A Million Bees

Today, Monday 3rd September 2012 is day 4 at the farm in Kitengela. The farm is a 60 acre piece of land in Olturuto – about 4Km from the Kenchic breeding farm on the Kitengela-Namanga Road. Our farm is however only 3 acres out of the 60 which then belong to a family friend who sold us the three. The shopping center is about 2Km away and has a Division Officer (D.O.) stationed there. The center is also about 15-20Km from the proposed Konza ICT City although there is no direct road to it- you have to go back to Kitengela and join Mombasa Road which is farther. The homestead where I am residing belongs to the Mzee who sold us the 3 acres, and I’m housed in one of the eight SQs. There is also the main house, store, kitchen and water pump. There are two boreholes on the farm which were used to irrigate passion fruit on fifty acres up to the year 2000. That’s the last time this farm was operational. The Mzee has since quit farming and subdivided the farm for sale, that’s how we got ours. He has however been keeping livestock, mostly cows, goats and sheep. He had sold about 20 cows in April of this year which fetched him a cool KShs. 500,000. In terms of electricity, the Kenya Power grid is at a neighbour’s farm which is about 1Km away and is soon going to be connected. The farm caretaker pumps water to a neighbour about 1Km away and uses the industrial water pump on the farm to do it. The perks of this is that the generator produces so much power that all the rooms on the farm have a bulb and a socket all connected to it and thus the lights come on when the generator is on. So, he pumps water every two days (like today, that’s how I’m on my laptop) from 10am-2pm. The neighbour has a huge water tank and uses the water domestically as well as for open irrigation. He does not use drip irrigation which costs him a lot of water although we do not charge him for the water, he just buys the diesel for the generator. Once the Kenya Power grid gets here, it will be so much cheaper to pump water because the neighbour whose farm the main grid has reached had been using about KShs. 40,000 per week on diesel to irrigate his 70acre farm. Now he’s only using KShs. 17,000 a month on electricity usage for pumping water and domestic appliances. This is one of the things that convinced me to move out here; the fact that Kenya Power are at our doorstep literally. I can do my commercial writing online from here as well as farm. I woke up this morning at 6am and headed to the farm, tilled up to when the sun got hot at 10am, now I’m in “the office”. Last week, we came with an agricultural extension officer from a project funded by USAID called Feeding the Future. The project is a Barrack Obama Initiative for Kenya- proudly. He is in charge of Eastern Province and from a quick visual survey, he advised us to plant Green Grams (Dengu) as a beginner crop since the land hasn’t been tilled in 12 years. After that, he said we can plant chilies and he will link us up with the local and export markets. He will be giving me the Green Grams seeds which just so happen to be free since it is a test project for seeds and so too is the technical support. They only need you to have land and capital to work on it. I am excited about this venture and I look forward to being ‘Benna Ma-probox’ or if I work hard enough, unlock the Range Rover Sport. Like Stella Mwangi aka STL said in her Kikuyu song ‘Biashara ni Biashara.