This week at Luyengo Fresh Produce
Another busy week at Luyengo Fresh Produce is drawing to a close. For most of the farm workers it means a relaxing weekend at home with their families but for a few it still means work as usual. Someone has to be there to see the seedlings and plants are watered, and that no strangers come onto the farm to help themselves to our harvest.
Last week one of our batches was rejected by a client who said the cabbage looked wilted. We have adopted a new strategy. In the summer we will start harvesting at 5am when it is still cool and deliver the product to the client before 10am. The workers that have to come in early to harvest are happy with the arrangement as they go home two or three hours earlier on those days.
Only Cabbage was harvested this week. We have once again prepared 1 hectare to plant 5 000 cabbage seedlings, 5000 tomato seedlings, .25 hectare carrots, .25 hectare sweet corn and a small area of green mealies. We planted 1 Ha off sugar beans for seed production for a local seed producer, Mr Harry van den Burg, in conjunction with the seed quality control board of Swaziland.
We have planted our first F1 Hybrid Klabishi Cabbage seeds in the nursery and the germination is excellent. We also planted the first F1 Hybrid Star 9009 tomato seeds that is, hopefully, Fusarium Wilt tolerant.
In the coming week we are looking forward to harvesting our green mealies, tomatos and cabbages.
Average max temp this week on the farm: 30°C
Average min temp this week on the farm: 17°C
Rainfall Avarages 2013 To Date
January 169mm 270mm
February 140mm 180mm
March 100mm 77mm
The past week we had great weather (that means when it did rain it was during the night) so the workers were able to put in a full day’s work everyday this week and we feel we were very productive.
A lovely story from Africa: When God was creating the animals and He was busy with the hippos God said they had to be land animals and live off green bushes. But the hippo begged Him and pleaded to be allowed to live in water. God said there were already enough animals living in the water and off the other animals in the water. Then God and the hippos came to an agreement – the hippo can live in the water but they must eat grass and land growing plants. They agreed, so during the heat of the day hippos are always in the water and at night they graze like cattle. To this day the hippo shows God it keeps to it side of the bargain. The hippo always uses its tail to spread its excrement over the lower branches of plants so that God can see there is not a fish bone in sight.
Heloise
