Tuesday, January 11, 2011

By the sweat of your brow...


"...you will eat your food until you return to the ground." Genesis 2:19. Now, I had never really taken that seriously. Of course I knew that we have to work hard and I knew that food is grown and does not fall from the sky but it never really sank in. Now I'm a farmer's wife and it makes soooooooooooo much sense!

Over the weekend I went to the farm with my hubby and got down and dirty with some farm work.

Crop: Bananas (matooke - they are bananas that are not sweet. They are the staple food in my tribe (Baganda) and are prepared by steaming in banana leaves)
Problem: Infertile soil
Solution: Cow dung (yuck!!!)
Project: Pour about 100 sacks of cow dung in the trenches in between the bananas. Then we had to cover it with dry grass and banana leaves so that it seep into the soil and fertilise it.

This is a bit of the banana plantation

The cow dung had been packed in sacks so we got some guys in the nearby village to help us carry the cow dung and pour it in the trenches.
The sacks

Pouring the dung in the trench

The dung in the trench
I know you're wondering what I did to make my brow sweat huh? Well, I covered the dung filled trenches with dry grass and soil. It was no easy task. We covered about two acres of banana plantation.
We cover the dung with dry grass and banana leaves so that it can retain any moisture which will help it rot and seep into the soil.

I had a good time with my farmer man. Each time I'd go to the farm we would just check up on the crops but this time I got to work along side him which was fun!
Hubby giving instructions :)
Finally, here are a few sneak peeks of our farm. A lot of it is still unused but we have big plans :-)

(Sorry I didn't have my camera so I couldn't take photos of the entire lay of the land) This is about a quarter of the land - I think :)
 
I couldn't take a photo of the harvest because my phone battery had died but it was a pretty good harvest :)
Many more nice things to come!!!!!

3 comments:

Kathy said...

You have a great piece of land! I would have loved to see a picture of you really handling the dung! lol.
We had to fertilize our backyard last summer and it just so happened to be the hottest day of the year... stinky stinky was I!

Kirsti Lukens Craig said...

Hi Sarah! I discovered your blog a couple days ago. I'm a fifth-generation farm girl from North Dakota, USA. Farming is my family's heritage and livelihood--I LOVE farmers! (Though admittedly I didn't end up marrying one.) :)
Your post reminded me of a post my Mom wrote on our family farm blog last spring about using our cow's manure in the fields as fertilizer. It's different than what you do, which made your post so interesting to me! Where is your farm located? It's beautiful.

http://griggsdakota.blogspot.com/2010/04/recycle-waste.html

Thanks for sharing, and stop by our blogs anytime!

Ki@m$E (P) said...

hahaha...can u dig??

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