Reverend Moses Farm Tour

By Sara:

Another farm tour happened in March.  The latest farmer group to complete their lessons got to travel to Abwanget, where a friend of ours, Rev. Moses Opus lives (in the straw hat in the picture below).  Moses is a very creative farmer and has (more than a little bit) of almost everything on his farm.  Fruit trees, vegetables, staple foods, bees, goats, and chickens, among other things.  I love the way he uses what he has, to do amazing farming.  Any enterprising farmer who is willing to work hard can copy what he has done, without any expensive inputs.

We all admired this huge jackfruit tree:

Everyone also loved how beautiful this new grass thatched hut is in his home: 

Moses is growing passion fruit in a small, fenced area, and is utilizing their shade as a nursery for starting seedlings.  His family intends to plant 100 lemon trees this year, so he is starting them under the passion fruit.  He also uses old water bottles for his seedlings instead of buying potting bags, which helps him save money and reuse waste.

Moses was on the trip to Uwepo and one of the plants he came back with was a grape vine.  Everyone was amazed to see it since they had all read about grapes in the Bible but had no idea what a grape plant looked like:

Another great innovation Moses uses is planting a certain local plant densely around his tree seedlings when they are small.  This protects the seedling from getting eaten by goats or cows.  Since he puts a lot of mulch on the ground around the trees, chickens also aren't able to squeeze inside and scratch it up.