work we have managed to cover and what we used to do is big. We are all excited about what the future has in store.

Another thing worthy celebrating is a micro environment that is being created, automatically as we are addressing issues that are affecting development at the field. I think we are building 'hope' within the family, and  I say this, because of behaviours that were non existent which I am seeing. I will mention the one I cherish the most. Recently my mother brought out a dancing cartoon, talking about how a happy person shows happiness through dance, she made everyone in the house dance to this, including my brother during his visit and he did not even argue, I will not even talk about my niece she enjoyed every second. To have mother process and execute her thought, this kind of thought, is a sign of her creating space to just enjoy a moment.

I had an opportunity today to look at our work and just be in the present moment without thinking too much. The sight of the plants growing so well brought some calmness. The elements that l sense as great improvements are consistency, as well as less effort and time we now put in growing our plants. Unfortunately it's something that does not show in an image. It's so much easier now and we have less plants failing within the early weeks of planting. We have added new beds and we are now comfortably experimenting beyond chomolia. We have tomatoes, this time l can add their image, all the past trials were okay, but this time is so so much better.

We still get a few cobs of fresh mealies,  we are still harvesting cow peas,  and we have started harvesting some sweet potatoes. The past rain, has surely tested the strength of our determination to grow things on our own, and we seem to have survived.

We have collected over 3/4 of a bucket of dried cow-peas, from the maize field. We have also harvested the few plants we had planted as live mulch, there are parts where the live mulch seemed to be overpowering the vegetables,  so we agreed to remove the live mulch and try it out later. I think we need to be careful as to the timing of when to plant the mulch, the beds that had a good chomolia height were not negatively affected by the mulch. I have a really strong bias towards a live mulch, but caution is needed l guess.

Below, are two beds that we removed the live mulch from. One bed is as if nothing was done to it and the other bed has a gap on one area, where l think we planted the mulch when the chomolia was not yet tall enough.

One very welcome potential that this year is likely to offer is time, time to just enjoy an activity. And I owe this to a different value system that I keep discovering as well as continueously improving systems .
Because we can cover a bit more work than we could, we have some extra time. Though this is temporary, as we are still growing, 10% of this time is going to be for dancing. I really enjoy dancing and l believe that the effort we put in things like stabilizing food...and other basics, should somehow be balanced with the effort we put in just ejoying life. Maybe I will share some of my dance moves as I learn, for now I still have two left feet. I look and count on the things that we have/will harvest this year, amongst maize, chomolia...e.t.c, dancing might be part of these achievements and its exciting.

That’s a lot of cowpeas! I grow them too, so I’m aware that you are growing and hand harvesting quite a lot. That’s wonderful! I still haven’t gotten around to trying the leaves in my cooking. I already have a variety of greens to choose from, so I simply haven’t gotten around to trying the cowpea greens. Because of you, I eventually will try them.

You have been doing quite a lot of farming work. It is looking better and better. I’m hoping that your fields continue to improve.

Thinking about dancing? Yes! Dancing is good for you spirit, your soul, your artistic heart, or whatever else you want to call it. I’ve never had lessons myself, but I will sing and dance while I work in my fields. People might think that I’m simply crazy, but I’m much happier working while I’m singing....and dancing a bit. So go ahead and dance. Feel how wonderful your body feels when you’re dancing in your fields. Good for you!

Su, when that time comes, for you to try out cowpea leaves, it's the extremely tender ones that are eaten. Those that easily break off by simply pinching. Otherwise the other ones are too tough.

We have been collectively working on basics in growing things and though we have moved so much positively, what we produce cannot last a single family throughout a year, in terms of taking care of their basics, bills included. So now we are compressing all this work so that one person can maintain the stage we have gotten to so far. This frees up some labour for us to focus on growth even further, which is now more of a reality rather than a dream.

Rufaro Makamure wrote:What we produce cannot last a single family throughout a year, in terms of taking care of their basics, bills included. So now we are compressing all this work so that one person can maintain the stage we have gotten to so far. This frees up some labour for us to focus on growth even further, which is now more of a reality rather than a dream.

How many COULD be taken care of by what you already produce? If it lasts three people 6 months, or one person 6 months, that makes a difference in how you handle expansion and maintenance.