fishponds, flowers and fruit flies

Hmmm...I'm a bit of a reluctant blog writer. I have been here nearly three months now and have so far only offered one little contribution, so today I'll try to get over my blog-block (sounds a bit...wrong) and write a bit about whats going on, and what is occupying my time and my thoughts over here at the project.

Work on hut three is going well, the fence is going up, building at Kesho Leo is continuing at an amazingly fast pace thanks to the hard work of Darren's family (Daniel, Jay and Robbie), Corky has started building the livestock sheds at Kesho Leo now that the bulk of the building work at the volunteer village is done, mamas are attending their classes which at the moment include sewing and beading along with their usual lessons in health, english, environmental studies, etc. Shona, Heather and Nick have all arrived in the past week and have hit the ground running, there is just so much to do! Life is busy, busy, busy.


Elvis, Helena, Glady, Mary, Elizabeth and I have been working at the farm. We have planted out the veggie beds in the shamba and now have silver beet, cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, leeks, eggplant, rocket, sunflowers, carrots, zucchinis and pumpkins growing happily, along with herbs and companion plants. We harvested our first lot of silver beet last week, each mama took home a big bunch to cook up for dinner, this week they will take red onions and lettuces, which are ready to harvest and looking pretty gorgeous.


I am learning just HOW many insect pests there are here as one by one they all find our vegetables and have to be dealt with using a range of organic methods. Curcubit fruit flies are nearly causing me to have a nervous breakdown so if anyone has any miracle cures beyond traps and bagging fruit feel free to email me keshopermaculture@foodwatershelter.org.au. Glady, one of our mamas, is particularly keen to learn more about organic gardening; she told me that she thinks chemical pesticides are very dangerous and that they regularly make people here sick. Glady asked me to teach her how to make the aphid spray that I use (garlic, chilli, oil and a little soap), and then in return has shown me how she mixes up cow urine and crushed neem leaves to protect, and feed, her small crops of mchicha (A type of Amaranth that is grown here as a yummy spinach alternative).
Our veggie patch is definitely a buffet for roaming insects at the moment - veggie beds perched in the middle of a big, dry, nearly treeless piece of land, well, a blank canvas you might say. I feel very optimistic though that once our farm establishes pests will become less of an issue. That's the beautiful thing about organic gardening - it gets easier over time because you are always enriching the environment in your garden. Healthy plants, healthy soil and diversity. We will establish our companion plants, grow windbreaks and shelter belts to reduce evaporation and provide shelter, introduce areas of fruit forest, enrich our soil with compost from our compost heaps (So good you could eat it, well, you know, nearly) and loads of organic mulch, ahhh...it will be a haven.

We have planted nitrogen fixing legumes such as Leucaena, Albizia and Sesbania which will be the nurse plants for our food forest as well as providing fodder for our animals, at the same time they also improve the soil and help to provide a fast-growing windbreak, gotta love em. Pigeon peas are next. Our swales have been planted out with bananas and papayas and they now have a thick layer of organic mulch while we wait for the pumpkins, zucchinis, marigolds, herbs, etc we have planted along them to establish. In our small nursery area we have lots of tree seedlings waiting to be planted when the rain comes, more nitrogen fixers, including local Acacias which we'll plant as windbreak species around our boundaries. With their thorny branches they provide excellent habitat for small birds.

So, the livestock sheds are being built and there is water in one of our fish ponds, the biogas system is nearly finished, the food forest is underway and the veggies are growing. Soon all of the elements of Corky's permaculture design will link together and we will get to see the farm working as a whole system. Can't wait.