Do Two Cows Make A Herd?

I wrote in August about our foray into the cow business as a ministry to the ICM staff at the Mt. Elgon Training Center. Since then, Juma's cow has birthed a calf, a bull, and has settled into her new life on his property in Kopsiro.

We've just purchased our second cow, a fine Asian-Guernsey mix, who is currently residing on the Africa Theological Seminary campus here in Kitale. The photo is of Chemway, as her new owners have named her, grazing on campus. If you look close you'll see that she looks thin. In terms of quality she is a very good cow, but her previous owner was trying to maintain a herd of four cows on a small plot of land. One of the points we're trying to make with this project that it is better to own one or two quality cows, who are healthy and fat and who give more milk, than to own many cows who give little.

Our partner for this cow is Jusus Kirui. Justus serves as the administrator of the METC as well as a teacher in the Certificate programs there. Justus has served at the center for many years. He is a quiet man, but is very astute and is quite the planner. We've had a number of long conversations this past two weeks, and I've come to appreciate the wisdom that God has given him. He has just completed the Diploma in Bible and Theology program and will be starting as one of our BA students in January. He is married to Suzy and is currently finishing their new house in Kopsiro

On Bowes' farm

I've always enjoyed having a vegetable garden. I can remember back to when, as a young boy, I tried to coax tomatoes to grow out of a patch of barren ground in our back yard. I don't recall having any success. After Kathy and I were married, we bought our first home and I enjoyed turning the adobe clay of our back yard into fertile soil by adding to it copious truck loads of compost from nearby horse ranches. Livermore, San Bernardino, Germany, England, Los Angeles and finally Bakersfield - all provided gardening experiences.

I'm not sure what I was thinking when we moved here to Kitale. I knew that our house had a big yard and there was an area for a 'shamba' (garden) on one side of the house. I also knew we'd be busy, and that it takes a lot of work to do a good job of raising vegetable. But, oh for the taste of fresh tomatoes from the garden again.

Enter our day man, Daniel, a farmer by trade. Daniel is supposed to take care of the yard, so having him set up a garden for me fit his experience and responsibilities.

The results so far are promising (if not downright intimidating). Daniel has increased the size of the shamba three-fold by converting attractive, but non-edible lawn into farm land. He set up bedding areas and then proceeded to plant ALL the seeds in the seed packets we purchased. In the accompanying pictures you see the garden as it is today.

The top picture is of our sukumawiki bed, into which Daniel has just transplanted young sukumawiki plants. Sukuma is either the Swahili name for kale, or a close cousin of it. The second picture is our potato patch. We're growing common reds. The third picture is one (one!) of our tomato fields. Each stake you see represents one tomato plant. The other field is larger. "What will you do with all the tomatoes," you ask. We reply, "We don't know!"

The final picture is of our chicken. We didn't plant chicken seeds, or find him on the road. We've begun working with another of our Mt. Elgon staff members to acquire a good milk cow (see a couple of posts down for details). His wife came to our campus today to attend a seminar for pastors' wives and brought us a box of vegetables and a live chicken.

So, if you're in the neighborhood, just stop by Bowes' Farms and we'll fix you up with whatever we're harvesting. But you'd better act fast if chicken is on your shopping list, because this kuku is soon for the soup pot!

Dealing with Pests

We have a lot of pests outside our house. We have bats and birds in the trees surrounding our property (lost our first carrot crop to birds). We have rats that have become more intrusive this past month (they got our worker's avocados which he'd stored in a bag that he hung from a rafter in the tool shed). And, we have ants - big, black African ants that are quite aggressive in building their nests in the lawn, the driveway, and at the foundation of our house.


We asked our day askari and gardener, Daniel (on the left), to do something about the ants (and the rats and the bats). He let us know that he'd need to have some equipment to do the job since he'd be handling some poison that is apparently fairly powerful stuff. He gave me a list and I acquired it. This is a shot of him suited up to do battle with the ants. The sprayer can also be used to apply fertilizer to the crops, so it'll do double duty.

We have a Cow in Africa...

One of the things that has been on my heart for some time is the loss that our Mt. Elgon Training Center staff endured due to the fighting on Mt. Elgon in 2007 and 2008. Chrispine Juma, Justus Kirui, Jonathan Aramis and Charles Chebok lost their homes, their crops and their animals. Some generous people have been helping them re-acquire land and homes. Earlier this year I had an idea about how we might help them with the loss of livestock.

I began developing the idea during my visit to Kenya in April, and after some discussion with Kathy and our cultural guide, Stephen Mairori, this is what I came up with: don't just give a cow, buy one and share ownership of it with the staff, gradually letting them earn our portion of the cow through profit sharing on the income from the cow.

We began with Chrispine Juma earlier this month. Kathy and I put up around $400 to purchase a good cow (good endurance for life on the mountain, good producer of milk). We made sure Bondet Kea, the Deputy Principal of the METC, was involved as he has good experience with cows. A bonus was that the cow we bought is pregnant and will deliver a calf later this month. We got the cow examined by a vet and given all the innoculations she needs for healthy living.

Chrispine then arranged to have the cow transported to Kopsiro, where she is temporarily residing and grazing while he finishes constructin of a shed for her on his proerty. He has planted Napier grass on a portion of his land to provide good food for the cow. On a recent trip to Mt. Elgon we visited "our" cow at the training center.

Chrispine has promised to give 10% of the profits from milk sales to Mt. Elgon Training Center, and Kathy and I will have our share of the profits from the cow and her offspring go to the METC as well. As we increase our herd(s), this should provide a reliable income stream for both the staff and the training center.

Next month we'll add another cow to our "herd" by working with Justus Kirui to accomplish the same objectives. We hope that by the end of the year we'll have five cows in place, hopefully with a few offspring.

We Went Grocery Shopping At Church Today

Last night Dorcus Chemingich telephoned us to let us know that there would be a special combined Thanksgiving service at St. Lukes Anglican Church this morning. So we altered our plans and arrived on time. Once in the service (which was about 90% in Swahili), we learned that it was a Thanksgiving service for the bean harvest which has just been completed. At the offering near the end of the service many of us gave cash, but there were quite a few people who brought the first fruits of their harvest. We saw beans, maize, eggs, potatoes, greens, a live chicken, a live goat and a live sheep. The animals aren't in this picture - they were kept outside.

Then it got interesting. One gentleman whom we've met before took over as a combination M.C. and auctioneer, and began taking bids on the produce from the congregation. Our friend and boss Emmanuel Chemingich explained that the church was converting the produce into cash which would be credited as donations for the people who contributed the produce. The MC/Auctioneer was really good and kept things moving along. In the picture he is moving a bag of potatoes. It was a lot of fun to watch, and eventually we got drawn in.


So, we got some quality produce at church today - in the picture you can see that we got some potatoes, some avocados, some bananas and some beans. We also got a small bag of eggs. It was quite an experience and once again took us back to what Thanksgiving services might have looked like one hundred years ago in small towns all across America.

Now all we have to do is figure out how to cook the beans!

The Terminex Guy Came Yesterday

Well, David doesn't work for Terminex, but he is a pest eradication specialist. He didn't arrive in a truck with a picture of a Black Mamba being crushed on it, he walked up to the gate with his gear in a small canvas bag. He comes three times a year to spray for mosquitoes, and, since he works for many others in the Milimani Estate, we don't see that many mosquitos.

While he was spraying outside for mosquitos (he also sprayed inside - which necessitated a one-hour evacuation to our front porch), he noticed that we were beginning to have an ant problem (have I mentioned how BIG African black ants are?). The ants were beginning to push up mounds in our lawn and next to the house. We'd noticed that we were seeing more of them in the kitchen. Since he was on the topic of pests we asked about the bees that were apparently creating a hive in the eaves of our house. No problem, he said, he could take care of it.

I drove him downtown to get the poisons he needed for the ants and the bees. That done, we let him get on with it. He dug into the ants' nests and then sprayed them - this picture is of him working on an ant nest. To get the bees he had to use a homemade ladder to get high enough to spray them. To remove the honey combs, he had to climb up on the roof and work from there (I wish I had a photo!). We were hoping for some wild honey, but apparently we got to the hive before they got into production. He said that he did one home and got 2 liters of honey...that must have been a really BIG hive!

He gives good service - he came back this morning to make sure he got the ants, and he'll be back next week to check on the effectiveness of the mosquito control.

Total cost? About $50.00, of which half was for the chemicals.

At Home in Kitale

So, this is not the once per week schedule I thought I'd maintain on this Blog... Life gets complicated in a transition like the one we've been going through. Mostly our experiences have been very good, especially the time we got to spend with family and friends as we traveled from Bakersfield to Seattle. This is a shot I took of Kathy with her brother Scott and sister Mary Ann at a lunch we shared just before we left the Bay Area

We've just published our July Newsletter (if you don't get it and want it, email us and we'll be glad to sign you up) which shares a bit about our experiences settling into our new home in Kitale. It was a real process. We went shopping for the big household items in Nairobi, knowing that we'd have a better selection and possibly better pricing. The store we brought from agreed to deliver the goods to our home for next to nothing, less than $15.00. They could do it because they make weekly shipments to their store in Eldoret (about an hour's drive from Kitale) and then could send the goods on from there. We thought we'd get the goods within five days, but it took about a week and a half. But, eventually I got a call from the store that the goods were on their way.

Given that our access driveway is narrow and has a ninety degree turn halfway to our gate I was wondering about the delivery, but the truck that came was small enough to navigate the turns. Soon the two men were off loading the cooker (stove), the washer and drier and the refrigerator. Here is a shot of them unboxing the refrigerator. Once it was in place we had to let it sit for 24 hours to allow the mercury in the system to cool and stabilize (don't ask for further explanation - it's what we were told). But the end product is that we are keeping and preparing food, though that is a subject for another time.

One last thought - at the end of the afternoon where we had all the help unpacking from our Kenyan staff wives, we finally got to sit down at our dinning table, in our dining room in our home in Kitale and have our first meal together. One of the ladies snapped a shot of Kathy and I. If it looks like the day has been a little long...it had!