Mziza Farmers Ready to Go

Mziza farmers are now fully prepared for the rains to fall. Each club member has been given enough seeds and fertilizer to plant 1 acre of maize. This acre will supply enough grain for their families for the entire year. They will use the surplus maize to pay for their inputs and save until the prices rise later next year.

Bua River Irrigation

Today we visited farmers in Kasungu District along the Bua River. Good Neighbors has started organizing irrigation clubs in the area and is looking to improve the harvests with better water pumps and irrigation techniques.

Windmill go!

Second generation windmill at Mziza Demo Garden. We installed the windmill last week, letting it run over the weekend to check for any kinks. We hooked on the pumping rod today and a makeshift pump to see if we could get water into the tank. We did get water all the way to the tank, 3m above and 20m laterally from the water source.

Likuni Irrigation underway!

On Friday we began the irrigation training process at NAPHAM's new site at Likuni in Lilongwe. The irrigation club was well prepared for us, having dug a new well and cleared the first section of their field.

First, we went through the initial set up of the pump, a maintenance overview, and how to use it.

Then we began digging the first feeder canal which will carry water to the beds where maize, tomatoes, and onions will be planted. In this training, there is no main canal, so water is fed directly into the feeder canal. As the garden expands, water will first enter a main canal, flowing laterally across the top of the garden, from where it will be diverted into feeders, and finally beds or basins.

For the next two days (Saturday and Monday) we will return to help them finish the digging of beds and to oversee the planting of maize. Within two weeks we expect to see maize emerging in the field and tomatoes and onions coming up in a nursery. At that point we will need to expand the garden to accommodate the tomatoes and onions.

New Irrigation Sites with World Relief

World Relief, whose mission is to empower local churches to serve the most vulnerable, works with 30 church communities in Salima District, Malawi. In January we began training Ministry Team members in irrigation techniques at Siyasiya, Salima.

Later this month we will take the trainings to a new site. We are particularly excited for this phase of the project for a number of reasons. First, the new site is remote, which means the people are good farmers, excited to work with townsfolk like us, and rich in resources. The second exciting thing is just how rich in resources: we will be using spring water for the irrigation training.

As you can see in the above picture, that borehole flows without pumping! The means that many farmers don't need water pumps and other farmers can irrigate their gardens higher elevations.

We will begin later this month, working with the World Relief field coordinator to establish a resource management plan for the springs alongside irrigation and fish farming activities.

New Irrigation Sites with NAPHAM

The National Association for People living with HIV and AIDS in Malawi (NAPHAM) is an organization established in Malawi to look into the needs of people affected by Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). NAPHAM engage in advocacy campaigns, testing and counseling, education, and livelihood development. With over 1,000 support groups throughout the country, they reach out to tens of thousands of people to support their efforts to live positively even with the reality of HIV and AIDS in their communities and families.

Africa Windmill Project began training members of the Nathenje support group under a NAPHAM project aimed at developing nutritious and income-generating gardens. With such a great potential to improve the well being of their members, NAPHAM has decided to send the project into another community. This is the second phase of a long process of bringing irrigation training to thousands of their members across the country, people who generally struggle with insufficient nutrition.

At the Likuni support group outside Lilongwe, we saw relatively good irrigation activities already taking place. Using watering cans, most farmers are growing small plots of tomatoes and greens. It is our hope that with better water pumps and training, these farmers will be able to scale up to larger fields and diversify their crops.

AWP will return on Friday the 12th of July to begin the training process.

 Maize under irrigation at Mziza:

 Harvesting sweet potatoes:

 Some farming club members show off new jerseys, just in time for the cold season:

Katsumwa Irrigation: Up and Running

Irrigation is underway at Katsumwa Village, Lilongwe. There are five irrigation farmers using this system and 15 additional farmers participating in the training course, to eventually start their own irrigated gardens. Up to three acres of irrigable land sits within range of the water tank. For a start the farmers have cultivated about half and acre.

Due to the sandy soil the farmers had to dig a well farther from the water tank. In order to fill the tank over that distance we installed a 200 liter drum near the pump which is connected by ground pipes to the 13,000 liter tank. As the drum fills, the pressure in the drum exceed the pressure in the tank, and water begins to flow into the tank.

The water pump can usually pump faster than the water transfers from the drum to the tank, which could lead to an overflowing tank. However, this does not present a problem under normal conditions because the farmers take short breaks while pumping, allowing the drum and tank to equalize.

Water tank:

 Distribution pipes:

 Flow under minimum pressure:

 Farmers learn pump maintenance:

Demonstrating how to water-in the basins:

 Demonstrating how to direct water into the basins:

 Demonstrating how to mulch the basins:

First Roots in the Ground at Siyasiya, Salima

Farmers were busy in their irrigated gardens the past three weeks, putting to practice what they learned during the initial trainings in April. At Salima, the St. Barnabas irrigation club transplanted tomato seedlings into the first section of their garden.

Though they said they had some challenges at first, the irrigation process has not been difficult for them. They were excited to share with us their plans for expansion.

 

Brick water tank at Katsumwa

On Thursday we joined with farmers at Katsumwa to lay the brick wall on the slab we poured back in March. The farmers put a lot of work into the project and we really appreciate that. The tank will be approximately 15,000 liters capacity when finished later next week.

Siyasiya irrigation training

Last week, we went to Siyasiya in Salima to train farmers in basin irrigation. We were invited by World Relief international who support Ministry Teams from local churches in development and relief projects in the area.

The group picked up the ideas and techniques quickly and had a quarter acre ready for planting by the time we left. Over the next two weeks they will expand their garden up to 2-3 acres, where they will grow onions, tomatoes, maize and green vegetables.