sustainable – Rajwera Farm

August 14, 2025 acacialeakey

Planting Season – Second Quarter 2025 Update

What a busy few months it has been!! April, May, June are always a little hectic with the farm coming back to life following the long rains. This year we were fortunate to not have too harsh a dry season, and everything has been looking and feeling very alive!

Crops

This year we have our largest ever acreage of bean seed, this is to cater to the continually growing demand for high quality Leldet KAT B1, and Chelelang seed. We went in with a higher plant density than usual, and the dividend of this was fantastic weed control with minimal chemical or mechanical interventions. The higher density was achieved by our new Piket planter.

We also planted some more beans for breeding material, which will enable us to sustain supply in years to come.

Chelelang breeder seed growing for crops in future years

We have two maize crops, one for seed – WE5135, and were pleased to have passed all KEPHIS inspections and the other as a commercial trial. For the uninitiated, maize seed is a particularly cumbersome crop because breeding “male” with “female” requires removing tassels from all of the female plants, so that their silks only receive pollen from male plants. Luckily we have decades of practice on our side!

We were particularly grateful for technical support from ICS Africa, who made sure our new 6 row Monosem planter hit the ground running! This planter gave us great seed placement which resulted in an excellent crop stand.

Maize planted into last year’s stubble, retraining soil integrity and moisture

We’re also growing Boma Rhodes grass and E6518 sorghum for seed, hay and silage. The hay is crucial for cash flow and the silage enables us to comfortably keep the cows flourishing come the next dry season.

Lastly (it has indeed been busy!!) we have several different legume crops aside from beans this year, most notably, Cow peas (Kunde) and Pigeon Peas (Mbaazi). The last of these we were able to plant with the Piket minimum tillage planter, which allows us to reduce even further the disturbance of our soils, promoting soil health and biodiversity.

Cowpeas, not something we plant every year, but fantastic for our crop rotation

Planting Pigeon Pea with the new Piket planter

Ooops that’s not all! We have a whole load of small trials – potatoes, maize, sorghum, beans, cow peas, soya and pigeon peas…but keep an eye out for a separate, upcoming post with more info on those!

Livestock

Do the cows and sheep take a back seat while we’re busy with getting arable crops in? No!! They continue to thrive, this quarter we sent another delivery to Choice Meats, and received our usual standard of the highest possible quality.

We’ve been more proactive than ever in implementing a controlled grazing regime, which balances the best nutrition for cattle while limiting the destruction of the grass to ensure it can recover as quickly as possible.

Controlled grazing, the grass on the right is protected as the cows graze on the left

This was complemented by our additional investment in a new salt mix, which is tailored to the mineral needs of our cattle.

Life on the farm

Alongside all this activity, all the wild things that make the farm so special are flourishing too!! While we rarely see the creatures we share the farm with, like this Aardvark, it’s lovely to know they are all there!

July 3, 2024 acacialeakey

Second Quarter Update 2024

The rains have come and we’ve been busy this quarter!

The whole country faced severe flooding in April and May, we were not immune as several catchments on the farm are fed by drainage from surrounding roads. Our main dam was full for the first time, but did not overflow.

Our dam, full of water but fortunately not over flowing

We were also really pleased to see no runoff from any of our own fields, unlike over grazed areas on neighbouring farms, proving our concept for crop rotation resulting in healthier soils able to maximise water retention.

Our field are sodden, but there wasn’t any run off or erosion due to the soil management regime, where lots of last year’s biomass is left on the field.

At the same time, we have been laying pipes for distributing water to cattle troughs and other points around the farm, this will reduce the cost in distributing water.

A new pipeline to distribute borehole water across the farm.

Crops

April always means planting, planting, planting! And we’ve been busy! This season as part of our usual rotation and in anticipation of good rains, we have planted seed maize, beans, sorghum and grass. We were flat out managing field preparation, planting and subsequent scouting and pest management.

The crops are all doing well, with the maize seed crop ready for detasseling in June. We continue to monitor wildlife threats, especially reed buck and guinea fowl which love to eat shoots, and wild pigs which will eat freshly planted seeds and small cobs.

Our maize seed crop, post detasseling with males on the left and females on the right.

The beans harvested in Q1 have met our consistently high quality, with KEPHIS returning 99% and 98% for Kat B1 and KK8 germination tests respectively.

Livestock

We’ve had an exciting development this quarter, bringing in a new herd of dairy cattle from the Hairy Dairy. These beautiful Jersey cattle will join our existing dairy cows as we develop this aspect of our livestock program.

Hairy Dairy cows, on their way to the farm!

In another first for us, we’re going to start breeding from one of our own AI bred bulls, this young Charolais cross should fill out and provide great genetics for our beef herd.

Our first AI-bred bull being used in our general beed breeding herd.

Additionally, we’ve been managing Foot and Mouth alerts in the area, with a vaccination program for all cows.

Life on the Farm

Loloto left us again, giving us time to fix fences and collect trees he has knocked over, we hope he’ll be safe until he returns.

In 2023, we shared information on our efforts to clear Lantana, an invasive shrub that smothers pasture, we recently commissioned a wood chipper, which will enable us to further deal with this threat while producing mulch returning biomass to the soil.

Cows happily grazing in pasture that is growing in a field cleared of Lantana

Lamu

While we were planting on the farm, we were also planting at the coast! This year we planted 500 mangroves along the beach at Mnazi Mmoja, in line with broader efforts in Lamu county to conserve mangrove cover to reduce beach erosion and create more habitat for marine life.

Mangroves planted in front of Mnazi Mmoja.

We’ve also been planting fruit trees for several years now, and these are starting to bear (delicious!) fruit!

Delicious mangoes from our first crop this year.

April 3, 2024July 4, 2024 acacialeakey

First Quarter 2024 Update

This year we’ve been off to a busy start, following the droughts in 2022 and 2023, we’ve been relieved to have had only a modest dry season, with a total of 150mm of rain in the first three months of the year.

Patchy rain kept us reasonable green through the dry season.

We’ve now transitioned to using our borehole water for livestock and general operations, however as it’s not fit for human consumption we’re still using rainwater for all our drinking needs. In 2024 we aim to pipe the borehole water to all the main usage points, especially cattle troughs.

Crops

We’ve had an exciting time with our beans this quarter, harvesting, dressing and packing seeds crops, with more in the field. We’re especially proud that our seeds produced outstanding germination results from KEPHIS: KK8 99%, KAT B1 97%, Chelelang 98%.

These first class seeds are being introduced to new markets, through a field day in March in Timau where we reached farmers from as far afield as Meru and Maralal. We’ve introduced new packaging, including a new 1kg packet, to meet the demand of cash strapped farmers as we all adapt to the challenging economic conditions. Our sales throughout Mulot and Bomet remain strong.

Leldet at the Timau Field Day, introducing our quality seeds to new farmers.

We’ve also been harvesting grass seed from our Boma Rhodes grass crops, and making hay. However, the light dry season has suppressed the hay market, which is a challenge for cash flow going into the pre-planting field preparation season.

Field preparation has been going on in the lead up to Easter, and the expected long rains. We have bean and sorghum crops to harvest, and then we’ll be aerating fields that are going to be planted coming out of the grass phase in our rotation.

Livestock

Our cows and sheep have come through the dry season well, we’ve been topping up their grazing with silage in their bomas in the evening. The AI program has been ongoing, and we’ve welcomed our first AI Jersey calf.

Other work has included livestock chipping, in order to improve our records for better breeding and tracking for more productive and healthy herds. We’ve been keeping up with our consistent provision of beef cattle to choice meats, and our cows continue to rank at the highest quality.

Our cows making it through the dry season in great condition!

We have faced some disease challenges this quarter, in large part due to the influx of cattle from a wide area onto a neighbouring farm, resulting in increased disease and pest – especially tic – load, and unfortunately some casualties. We’re continuing to build capacity within the team to recognize, diagnose and treat issues as soon as possible to maximise the welfare of the livestock.

Life on the Farm

Loloto the elephant is back from his Christmas holidays, as ever, we’re pleased to have him back, but a little less thrilled to be dealing with the constant fence, tree and crop damage. We’ve had challenges this quarter keeping the farm safe for the wildlife we share the space with, especially from poachers who continue to set snares catching birds, hares and small antelopes, and cut down trees for charcoal production.

Hares caught by poachers using snares on the farm.

We’ve been planting more trees, trying to make use of the borehole water to establish some fruit trees and other indigenous varieties.

Lastly, we’ve slowly been building our workshop, so that onsite maintenance can be optimised. So much of our time is spent fixing tractors, planters, sprayers and other equipment, we want to ensure this can be done as seamlessly as possible.

All in all, we’re looking forward to a productive 2024, mindful of the increasingly challenging economic conditions we’re facing alongside our team, neighbours, suppliers and customers.