Veggie Garden / Forest!

Aunties' Garden

We were overjoyed when, after watching us circumspectfully from a comfortable distance for the first three months, the 'aunties' or house mothers approached us and asked if they could make their own vegetable garden in the central turning circle of the main entrance area. We said yes please and have done nothing - they have marked it out, dug it, and are about to plant it all on their own initiative. And they are planning more! What's more, shortly we'll add pix of Uncle Jospeh's wife's garden (Aunty Mirembe) - she has also decided to copy what we've done at her own home. This stuff is slowly starting to spread out across Uganda!

Earthworks

So here are some recent pictures of what's been happening on the water-harvesting earthworks front over the last month...

Marking out swales using an A-frame and Bunyip level...


Our hired boys digging (we're developing a great working relationship with them and they do an excellent job)...


Here they are, looking like rap stars ;-)...


Here is the freshly-dug top driveway orchard swale (the driveway orchard was created in the space gained by moving the football field 17 metres west)


and from another angle...


and the one below it, which is now full-sized, planted out with fruit trees (jackfruit and mangos), maize, beans, sweet potato, comfrey and hopefully tomorrow vetiver grass...


See later photos of them holding water here.

OutReach WorkShop

Last week Mike and Dan visited a rural site on the Eastern shores of the bay of Lake Victoria closest to Kampala, where we ran two days of workshops with a new woman's community gardening group. Here are some pictures:

Making compost was out main focus and it went great - the women really got it, and arrived in the morning carrying basins of animal manure on their heads...


Here Dan works with the women to help plan their planting and transplanting to ensure a continuous harvest for sale and to nourish their families...


Here's the group on Thursday. On Friday even more came along and they are just the most lovely amazing people ever!


Here they sang and danced for us to welcome and then to thank us for the workshop. It was just beautiful and everyone in the room was up and dancing...

Pump House gets a Trench Job

So when we arrived outside the pump house was a wet slippery big trench that all the children walked through every day to fetch water for drinking, washing and bathing...



So we got our friend Patrick to mix up some concrete and knock up a covered waterway that feeds into a little pond just uphill of our vegetable garden. Collecting water by dipping in a watering can is so easy some of the children water the vegetables just for fun!

Permaculture Sabina

A close up of Amanda's fine mural...

Uncle Richard

Uncle Richard is the truck driver at Sabina and a lovely character in the Sabina cast. He observes the permaculture activies between driving stints (his room looks out on the garden) loves his football and basketball, and in an upcoming entry you'll see him planting a mango tree. Go Uncle Richard.