Stuart Barden in Kenya

Monday, July 30, 2012

Back to Kenya Soon

Well our family have been in Australia for about four weeks and we have been busy catching up with family and friends which has been great.
Lots of business as well on the east coast (NSW) as well as packing a shipping container with two harvesting fronts, a grain auger plus spares ect.
As usual I underestimated the time required which meant I was still lashing down the contents of the container with only hours to spare,nothing like a bit of pressure to sharpen the mind.
Back to Perth today then back to Kenya a couple of days later.
I will take photos of the crops progress and post them, wait and see I guess.
To all those friends and family in Australia that have shown us such great hosptality I thank you and hope to return your kindness when you visit us at our home in Kenya.

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Maize Trials

These are the maize trials (planted at 22,500 plants per ha), there are only two varieties of maize planted on the same configuration as the sorghum, double skip on 75cm rows. i.e two planted two not,this gives a 2.25m between the 75cm pairs. (I hope this makes sense). There are also mungbeans (green gram),chickpeas times two (Channa),Red Sorghum and two varieties of white sorghum. So in all there is seven crop types/varieties on two different row configurations i.e double skip and solid 75cm rows.
The trials are 4 runs (9 meters each) of one ha per run, so each trail is 4 ha each.
The small holder research farm is planned to be fenced starting in Aug/Sept, we had to start on the commercial farm first as we had to keep making a dollar (or shilling) to fund it.

Its Alive (the electric fence)

We just finished the fence and powered it up about two hours before having to head to the airport to fly out to Australia.

Chickpeas 14 days after planting

The chickpeas are looking good after 14 days, a lot faster than I am used to in Australia.