Aurelié from France, Emma from England/Zimbabwe and Tyler from the USA are visiting us. Aurelié has the idea to start her own Eco Lodge, Emma has knowledge of Bee Keeping and Tyler has interests in Composting.

Apart from our subscribtion at “WOOF Independants Africa” we have also been given the opportunity to enlist at “WWOOF Tanzania”:

See our WWOOFING tab on this website.

Karibu sana!

This ancient building is located about 500 meters inland on the east borderline of our farm. We are trying to find out whether it is a Mosque or some sort of residence for a whealtier person. This is one of the best remained buildings on RK

When you take a closer look at the picture below even old wooden framework can be found ( left on pic behind bush ) This could mean that this building was still inhabited maybe in the early 1900’s

As we have sandy soil on RK you can imagine that the water needed for our plants goes straight down. To halt this Tichafa has made various types of raised beds to determine which type is best. So under our mulch we put 1. nothing, 2. two types of plastic sheets, 3. cardboard. Permaculture Research!
In the coming weeks we hope to install a Bucket Drip Irrigation System from Chapin Livin Waters.

Our 600 palm trees are bursting with coconuts that can be harvested at the beginning of november. We want to start a nursery of about 750-1000 nuts that later on will be replanted on our site.

Sofie, our new WWOOFer, has finally arrived by piki-piki. She will graze weeds and supply us with milk ( we hope )

Getting settled:

As we have a water lens at about 1 metre below ground level we decided to dig a pit garden till just above water level. This type of gardening is much used on atolls. So this will be a great way to grow vegetables.

Here a nice interactive picture of the digging-process

On the 18th of June 2014 new satellite images have been made of RK. On this image you can see our base from which we operate and the maize fields intercropped with several vegetables and nitrogen fixing plants like cow-peas. On the right we have made a small road by widening an excisting path to enclose our premises.
The yellow lines show the proposed area’s for the eco lodge and farm area.
Left next to the yellow borderline on the right shows a brownish area. This section has just been cleaned of weed bushes, leaving all valuable domestic vegetation like monkey fruit, almond, coconut and mango. After that nitrogen fixers will be planted, combined with various other fruit and nut trees.