In his own words...

My name is Christopher Nyero with 17 ages and I was born in Uganda. I am good in playing Basketball because of the good height I have. I play Cricket, Baseball and some time soccer. I support Chelsea football Club in the English Premier League in England. I study from Mbuye Farm School and I would like to become an engineer of architectures in the future.

I have managed to spend the whole two months of my holidays helping Dan Palmer and Amanda who were my best leaders in the Permaculture Project at Sabina. And it is not because I study from Mbuye Farm School but it is because am so interested in practising Agriculture. I have enjoyed learning a lot of things about permaculture and am having enough experience in it now.

And let me take this chance by passing through Dan Palmer and Amanda to thank the one sponsoring this project. May God bless you abundantly. Bye! Bye!



Note: Nyero Christopher has been the most amazing helper during the last three weeks, present from dawn (7am) to dusk (7pm) every single day quietly, competently and accurately assisting us with whatever we were up to, from watering to planting to measuring, designing, marking out and digging. No one shapes earth like Nyero - the man is an earth artist, and his almost 7 feet of height were a help when erecting poles and wires for the passion fruit around the mandala garden. Thank you Nyero for your massive contribution and see you at the end of term one next year!

Some general pictures from the last few weeks

The day 200 K-Apple fence seedlings arrived to begin our living fence around the 3000 metre Sabina boundary.



Gorgeous young Antony (Uncle Ddembe's son) and Rahita visited us preparing holes for fruit trees in freedom park the other day and when they picked up the tools we couldn't resist a snap!



One of the mandala garden passionfruit poles going up.



You saw Sarah with her sack garden in a below entry - here it is five weeks later - pumping out many a fresh garden salad and a full three steps from her kitchen...

How we made our sheet-mulch gardens

First we marked out and dug from path to bed, getting both dead level to slow and soak rain water, then edgebanked the bed with soil again to retain water, before banging in stakes around the edge.



Next comes soaked cardboard overlapping by at least ten centimetres to halt cooch grass seed and root growth.






Then we added nitrogen in the form of cow manure and cow urine.



And carbon in the form of wood chips.

Garden Party

So during the holidays we had a breakfast garden party with a bunch of the student who have been helping most in the garden and permaculture project. We all sat in the keyhole beds and ate delicious maize porridge, chapati and sweet bananas.





The lovely Charles entertained us from the compost area with sweet tunes from a local instrument...


While Doreen sat back and enjoyed.



Charles, also our Master of Ceremony, then finished the party with a heart-warming redition of the Permaculture Anthem he had written, watering can in hand.

Water Works

After marking out and digging a diversion drain through the main entrance area (Which sheds vast amounts of water) we test with water.



Nyero observing it work beautifully! Moving slowly away from the buildings towards...



The planned large vegetable garden and nursery area.

First Harvest!

One of the Ddodo just before harvest.



The harvest begins...



The harvest continues...



In to the kitchen for chopping...



More chopping...



Adding to the pot...



Onto the plates...





And into happy mouths!