The Sytsma Farm

To begin with, my garden is growing happily at the moment since there has been sufficient rain.  I have struggled with termites destroying my corn and I while I was gone, they got all but two plants (for some reason, they love to attack living corn, sorghum, and millet, but nothing else in my garden), so I am trying various experiments to repel them (constantly adding mulch, using leaves from the castor oil plant as mulch, etc.).  Here are some pictures:

I made myself a sack garden like I saw in Kenya as well as planting potatoes in mulch/compost surrounded by wire mesh.  You can see how they grew in one month.  The plants exploding out of the sack are fennel.

There are all sorts of chicks - I have two hens and one has six and the other seven.

But even better than all the baby chickens is the new baby goat!  I took this picture of Bendita the day before we left for the US and the next day (after we were gone), she gave birth.

Here are some irresistibly cute baby goat pictures.  Her name is sweet Caroline.

Even Caleb likes her.

Luthien is doing well too.  She is a bit more relaxed than Caroline, so she'll even hang out in the hammock with Anthony.

Anthony's pets have not been doing quite as well.  Caleb is very healthy and fun but he ate both of the guinea fowl chicks (Anthony says we don't know for sure, but I say he is wrong...) and so we have to keep him chained up sometimes when no one is generally keeping an eye on him.  Here is one of the departed chicks:

But on a positive note, Caleb is taking a walk with us nearly every day and enjoys it a lot.  While we were in the US, I found a leash on sale that came with two collars, so now he has an official leash and two of my goats have dog collars.  People think we are strange when we are out walking him and we get lots of compliments about what a smart looking dog he is.  Other people say, "mzungu, give me your dog!"

You may also remember that Anthony had a few hedgehogs, but some died.  Our friends suggested that there may not be enough food for all of them in the compound.  So Anthony decided not to keep collecting them.  He was going to try to eat at least one of them like some people in this region do.  But he decided it would be cruel and instead gave the remaining ones to some missionary friends.

Finally, there are no more chameleons in the cage in our yard, though there is at least one which we set loose in our mango tree and another in my garden.  How great is it to see this while working in the garden?

The one that had been living in the cage died right after laying eggs (which is not too unexpected given the stress of laying eggs plus the stress of captivity).  We salvaged the eggs and put them in sand in a container in our kitchen.  They should hatch in about eight months.  If they survive, they will be super cute and Anthony will release them all over our compound.