Slaughtering a rabbit

Here is the video of the slaughter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2sAlGYAnuw viewer discretion is advised for the faint hearted.


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Training

Today, November the 2nd was the first day of training on rabbit keeping at the National Agricultural Training Center here in Ngong. The capacity building is part of a 3-day course which ends on Friday and by which time I will have gotten enough knowledge to be able to keep rabbits comfortably and cost-efficiently. Our trainer today, Mrs Komen, informed us that there has been a request from China for 200 Kgs of rabbit meat every month but the available farmers in the country aren't able to meet the demand. This is partly due to the fact that most rabbit farmers go it alone and thereby miss out on opportunities like this. Others just do it as a hobby and keep only two or three rabbits.

The training today covered the various types of breeds there are including the California, New Zealand, Flemish giant, Angora, Chinchila and many more. Oh by the way, did you know that a baby rabbit is called a kitten, and when in a group they are called a litter. Any way, enough with the terminology. The training went on well and I'm hoping to create a network of rabbit farmers with whom I can work along with and share experiences as well as meet orders together.

Bottom line is that I am getting ready for this venture the right way and I feel positive about all this. As for the crop husbandry, I will employ the services of my agricultural consultant Mr. Wainaina because I am yet to get any training on that. I'm looking forward to tomorrow's training day. Till then.

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.

fallow land

My family recently acquired three acres of farmland near Kitengela town and it is my intention to put up a greenhouse on the land to produce peppers and other products for sale locally and for export. Having been a poet before, I am now about to make the transition onto farming and hence the title of my blog. This blog will serve the purpose of documenting my journey for the next two years as I dip myself into the world of farming.

The main reason behind my transition is a realization that there isn't much headroom for growth in the poetry industry and a recent major disappointment has only reinforced this. I am thus in search of a more productive path that is not office-related. We have been rearing chicken and I have been the defacto caretaker of those fowls and this will be just an extension of that farming spirit.

The farm is part of a larger portion owned by a family friend and he has built a temporary house on the farm and several Servants' Quarters where he used to house his workers. Did I forget to mention that he used to farm there and has now ceased to do so. Part of the reason why he quit farming is that he suffered major losses for two seasons and was unable to recover from the crop failure. In light of this, I intend to make arrangements for a farming insurance cover to take care of the risks involved and not suffer the same fate.

As part of the farming expedition, I will move into one of the SQ's on site and through that keep a close eye on the activities going on in the farm. My plan is to set up a greenhouse and irrigate with the water on the farm from an earlier existing borehole. To this end, I am about to make contact with a farm solutions provider Amiran Kenya who have special farm kits for small to medium scale farmers. I also talked to another family friend about the challenges he had faced when he was running a greenhouse in his backyard. Among the prominent ones were the sensitivity of the crops given that the greenhouse creates a micro-climate and thus the need to protect that micro-climate from external factors. He cited the fact that at one point he woke up to find the tomatoes he was farming burnt by a disease which he suspects one of the workers brought into the greenhouse the day earlier. The crops are that sensitive. Amiran Kenya however provides special gear for the farmer which is disinfected and worn over regular clothes to minimize the transfer of diseases from the outside world into the greenhouse. In fact, Amiran have a whole support network to ensure that the farmer not only gets a greenhouse but also the appropriate seeds, fertilizers and pesticides as well as market for their produce. This has really encouraged me given that I have no prior training or experience in commercial farming. Their monthly visits to the farm will also be helpful in monitoring the greenhouse and the crops to make sure that everything is going according to plan. To this end, I feel that I am getting into farming with the right people, tools and resources to ensure a bumper harvest and money in the bank. I look forward to a journey of discovery and abundant growth. Amen