Nite - Natural farming: obedience to laws of nature

Natural Farming: Obedience to Laws of Nature, by Aluta Nite. ISBN 978-1-62137-422-0 (Softcover) 978-1-62137-423-7 (eBook).

Published 2013 by Virtualbookworm.com Publishing Inc., P.O. Box 9949, College Station, TX 77842, US. 2013, Aluta Nite. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of Aluta Nite.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Farming done the conventional way was the best thing ever. The harvests were sweet, satisfying and almost infection free. The author became an entrepreneur in this type of farming for ten years and enjoyed it thoroughly. She did this type of farming with her husband in East African coastal region and she had experienced it in childhood at her parents farm in a rural setting.

Her family ate the produce without fear of anything as they knew where it came from. Her family was healthy. Their cattle and poultry were healthy too. They spent less money on disease treatment, medication and doctor calls.

The occasional sicknesses were not severe because of the care and knowledge in what they, their cattle and poultry ate. The soil was enriched naturally and production swings were not alarming except when Mother Nature brought less or too much rain or they failed to irrigate adequately.

Water for irrigation was from a dug out well with concrete walls, a built up top and cover. A sub-massive pump was imbedded inside the forty one feet depth. Water was pumped into a big built up reservoir next to the well and then using a portable surface pump, pumped to the gardens through plastic pipes or drawn into water cans from taps strategically placed all over the ground.

The water was a bit saline as the area was near the sea but it was still good for plants, cattle and poultry, cooking, washing and cleaning.

They did not know the cost of pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers or where to get them because they were not interested in them.

Intercropping legumes with grain crops helped reduce weeds as legumes provided ground cover that deterred weeds. Legumes also provided nitrogen to the soil through their root nodules.

Weeding was done several times per production period in order to fight weeds but it was worth it.

They uprooted the disturbing weed called Striga that impoverished the soil even during the dry spell when seasonal crops were not planted and burnt it, but it was worth it.

They went round and round removing any plant that showed signs of attack by stalk borer, tomato blight, sweet potato bug and the like and buried them underground, but, in the end, it was worth it.

There was Agroforestry practice around the farm to deter some of the culprits like stalk borer.

There was the blend of stuff like dry chili peppers and ashes from burnt firewood at the cooking place i.e. the three stones tripod and charcoal burners to act as pesticides on their plants.

There were plenty of herbs from leaves, bark and seeds of a tree plant called Neem in and around the farm whose solution they used as pesticides on their plants as well and also to treat their cattle, poultry and themselves. The leaves, seeds and bark of this tree are used as herbal medicine and to produce soap and many other products in this region and to produce herbal toothpaste in India.

Shelled dry crops like maize and groundnuts and threshed dry crops like millet, sorghum, quinoa and lentils were preserved with the same ashes to keep away vermin. They were then put in huge jute or sisal sacks and kept in a clean dry store within the farmhouse where plenty of air circulated. They were winnowed and washed before cooking or grinding.

Unshelled maize on the cob and peeled dry crops like cassava, sweet potatoes and cooking bananas were stored in granaries walled with chicken coup wire mesh and netting all round and from top to bottom including doors or windows to deter rats and the like. Plenty of air circulated within the granaries.

There was enough waste at the farm to act as fertilizer e.g. stalks, grass, dung and others.

Crop rotation helped enrich the soil, as some crops like maize, millet, sorghum and quinoa demanded more from the soil than others.

The only limitation was not being able to utilize a lot of land because they did not have it, but whatever they had which was three acres, they put every inch of it to use and it yielded enough produce for one full years subsistence and sales. They used no mechanization due to cost factor and the land being stony.

They got extra cattle feed from public land reserved for future road construction and also from private empty land belonging to absent landowners who appeared in sight maybe like once in ten years.

To wash crockery, they used the same ashes; and in some instances when scrubbing stubborn stains from saucepans, they used coarse sand from the river nearby.

When brushing teeth, they used herbal twigs called Mswaki from particular bushes known to be medicinal. One of the bushes is known as Mda. In fact one of the herbal tooth pastes in the market at the moment from India is called Meswak. Their teeth were clean and healthy and the gums were infection and pain free.

Their farm was initially a quarry where men excavated coral stones and quarry waste for construction purposes. As a result of this, the land was undulating, but they did not do anything to change the landscape. They simply used the land the way it was. This made it beautiful and unique.

There were depressions, flat ground, sloppy areas and hilly parts scattered all over. And that was their farm and home. As a result, the top soil was thin because coral rock was right underneath the top soil.

Sometimes, it rained continuously day and night for one, two, three, four, five and even six days without any ray of sunshine or a stop for any meaningful work to be done on the land. Luckily, the area had sandy soil that drained water quickly into the aquifers that formed ground water and made well accessibility easy.

At such times, the problem became mushrooming of thick, healthy weeds that had to be dealt with urgently, but in the end the animals got very fresh feed that they loved and sometimes, it made some of them produce rather liquid dung, but it did not make them sick.

The family too, benefited in that they were able to gutter harvest enough rainwater from their farmhouse roof and stored plenty of it in their built up stone tank. This was the water that they used for drinking throughout the year.

They sustained themselves with milk, grains crops, nuts, legumes, root crops, vegetables, fruits and meat. The farm sustained itself from milk, vegetables, fruits, male calves and old cows sale proceeds.

Due to extreme heat in the tropics especially around the equator, they only watered and irrigated whatever they were growing early in the mornings and in the evenings when the sun was less intense to avoid severe evaporation and allow some moisture to remain in the soil and sustain plants in the heat the next day .

Dedicated to:

All who desire and implement natural farming

Acknowledging:

All those practicing natural farming

Contents

What we farmed, methods and results .

We had various types of compost:

Dung

Leftovers from two sheds

Leftovers from the farmhouse

Leftovers from pruning

Leftovers from crops

We had five depressions of compost next to each other. Fresh dung was heaped in the first one where only raw dung stayed for about one month without any additions, deductions or disturbances of whatever nature. This was the stage when flies really loved that particular spot.