The bean crop in Kyemula has been exceptional which has not only provided immediate food for the community but enabled us to buy beans directly from the farmers to store for school meals.
You can see the bean plants being dried on frames before the beans are ‘podded’ and stored.
.We have bought 950 kg of beans for 1,900,000ugx (£388) – with individual farmers selling us between 20 and 50kg. This is the virtuous circle we hoped to achieve –as the farmers will now have cash to buy next season’s seeds etc.
Sadly, the beans were not a successful crop in Namayili – but the cabbages there are doing much better than those in Kyemula which haven’t had enough rain at the crucial time.
Both villages report that the maize crops are developing well and ready to harvest. We plan to purchase 2,000 kg from Kyemula farmers for Jackie School, costing 2.5 million ugx (£508) – which will be milled into’ posho’ – maize flour porridge – later. Milton says, ‘Sincerely, the support you introduced of farming has caused a very great impact. The reason being that for people in Kyemula this year is very different from other years - and what the school is going to buy is little to what they are harvesting.’ We will wait to see how much maize is available to buy in Namayili in the next few weeks.
Milton reported that families picking maize have said they have far more this year, compared to how much they previously harvested from the same piece of land. He added, ‘The challenge we are have is mainly transport. When the fields are far from homes it becomes a serious problem. People carry on heads and wheelbarrows. But thank you so much once more.’
And as you can see once the crop is harvested the farmers are planting beans for the second season.
We are delighted that the farming project seems to be working as we hoped allowing the local farmers to make some money by selling excess produce to the school. We hope to expand it further next year to include more farmers and additional crops such as cassava.
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