Grill and Garden

 By Sara:

Some time ago, I had this oven/grill made out of a metal barrel by a metalworking friend.  I first tested out the oven for bread.

More recently, we tested the top part for grilling.

 

 

When we lived in Mbale in 2009-2010, Anthony and I visited a lot of Bible college students at their homes on weekends.  We would usually get back to Mbale late on Sunday evening and would buy roasted maize and an avocado on the street for our dinner.  It's exciting to be able to roast our own maize (which I grew) on this grill.  Unfortunately, I waited too long before trying to roast maize and by then, most of it in the garden was already too dry.  The few which were still a bit green were not bad, but would have been better if they were roasted at least a week earlier.

Still food, but somewhat unrelated, here's a lovely roasted duck.

And on to the garden.  Here is some of the millet I grew this year:

I put these garden supplies outside and in the time it took to go back inside for something, Beorn made himself comfortable. 

Then, there are the peanuts I grew successfully this year.  The last time I tried growing peanuts was in 2010, when a squirrel ate almost every single one of them before I harvested.  I've been afraid to grow peanuts ever since because this is what I got that time (it was very disheartening):

 

 

Soroti is a better place to grow peanuts, though.  So I overcame my fear and ended up with plenty of peanuts.

 

 

This is how they look when you pull them out of the ground:

 Beorn thought they made a nice pillow.

 

This picture is during the process of harvesting - there are much more than that:

Paul is the expert peanut grower and taught me what to do:

I was pleased to get a sack of peanuts from my small garden:

I also have a couple new additions to my garden.  First, a small pineapple patch!  It will take a while to get fruit, but I'm willing to wait:

And then a strawberry sack garden.  I was inspired to give strawberries another try by a new Resonate colleague, Barbara.  She has an amazing strawberry garden and generously gave me these seedlings!

My five little sacks have nothing on Barbara's garden!