Farmer who writes

HOW FARMING CAN CONTRIBUTE TO BETTER MENTAL HEALTH
I got into farming by chance, and by that, I mean, I had no other option, dead broke and the only low entry sector that didn’t need a huge capital was farming for me. Retrenched at age thirty from a senior management position earning 220,000 KES a month, a Barclays loan of 106,000 and a project manager title up my sleeve, my own designated parking and a buzzing phone from the CEO, directors, suppliers, fellow employees and even the watchman! I was in the middle of it all and that gave me some validation that I was doing a good job. Then one day am there, with a debt to pay, moved to hot, distance Kajiado and zero income, I was devastated.

I felt the depression creeping in as I covered myself in my white cotton duvet, staring at my phone that didn’t ring anymore except for the occasional debt collector from the bank and insurance. Pregnant with my second child, hormones all over the place and not a friend in sight to calm my nightmare.

Things were hard!

I started a kitchen garden, and grew it to supply neighbours, local restaurants, church, and the mama mbogas. Combined with a lot of free therapy from USIU where I was an alumnus, I was able to get things into perspective, collect the shuttered pieces and rebuild my identity. The hopelessness felt dire, yet I couldn’t end my life because, the people pleaser personality that I am had too many people depending on her. So, there I was stuck in limbo, with nowhere to turn to.

Slowly simple joys of sowing seeds, harvesting, and supplying made my days and it got easier. My dads’ constant calls of weather I had gotten a job yet or did I think that farming was going to bring me enough dignity would set me back, but I pressed on. The joys of people in church smelling and thanking me for the fresh organic vegetables truly blessed my soul.


Highlights of my recovery from depression farmer on fire
· Therapy- someone listening without judgment to my monstrous thoughts
· Dealing with the debts- facing them head on and conversing with the debt collectors like the human beings they are
· Having something to do – idleness is indeed the devil’s workshop
· Physical labour- the mind sometimes is too tired and wants a break, when the muscles take on remedial manual work, the mind takes a much-needed rest
· Having living things rely on you. Making it about others, my chickens, cows, rabbits, and plants needed me to get out of bed to feed and water them.
· Interacting with non – judgmental parties- My cow, didn’t care about the dress code, or ask me my then dreaded networking question, ‘what do you do for a living?’
· Gym time- physical labor, made me sleep better, dealing with soil, weeds, nature is indeed a healer
· Leveraging on the digital platforms- they provided non- one on one market for my produce, feedback on my YouTube videos and a sense of value in the farming space.
· Fulfilment- getting clarity, knowing, and getting validation that what you do will be of benefit to others

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BECOMING FARMER ON FIRE-Leveraging Digital Platforms in my Everyday Farming

If you told me that 3 years ago, I would be making YouTube videos for a living, I would think your mad and to add salt to injury, videos about farming?. I am an only girl born in the village near the cold Aberdare Ranges, Nyahururu. A very fertile place with great humid climate favouring agriculture. My mother who was a typical housewife, farmed as well. I however didn’t see it as a career choice since I never saw money change hands. Food grown was for our own consumption and occasionally gifted to relatives.

I mostly ....Read more https://farmeronfire.com/2021/09/16/3816/

ACCESS TO FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR THE YOUTH IN AGRICULTURE

According to world bank statistics, Most Africans fund their own agricultural project from pocket. This means that they risk their income and savings hoping to turn it into profit. These minimal resources are already strained from the high dependency rates in Africa. In the western worlds, we find youths are supported by their both their parents and even grandparents. The scenario is reversed, where we see relatives relying on the person who is ahead economically and thus limiting their investment efforts.

The financiers require a miraad of demands that the youth must provide upfront to access these funds. The youth are young and mostly from poor families and don’t have assets like land, car, machinery etc. to act as collateral in exchange to the money needed to start their agripreunership journey. This in turn leads to the cycle of poverty, exploitation, and dependency.

The lack of proper farming practices leaves the few youths who start in a worse state than when they started because they don’t have the resources to treat farming as a laboratory. At this point it’s a gambling game of win or lose. This also in turn depends on factors like weather patterns, market forces, labour, and pest management.

The biggest challenge however is psychological. Systemic injustices ensure that a population remains inferior without much resistance. The youth grow seeing their parents shunning away from financial support because of fear of auctioneers and deals gone wrong.

Possible Solutions

1. The confidence of knowing what one is doing comes from proper training and mentorship as offered at farmeronfire.com or in the various agripreunership hubs.

2. Financial literacy can empower the youth to understand and treat agriculture as a business and hold the discipline require of running a basic business, e.g., understanding the entire value chain, documentation of the practices, having clear rules and guidelines of tasks needed, proper record keeping etc.

3. Having the courage to walk in and gather information on what it takes to get access to the money. Also taking the time to apply for the grants and competitions available globally

4. Having ideas that are impactful to the entire community. Once you are clear on how your agribusiness helps the community, they you can test it and with the facts, you can approach the various stakeholders including friends and family to invest in you.

5. Agro- insurance, factors that cannot be controlled can render a farmer poor leading to eventual food shortage, drought, or famine for a nation. By having insured the farm before the season, the youths can buffer themselves against such eventualities and losses.

6. Agri- lending products from commercial loans. Equity bank of Kenya has a product tailored towards these efforts. They fund small-scale farmers and only start collecting the installments after the 3-month harvest period taken for the crop to reach maturity. In the effort of de-risking, they also connect farmers to market linkages like manufactures, restaurants, and local markets
MrAgriculture

GHOST FISHING WHAT WE CAN DO TO REDUCE MARINE POLLUTION
If you eat fish or any type of seafood, then you need to read this. Ghost Fishing is a terminology used to show that disposed fishing nets into the ocean continue to cause harm to marine life for decades. The fishermen, after realizing that there is an issue with their current fishing, they leave it behind and just purchase or buy a new one. What they don’t realize is that ocean pollution can lead to death of turtles, birds, and a variety of fish species. In other cases, the fishermen leave the nets at the shore for future use, but with high tides they can be carried right back in the water causing pollution.
As much as human indulge in polythene and plastics that cause harm to the environment because they take years to decompose. The nets strangle the marine animals reducing their movement and eating habits leading to starvation and an eventual slow death.
The nets are also indiscriminate, in that they collect anything and everything on the ocean floor. Most fishermen don’t care about 30% of the catch and they are eventually thrown back into the ocean although by then the sorting process leaves them wounded and without air leading to death, but this is a bigger conversation.
Ghost Fishing Menace can be handled by changing and adopting a correct way of disposing the fishing nets.
Solutions include
1. By creating awareness among the fishermen on the dangers of neglecting their nets. By showing them evidence of trapped marine life can cause a responsibility shift for the better. By also connection to them that it will eventually affect their future fishing pursuit can help too.
2. ‘One man’s garbage is another man’s treasure’. By reusing old nets, finding ways of repurposing nets or even donating them to other smaller boats, can go a long way to reducing ghost fishing.
3. By buying back the old nets at the mainland. This has worked well with plastics and metal. And the incentives give people a motivation and a source of income as they might not be in the fishing business but will go around the shores looking for nets to sell.
4. By use of biodegradable fishing nets. After Kenya enacted the plastic ban, we thought we couldn’t survive, yet we have innovated technological solutions that are both functional and safe for the environment.
Let’s continue the conversation on www.farmeronfire.com
https://youtu.be/BCe_f7FXGtE

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FARMING IN KENYA AND MOZAMBIQUE

LAND OWNERSHIP

In Mozambique, the government owns all the land. This means that no one has a title deed, people are assigned land temporarily and, at any moment, the government can take it back, this can lead to fear of investments with such uncertainty.read more
https://farmeronfire.com/2021/08/20/10-differences-between-farming-in-kenya-and-mozambique/

MAJOR SPINACH/ SWISS CHARD PESTS AND DISEASES

Spinach is a foot-long, leafy green plant grown in almost every household. They are remarkably easy to grow and require little attention compared to other crops. They can be grown for both domestic and commercial use. Major challenges of growing spinach are pests and disease. These are some of them and their remedies

POWDERY MILDEW

Spinach is a summer crop that requires direct sunlight to thrive, however during the cold months, they get a white powder residue on the leaves. Read more https://farmeronfire.com/2021/08/20/major-spinach-swiss-chard-pests-and-diseases/


4 week SPINACH CHALLENGE and giveaways BY FARMER ON FIRE.

The beginning of

Here I am in Maputo , Mozambique, idleness creeping in, depression at bay , feeling helpless because I don’t speak Portuguese to even negotiate with a cab driver to take me somewhere where there is farming nearby, not that I haven’t tried, I did. And we ended up in the wrong place, twice, and yes the charges were 7500 % the actual cost and ended up back home an hour later because no one actually allows strangers into their farm, their property, a foreigner and a camera? Hell No, No Pala inglais, they claim just to get out of it. Converting the local currency is another drama all together.
So there I am, feeling down, wondering what else I can do to the YouTube channel farmer on fire, then someone sends me a flier , of daily motivational quotes, asking , can you do that every day to inspire people. Gets me thinking, yes. We are a YouTube channel with an aim of” inspiring people to get excited about farming”. But what can we do more?
After inspiring people, we need them to act, we need them to experience that journey of farming for themselves. A lot of people in our inboxes asking. , aki I love farming, how do I start? What crop should grow? how do I make money?. To me this are usually ambiguous questions which cannot be answered with one answer , and so like a therapist, we go through the rabbit hole , I have to dig deeper; where do you live?, what is grown there?, what climate?, how much capital do you have ?, what space are we working with?, Do you want to farm crops or animals?. About question 7-8 we have some head way.
The idea is to start, to get over the fear of unknown, to overcome analysis paralysis. To say, I once had a plant and it didn’t die! And so the FREE! 30 day challenge is born, to give meaningful value to our audience, give an opportunity for others to walk the journey with us. Make a decision, get seeds, plant, grow and successfully harvest and transform the task into food.

🔥,FREE Sept 4 week

Why spinach? FUN FACTS and giveaways

Spinach is a short approximately one-foot-high leafy green crop. It is usually grown in most households as it is used almost every day in the Kenyan household. In the western world they call it Swiss chard, while in the USA is called baby spinach in Kenya and is a little unpopular. China is the biggest producer of spinach in the world, growing almost 20 million metric tons annually, this is for their local consumption and for the American market as well.
Spinach is an easy to grow vegetable and with the rise of gastric diseases, its preferred to its counterpart, the kale for its less acidity. The kale in the west is known as the collard. These names are important because as you go google online, you will find a different thing, so know the correct terminology to goggle.
Spinach is a perennial crop that matures in 6 to 8 weeks, usually it is transplanted from a nursery where it grows for one month but in a kitchen garden or small setup, one can grow it directly. It can continue to be harvested once a week for 6 months. Compared to other vegetables, the spinach seeds are comparably larger than the others e.g., the kale, which means, because of spacing challenges, they must be transplanted.
Spinach is a great vegetable accompaniment that can go with almost all meals. They can be served at the local nyama choma joint, eaten with ugali or as a side dish to rice or chapati stew. At a certain age that my parents are in of 60’s, I have seen it served at every meal, including breakfast.
For me it has been a vital vegetable, I had a major operation a few years ago, that left me anemic, I was given 3 weeks to go home recuperate and would get blood transfusion, but I ate spinach everyday which I believe led to increase in blood level count back to normalcy.
Spinach is easy to cook and soft meaning, in a world of busy mom and less heating and cooking resources, it is preferring because of the time taken to cook it is much shorter.
Spinach is nutrient dense vegetable is a variant if vitamins and micronutrients However due to high levels of vitamin K in spinach, caution should be taken for those people who suffer from high blood pressure, they are usually given blood thinning medicine, yet vitamin K is known to have clotting properties.

NJANUARY FARMING STRUGGLES

It has been so dry, I have been getting so disappointed when I open the farm gate, my morale drains and I can feeling depression creeping in. I wonder if am doing the right thing, second guessing myself, lowering my self-esteem. Wondering if I must rethink my purpose all over again. I wonder trying to crack my head on ways I can improve the half dead crop. Some rabbit urine perhaps? I am not sure; it will just burn them dead for sure. You see, my neighbor lady who has a borehole has been metering me water to farm is doing her job, but the current challenge is that my house/farm is up the hill and she is on the other side of the hill. With an elevated tank, gravity is my only hope to drive the water up to my doorstep. With over 200 clients in between us expecting the same water, I get the shorter hand of the stick.
Water is vital in farming, but they did not say that once I plant, it is going to cause me stress to ensure that the water is sustained all throughout the season. Oh yeah, I knew that, but I had faith that all will be well,’ what do you mean close the farm’? And buying water from a truck is too expensive, believe me I have tried! and it ate all my profits. The Kajiado sun smiles full-on, letting me know of my current challenges, I am on my last nerve. Do people have to eat, really, coz intermittent fasting can put all this to rest. Our ancestors had only a meal every few days and they did not have to toil to farm food, they just hunted and gathered. Well with the current population and high life expectancy, the earth is cracking. What to do, I cannot wait for the rains