permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

Bucket trap for the rodents?

are you talking about oil in a bucket?
i saw a rat in my backyard the other day, but i have a little turtle wandering around and a lot of birds. so i didnt want to put y poison out

No, a bucket trap is just a large bucket 1/3 or half full of water. It has to be deep enough that the rodents can't reach the bottom when they fall in. It's generally done with a bar across the top that's free to roll with some kind of bait attached to it (peanut butter or similar). The rats or mice get out on the bar, it rolls under them, they're dumped in the water and they can't swim.

A friend of mine had rats getting into her sunflower seeds, so she planned to build one but only got it partially done--no rolling bar or ramp up to the edge of the bucket. She scattered the seeds over the water and they went in apparently thinking it was a solid surface. She said she caught 6 in one night.

If you look up bucket trap you'll probably find some decent plans. Lots of variations.

I can't help thinking that trapping/killing/poisoning pests isn't a particularly Permie thing to do.  I know it's tempting, but in a healthy system predators should balance out the pests. Bucket traps in particular I believe are illegal in the EU because they are considered cruel.
Obviously Rufaro has created a lovely food supply for the local rodent population, so what she needs is balance.  What are the local predators of rodents?  Can she provide habitat for them to encourage them to keep the rodents in check?  Or make the tomatoes less desirable to the nibblers? There are suggestions on this Permies thread about rats something may help, but it would need to suit Rufaro's site.
Our vole population tends to go through cycles. It boomed as soon as we let the grass grow; they eat a lot of grass but it also gives cover from birds which are one of their local predators.  They killed several of our young trees in the early days, but vole guards around the trunks of new trees was enough to protect them.

Ooops... I am a little embarrassed but I will be honest anyway. I had celebratory, intentions but for obvious reasons l will not go into detail. I have no intentions of being cruel but the rats are driving us insane. l will look at the thread and see if there are any other alternative solutions .

You know it's not the first time l have been in a conflicted position. I wonder , how or when does one know when to make a trade off/ compromise as one tries to develop a regenerative system.

You have to create a balance. I don't know what kind of predator pressure there might be in your area, but the bucket trap is an OPTION, and one far less hurtful and "cruel" than most traps and poison. If there isn't sufficient predator pressure to keep them under control, encouraging predators may NOT be the answer depending on the circumstances.

You need a solution that doesn't create a threat to livestock (yours or others) or people and also allows you to eat what you grow. Permaculture is about what works. I suspect that most purmaculture "purists" have never relied on what they grow--the safety net has always been there. You rely on what you can grow. There are solutions. I gave you one, and I do NOT think that it is against permaculture principles.

In a wild situation, there would likely be enough predators to keep the rats under control, but you do not live in a place where wild cats, hyenas, and other similar "wild" predators should be encouraged. In that case, you need to take the position of the predator. Just like you take the position of the herd animal by disturbing the land, you take the position of the ruminant by spreading vegetation and fertilizing. These are systems you have taken on responsibility for. Control of animals is no different, assuming that you take the position that you don't destroy or kill wantonly.

You protect yourself and your food systems, protect what you have built from an already out of control problem.

I felt guilty soon after I posted, but haven't caught back up on this thread until now.  Although I didn't actually use the 'should' word, my terminology came perilously close and for that I humbly apologise.

I appreciate that everyone here is on a journey, myself included.  I am blessed to be able to rely on others for the majority of my food, and when my crops do not mature I can shrug my shoulders and buy something else.  Don't feel guilt Rufaro.  Nature is cruel.  Without knowing your environment, I can't offer better suggestions, so if you need to fight for your crops then do it, but maybe you will find a way of letting nature do the dirty work for you.

thanks, in a city backyard its good for me

Personally, I think trapping and killing pests is fine. Farms and gardens are food-rich environments, and rats can really proliferate and destroy all the yield.

The mice that come into my house and garden can swim. (I haven't seen actual rats here yet in the first 3 years.)  Here in India there are cheap locally-made live traps for rats, box-shaped. I then put the whole trap into a bucket of water and the mouse drowns in less than a minute. The time I tried opening the trap and dropping the mouse in, it swam for ages, at least a half hour. Anyway, then I pull the whole trap out and drop the wet mouse outside. I figure the magpies will come and eat it safely without poison or sticky-glue, and maybe the magpies will sometimes catch a live one, I don't know.

Storage of sweet potatoes has turned out to be so simple. It  involves just digging a hole big enough to fit available sweet potatoes, then putting ash first and then adding the sweet potatoes alternating them with soil and if there is a lot of ash, it can also be added in these layers, until all the sweet potatoes are covered. This is usually done when the sweet potatoes are being attacked by pests and also it makes them easier to access, instead of digging them out always when one needs to cook.

Over a year and a half ago,  I shared how to make a rocket stove with the family we are working with. They used it for a little while but then abandoned it and little was said about it, no matter how much l would probe. They have started using it and I am glad. Now is when they talk about why they had stopped. Among the reasons, one was that the available firewood wasn't dry enough which made it difficult to manage the fire and generally how it is just difficult to embrace change. They are using it now because it is really hard to get big logs, they just pick twigs and a few logs now, for them to prepare a meal. It's good to they kept the rocket stove idea.

For the month of June mother got $20 worth of manure and we have been using it to make manure tea that we have been using on our plants weekly. Meanwhile we have been piling all the chicken waste, banana stems, bedding , comfrey leaves
..., and we have been busy making our own compost. We agreed this is our next step in balancing what we are getting from the land,  to add to mulching and watering.

Last week is a week, if given a choice I would erase completely from my memory, my mum tested positive for the corona virus and I think she got the bitter end of it. In this darkest time is when l am grateful, even much more, for discovering permaculture, a change of values and so many things that l have picked along the way. Every single thing has been building up to make the past week unbelievably easier. All the right people at the right place and in the right mood, and a system that is friendly and beneficial to it's inhabitants, making extreme conditions tolerable without being limited by money or bigger systems that might not be functioning well, is what we have been building all along.

I will not talk much about food supplies and some financial cushion, it's the most obvious. The environment that we created is priceless. Mother is in pain but she has people around her, and so many things that could have stressed her are things we were working on as we've been implementing regenerative practices.  She is a beautiful soul she deserves all this in such a time. We dance for her, my niece is learning how to read so she reads for her and there is a lot of story telling. I have put a video of our dancing. In this world, there are somethings that cannot be bought.

       

It's extremely important to have people around that you love and trust in a crisis.

Praying for you and your family.

Thank you for your prayers. It's so unfortunate mum is no longer with us, it's been about a week.

I'm so sorry to hear about your mother, Rufaro. It sounds like you did everything you could to keep her surrounded with love as this was happening. I'm holding you and your family in the light.

The past week has been the first time in weeks, I have been to the plot. I do not think anything is ever going to be the same, mum was the centre of literally everything and right now everything is scattered.
When I was looking at resilience there is nowhere in this universe I could have seen myself preparing for this scenario but I will be honest it is not all doom and gloom. I am grateful for the improved environment which allowed us to enjoy each other’s company and also for the time we shared. It was not all rosy especially recently, where we would fight ‘I feel we were becoming more honest with each other’. What makes it less painful is what we would fight for, trying to build a home that takes care of it’s occupants, the only issue being we perceived the world differently and we had to work, to get to a common ground, as opposed to imposing things on each other.
I owe it all to the discovery of permaculture as well as regeneration. I stand here and talk of the presence of scattered pieces that we can pick up and build something with, we could be having nothing but just a void. For this I thank Soft Foot Alliance who planted this seed and as friends they allowed me to see their journey as they built their Trust. They are an NGO working with a rural community in Hwange, living really close to a game park. As I watched their journey, I started believing that every single person has some power to change things, and it has so much to do with how we ‘tread’ on this earth, i.e, earth care, people care...  
My biggest question is, have we built enough to make mum’s legacy go on in her absence, are we going to be resilient to what l consider to be a catastrophe?