Stuart Barden in Kenya

Monday, June 23, 2014

The last two weeks



The above photo is of a friend who helped build our new low cost chemical vat, it will be used for loading the sprayer and mounted on a 16,000 lt tanker trailer.
If you click on this photo there are at my count 12 raptors waiting for a meal of Quail as the fly in front of the harvester



 

Last Wednesday the 18th we ran another field day, probably the best so far, Tim who looks after the trials now and extension into the smallholders has done a great job with the trial site and the 100 things that make up a field day. The Picture above is of us uncovering two lambs that had been in an underground oven Kiwi style,it all went well thankfully. 

The above fellow is Gideon, he came to us as a excavator driver but he has many more abilities than that, this picture is him in one of the sunflower varieties in the trials.He is one of our rising star's.

I had to chase 5 Eland from the Barley on Sat 21st June, I took this photo whilst doing so.

My darling baby girl, I showed Gracie the Trials on the weekend.

Tim who is in charge of Trials and extension speaking to a smallholder field day held on Sat the 14th of June at our trial site.

This .6 ha of field peas are podding and looking good, they were planted at about 50% of the rate they should have been as we only had a small amount of seed.The variety is "Thomas Blues"

Looking along one side of the trials

John Boy, or Little boss as he prefers, sitting in front of a trial of Green Grams, that's Mung beans to an Aussie. They are very impressive, virtually no soil cracking under this crop, so there is plenty of subsoil moisture to bring it home. (I hope)

My Darling Big boy leaving home,James and I at the airport


Boys in the barley two weeks ago


135 tillers on one barley plant???

Samson pictured holding this barley plant found a lone plant with about two square meters of space to itself.
He washed the roots with water to see how many plants there were and we could only see it was one, still not sure on this, seems a bit to many after 90 days growth (Mid last week)

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Sorgum Harvest




Rotor Box issues

We had the Case 2388 Rotor Box throw a hissy fit and threw a few teeth and punched a fist size hole out of the rotor box housing.
The photo is of us removing the rotor box with the telly handler, off to an engineering fellow in Nairobi, had him make two new teeth (i didn't even realize that was possible), weld the two big chunk's back to the two halves of the housing, we then put the rotor box together and realized the replaced teeth were binding, pull it apart and Polish and grind the new teeth, we did this 5, yes five times, so 48 hours after the event, we were ready to put the gear box back in.
It is amazing what you can do and learn when you dont have an option.
 

Our Workshop and Office (upstairs)


Friday, June 6, 2014

Aussie Wheat

I was at a flour miller's during the week, they were unloading wheat from 90kg Bags direct out of a trail from Mombasa, 12.5% protein, origin Australia. Interesting I thought

Barley going well

We had some Eland in this paddock of Barley and they ate a few Sunflower plants in the trials, so I had to rid the field of the beasts. We have just recieved 20mm of Heaven sent rain last evening on the barley, this photo was pre rain so it will only get better.