permaculture advocate in Zimbabwe - too little/too much rain

I am keeping a close eye on the onion trays, it's almost a week and l can see little white things develop. I really need this to work. Seedlings have not been our greatest strength and this time l won't relax at any phase of the seedlings' stages. So far the soil looks good and healthy, and there's not a single day the surface dried up. I used banana leaves to mulch. I am not sure though if l should start with the chicken soup.

It is so easy to assume that everyone is guided by the same principles and values and there is automatically a rigid right and wrong. But looking at backgrounds and life experience, it is almost certain that the spectrum of values and principles that govern people differs greatly, this is has led me to want to invest more in developing common values and principles with Ngoni. I am planning a day for sharing ideas and a vision with him and a lot of other values as well.

I feel there are things we might need to adhere to, that are part of our existing community's standards/ norms, for us to blend in as we build our own parallel living standard. It will be draining because we will be needing twice as much effort to strike a balance. We need to have the skill though to determine what are truly needs and wants.

For example, Ngoni is a father and one of his children has reached a going to school age. The easier solution when we discussed this was for her to go back to their rural home and learn there, it will almost be free. But Ngoni, his wife and myself would ideally wish for her to learn while she stays here with us, there are better living conditions and she will be with her parents. Instead of settling we are all willing to try our best to keep her here. Since her mum got a job it's certain she will be going to school here in the coming term. But in the meantime, I need to Google nursery school stuff to not have her lag behind, while we build our productivity level to accommodate education requirements for children that are part of our little system. I believe Ngoni's job is the one that was supposed to take care of this which is why I am going a little out of my way to be involved in this until Ngoni and myself are in a good position.

We will have a tour around town just seeing how businesses big and small operate and it will open ground for our discussion. We will talk about work ethics and deliberately pick on those we want to adopt. I can talk about trust in a less confrontational manner in this discussion.

Rufaro Makamure wrote:...
For example, Ngoni is a father and one of his children has reached a going to school age. The easier solution when we discussed this was for her to go back to their rural home and learn there, it will almost be free. But Ngoni, his wife and myself would ideally wish for her to learn while she stays here with us, there are better living conditions and she will be with her parents. Instead of settling we are all willing to try our best to keep her here. Since her mum got a job it's certain she will be going to school here in the coming term. But in the meantime, I need to Google nursery school stuff to not have her lag behind, while we build our productivity level to accommodate education requirements for children that are part of our little system. I believe Ngoni's job is the one that was supposed to take care of this which is why I am going a little out of my way to be involved in this until Ngoni and myself are in a good position.
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Hi Rufaro. In my opinion the best for young children is to be with their parents. At school children can learn important stuff, but a school can not replace the parents.

Today was a successful day. I managed to meet with Ngoni in town checking what was going on in different shops. We did notice that the places that you just look at and see organisation, the employees inside were as busy as bees. When we went back to the plot we had a meeting with his wife included, brainstorming on  things we need to improve or add to keep us going. We talked about importance of hard work, and that we need to be productive and to have multiple things we produce. We all want the same thing and it is our responsibility together to get things going and there is no external push but drive has to come from within each individual. We set goals and we will check on the updates  in three months' time. Hurray....!!!

I still need major communication skills practice though.

I was walking around the plot cracking my head on what l can do to have a second product growing in the field, as we wait to master the skill of making our own onion seedlings. Then l noticed that there is spring onion scattered in different places and it's scattered in a way that makes it almost invisible or irrelevant. "This is something I can grow, if l get enough sets, l just might have my second product in the ground", I thought to myself. So I pulled out some and as we speak l have planted in three of the choumollier beds and l can still add more.

I am weeding the beds as l plant the onion and the weeds are going right back into the beds. I lay them ontop of the dry mulch and they too will eventually dry up.

The Sandy portion we started putting vegetable beds in, this year, now has some life. l have begun adding chicken soup, to feed the beds, the plants looked like they need the boost.

It's raining after over a month. It sounds like light showers. Any amount of rain is good at the moment, for the rivers mostly. I pass a stream on my way to the plot and it was drying up, the section we use for crossing was literally dry like we would just walk on the base of the stream. It is in March, and it is the direct opposite of what should be. Parents usually help their children cross the stream because there will be too much water.

Rufaro, we're also experiencing weather that doesn't make any sense. Too much rain, too little rain, too hot, too cold. This last year or so I've been thinking a lot about how to make my plants and my crops more resiliant, probably a habit that will always come in handy. I think every season I learn a bit more.
May good weather (for you and your plants) come your way!

It seems to be everywhere, all over the planet, weather that's different from what we were used to. Normally here (in the Netherlands, western Europe) in month it's very rainy and it's fairly cold. But now March 2022 is very sunny and dry! And last month we had a storm like we never had here before!

Ngoni's daughter had a sleepover, which is an action that is following up our meeting and the discussion we had on education. We had a good time and we were using anything we could get our hands and eyes on, to see how learning at home is a possibility. There are three main areas we are concentrating on, numbers, colours and familiarization with the English language. These are things that other children of her age have started learning and these are the areas that are likely going to take her confidence away if she is to be thrust in a group with children that are a term ahead of her. A friend of mine with two kids that have already passed nursery school says he has some songs that he can share with me to help with her English.

I enjoyed doing a color game and we were using colored popped maize and she seemed to enjoy it. So I will try and have different things with different colors placed in different places and now instead of just naming things we will start calling a thing + it's color, e.g ' may you get me a green plate'.

The day I picked Mitchell up, the father was excited and he in turn gave me a couple of some ideas to make work a little easier at the plot and he has begun watering the sweet potatoes. We usually just let these be taken care of by the rain and because of what he is already doing for our place somethings are just difficult to request from him, yet they're a requirement for us to sustain the place, having him realise this by himself is great. He even has a tomatoe patch in the field he waters using the hand pumped well.

The onion seedlings are wilting. I have been keeping them moist and trying to avoid too much water, l put the banana leaves in between the rows and nothing is working. I wish this gets easier because l am not giving up anytime soon. It's can be frustrating l won't lie.

Can you set up some shade cloth or some sort of shade above the seedlings? I know mine are constantly wilting if i have them out and the sun is stronger than i expected (weather here can be unpredictable, I've lost many seedlings this way...)

I will try a different cloth, l had put sacks to help with this.

I do not think things should be this hard it's really difficult to make sense out of things now. Today l am failing to contain how low l am,  

Hang in there, Rufaro. Growing things depends on so much that is out of our control. Sometimes we figure out why and sometimes not. I have a lot of respect for what you're doing through hard work and tenacity. I hope it gets easier soon!

We transplanted the onion seedlings that survived from the first seedling growing attempt, and we got an equivalent of about $3 worth of seedlings compared to if we had bought ready to plant seedli gs and these are coming from a $2 packet of onion seeds which were supposed to give more than double the seedlings.

I got a visit from my uncle. He is formally employed, and he came to look at our project. He is considering to start working on his homestead, which is in Masvingo, where  my rural home is. He wants his homestead to serve him more than just providing shelter. As he looks into retirement which is not anytime soon, he realised that with the trend, there is no way that his job alone can take care of him and his family, as savings are not even a part of his vocabulary. He has witnessed my journey from the start and he really wants to understand more about a possible alternative way of life/ earning a living other than formal employment or buying and selling already processed foods. He came at a time that is not too ideal as I am trying to understand where l am currently in order to be clear of what to prioritize and what to revisit. I did ask Ngoni to help in sharing the vision that we have for our place and he did this beautifully. My uncle wants to go with me to our rural home, once his things are in place, so that he can share with me his dream for his portion of land and this is an honor truly. It means in business terms I now have two 'clients' to share with what l learnt through permaculture and this is a great thing as l hope to this information to as many people as l possibly can directly or indirectly. I was open to him about how at the moment things are a little slow and if ever he decides to try out implementing an alternative more regenerative lifestyle it's not going to be a walk in the park and he should brace up for this. Also his biggest success will be the day he starts as most of these ideas wither away in the dreaming phase.

This past month we have not had problems with selling vegetable leaves like we sometimes encounter. We have in all occasions managed to sell everything within 2 days and we no longer wait for people to come to the plot, we go to them.

I was given a fruit called "roro", referred to as wild custard apple. Nothing prepared me for how tasty the fruit is. Everything about how it looks sells nothing away, it is an indigenous fruit, and it might so far be the best indigenous fruit l have had.

Before begining of this week l had no idea of the existence of this fruit and having tasted it l want whoever stays at our plot in years to come to know of this fruit so I am going to grow the tree from the seeds we l will get.

Rufaro Makamure wrote:...
I was given a fruit called "roro", referred to as wild custard apple. Nothing prepared me for how tasty the fruit is. Everything about how it looks sells nothing away, it is an indigenous fruit, and it might so far be the best indigenous fruit l have had.
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I know that fruit! It grows too on the island of Curaçao (Netherlands Antilles, Caribbean). It was my (late) husband's favourite fruit (he was born and raised there). Yes, it tastes delicious!