Facebook Farmers

Its 2 O'clock in the morning and for farmers, this is no time to be awake, but for writers and poets, this is a time when the mind is most fertile and pregnant with ideas just ready for exposure to the whole world. At two in the morning, the creative kind will just wake up from a deep slumber and have a hovering need to put their thoughts on to paper (or keyboard) and this is exactly what I'm doing right now at exactly six minutes past 2am.

The title of this post is Facebook Farmers which is borrowed from Amiran Kenya and the idea of it is creating a new crop of young farmers from the Facebook generation and I guess it has worked with me although I haven't yet had any contact with Amiran directly but I have come across their banner along Ngong Road at Racecourse which says 'Farming is cool'. I am gearing to use this blog as my 'Facebook tool' or social media outlet to bring together my farming activities and create a repository of not only a chronological account of my progress but also attract other young people into the farming business. Note how I have used the words farming and business together and right after each other.

As far as the farm goes, we finally did a preliminary assessment with my agricultural consultant Mr Wainaina yesterday when we took him and his colleague to the farm in Kitengela. His initial reaction was to fall in love with the soil type. As he described it, the soil composition seems to be black cotton with a mixture of sand which makes it a bit more loose than the regular black cotton which is very compact and thick. The fact that the land has been fallow for a few years made it even better. He also praised the fact that there is a lot of manure in the soil coming from goat droppings as the land owner keeps a small herd of about 60 goats which at this time of year are a gold mine because I heard that come December he can sell each at Kshs 10,000. Farming is just too exciting. And to think that the only expense those goats are incurring is almost nothing because they are let loose in the morning and they eat the hay-like grass that is common in Kitengela and only come for a drink of water occasionally.

Looking at all these cash generating avenues, I get very excited and its no secret that this January when everyone has finished celebrating Christmas and are looking for school fees, goats will become very cheap once again and I will get a few to keep. Anyway, back to the preliminary assessment. Mr Wainaina was on board with the idea of letting loose a tractor on the land to clear it through. After that, he advised that the first crop should be either onions, hoho or beans with a few lines of maize and bananas all around the perimeter to act as part windbreakers.

He also took a sample of the borehole water to make a test and establish its acidity and hence know which crops would do well there. The owner had done one earlier but had probably misplaced the test and hence the need for a new one. Well, that's about where we left off until the tractor tills the land after which he will come back and lay out the physical plan of the Shamba (farm). Till then, I sign off and sign out of Facebook where I have just 'shared' this post.