Farm is sold, crop harvest is Oct-Dec, then off to Africa.
Updated: Sep 30, 2020
23rd Sept 2020 blog - What a splendid, friendly farm party we just had. Thanks to all 100 who came. I am now in energetic conversations about Phosphorus supplies for Africa - some amazing doors have opened with great potential. Our good friend Cleophas is off to DRC this week to meet important people and discuss the Bukanga Lonzo Project and how we may possibly help to resurrect part of that project.
Burundi doors are open, thanks to Barry Court, i will arrive there hopefully in January 2021 and the large donated land mass there we will hopefully plant to corn/maize. But, this all depends on the certificate of occupancy, machine availability, seed availability and other business and agronomic factors unfolding. But given the past amount of amazing doors that have opened (Isaiah 22:22) i am confident that we are heading in the right direction (James 4:13) and a solid foundation for our African work is being established.
I have come to some understanding of the natural rock phosphate that is in some soils across Africa and how tweaking their chemistry may enable them to be useful and cost effective as a local source of P. I still need more knowledge (and trial data) on this and on the local soils acidic pH profile to depth. I have learnt from my own 13 years of Morawa farming that subsoil pH can cripple yields. I had a 666 acre paddock that i called the "beast paddock" - haha. It had two big problems; 1. low Colwell P values (8 ppm) and 2. low pH at 10-50 cm depth, being3.9 in CaCl2. This paddock now, after 13 years of work, is a very good paddock. We saved it from disaster and got it into production - the previous owner told me it could not grow wheat. Google "lime without tillage works Bill Crabtree".
Many have asked to be kept updated - so here is the latest. We will harvest our crop from 22ndOct - early Dec. I believe we have at least an 800 kg/ha crop on 106 mm of Mar-Sep rainfall. The crop result is a nice surprise on almost no rain. I have just spoken to Peter Hack and Chris McDonough about these updates. Shalom!
https://www.farmweekly.com.au/story/6889595/farm-sale-marks-start-of-no-till-venture/