Cover Crops in Pallisa

 By Sara:

Early this year, I was invited to meet with a group of farmers near Pallisa to teach about caring for soil and cover crops.  They were very excited to learn new ways to improve their soil, since they've been struggling in recent years with worn out soils.  I brought some seeds for mucuna and jackbean and the group chose 5 farmers to grow and multiply the seeds.  In August, I went back to visit those farmers at their homes to see how things are going.

When I arrived at the church, I parked my car and had tea with the people there.  Then, Okello, who organized the training, and I headed out to see the farmers.  When we got to the car, however, I had a very flat tire.  Being hospitable, these guys didn't want me to have to get down on the ground and change a tire.  However, I was the only one there who knew how to change a tire... So I ended up explaining and describing to them what to do and they changed the tire for me.  After they were done, they were super excited about their new skill of being able to change a tire!

After that, all went well.  From just a handful of seeds, all the farmers have already managed to get much more.  Jane Rose only planted a tiny section with the cover crops and goats ate some of her mucuna, yet she has so far harvested all these seeds:

Whenever we got to someone's house, everyone nearby came over to see what was going on.  Leo (below) told us his neighbors are always admiring his mucuna (he's pictured standing in the garden) and are ready to get seeds from him as soon as he has them.  He also said he has stopped burning grass around his land and is putting it on his garden for organic matter, to improve the soil.

Robert had the biggest garden of mucuna, but he planted it next to a tree.  As you can see, some of the plants have already grown all the way to the top!  Next time, he plans to put it farther away from all his trees and bushes.  From this observation, he said he can see why it isn't good to plant mucuna and maize together at the same time!

David was the first of the 5 farmers to plant and carefully organized his cover crops in even sections.  He's standing in the mucuna, which is drying up since it was the end of the dry season, then the jackbean is on the left side of the picture.  He really liked the mucuna because he could visibly see all the organic matter it is adding to the soil through dropped leaves.

He is really happy about all the seeds he's gotten already and had a bunch of them packed up for Okello to take back to his office and store for distributing to other farmers later.

I always enjoy visiting farmers at their homes and seeing what they are doing.  These farmers are very serious about their work and improving their land.  They have had a rough first rainy season because it didn't rain much and the little rain was very sporadic, so it was encouraging to see how the mucuna and jackbean still did well.  We are praying for this second season to be better so everyone can harvest enough food for the long dry season.