Soil Testing with ADS and CFGB

By Sara:

There are so many acronyms for organization names!  In order that you are not confused, let me explain: ADS is Anglican Development Services, the development organization of the Anglican Church, which World Renew works with here in Kenya.  ADS Central Rift, to be specific, is the "branch" of ADS here in Nakuru that I work with.  CFGB is the Canadian Foodgrains Bank, which is, among other things, currently funding a conservation agriculture project in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.

Some of the staff from CFGB and World Renew came from Nairobi to join the ADS staff here in a soil testing training for farmers.  Some of the lead farmers that ADS is working with gathered together; each one brought a small bag of the soil from their own farm to study and look at together.

They started out with seeing if the soil, when moist, had a nice smell (which is often indicative of healthy bacteria being present in the soil).

They looked at how the soil crumbled in their hands - if it was really hard or very powdery.  They also got to see the pH of their soil - ADS borrowed a meter for checking soil pH.  Interestingly, one farmer had a pH above 7 (which is a bit unusual for this area), while most of them had a pH between 5 and 6.5.  I think the idea of testing the pH there was just to help the farmers think about how they can improve their soil through conservation agriculture, because they won't be able to test the pH on their own.  However, in a couple years, ADS could borrow this tool again and let the farmers re-test to see if their soil pH has changed.

At the end, all of the farmers got to try to figure out what kind of soil they had by doing three things: forming it into a ball, trying to squeeze it into a ribbon, and feeling the texture rubbed between the thumb and forefinger.  By putting together the results of those three simple tests, you can fairly accurately figure out if the soil is sandy loam, silty clay loam, silty clay, etc.  There were different results among the various farmers, but pretty much everyone had a high clay content in their soil.  Some people probably could have built clay pots (or ovens) with theirs!  I thought that this was the best part of the training because it was something that people could practice at home, in their neighbor's field, or anywhere.  They don't need any special tools and it is useful for understanding the makeup of their soil.

Joys and Pains of the Rainy Season

By Sara:

Finally the rains have come to our area of Kenya!  Along with the farmers, I am rejoicing for the benefits the rain brings to my garden.  I've got a video for you of our front yard in the rain.

 
And here are a few of the nice things I have growing:
Cabbage, beets, parsley (Hamburg rooted parsley - you can eat the root too)

Onions, carrots, chard

Peas, sweet potato, scarlet runner bean

And a fine crop of avocados!

But with the rain, come some new challenges/changes to everyday life.  Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of what our life is like these days.

First of all, during the rainy season, our power goes off more often.  Sometimes I wonder if there's a person sitting in a room somewhere who flips a switch to turn off the electricity off when it starts to rain.  But, who can know why it goes off when it does?  Anyway, you might think that this is a terrible thing - what can you do without electricity?!

Are we sitting around in the darkness when there's no electricity at night?  Why, no - we've got candles, solar lights, and solar flashlights.  And there's our little generator if we need to power up the fridge for a while or charge our computers.

And hey, we wash our clothes by hand and cook using gas.

Okay, the internet is kind of a problem because first of all, being a satellite connection, it often goes out when there's a rainstorm.  And it runs on electricity... but that's where the smart phones fill in.
(It's a strange internet plant growing in my garden):

Now with the rainy season, comes "cold" weather.  All you people in Minnesota and Michigan, I know that 50F outside is no big deal, but when it's below 60 in the house, that feels pretty darn chilly.  Especially when you need to sit on a cold toilet seat...or wash dishes in icy cold water...or take a shower when our "instant shower" (an attachment that heats water as it comes out the shower head) goes off since it's powered by electricity.

But who needs heat when you've got warm clothes, rugs and slippers, and heavy blankets to huddle under in bed?

We can also drink lots of hot tea and eat warm soup and freshly baked bread!

You might wonder how our animals are faring in this kind of weather.  Well, the rabbits are enjoying feasting on the green things that have started growing again.  The chickens really don't seem to mind wandering around and getting wet.  And Caleb has taken over our outdoor couch.  Apparently it's warmer and cushier than sleeping on cold concrete.

Oh, and then there are the white ants (the termites that come out to mate - those have wings).  They usually come out near the first big rain of the season.  Caleb had a great time catching them since they were attracted to our porch light.

Cake Decorating

By Sara:

When I taught students how to bake cakes, many of them asked me to teach them how to decorate them too.  It's easy to take for granted growing up in a house with an oven and parents who knew how to bake, so it was good to be reminded that knowledge of how to make frosting doesn't come naturally.  One of the students also asked me if I had gone to school to learn how to bake.  I thought it was a funny question until I realized that I was blessed with a mom who is an especially good baker, so my baking education was probably better than many other's might have been, even in the US!

We started out by making basic frosting with powdered sugar, water, and a little fresh lemon juice (the lemon juice helps to make the frosting get a bit more stiff when it dries).  The students frosted the cakes with this white frosting, then we made different colors.  I showed them how to make yellow with turmeric and brown with cocoa, then also how to use food coloring.

They did some serious decorating.  We used little plastic bags with the tip of a corner cut off for piping the frosting.

And here are the happy decorators with their cakes:

Here are the final products.  I told them they could put anything they wanted on the cakes and for some reason, I was the subject of some of the decorations.  For example, here it more or less says "Congrats Sara".

Just so you know, NASA is a political party here; they're not talking about the National Aeronautics and Space Administration...

This one wished happy birthday to me and Harriet, one of the students, even though it wasn't really our birthday:

After this, everyone chowed down on the cakes.  They managed to save some little bits to take back to fellow students in the dorms, but not much!

Coffee

By Sara:

When our friend Tammy came to visit from Michigan, we roasted some coffee beans that I got from Berea Farm across the street.  In case you've ever wondered about how coffee gets grown and processed, you can see all the steps that we followed (and a video of us percolating the coffee through a handkerchief) here.