The Shamba in Tanzania

Here are video's for year one and year two of our fruit orchard.

I had to overcome a few big obstacles in making the orchard happen, which are detailed in the videos. But mostly, it’s about seeing fruit trees grow over two years. With cameos by Godfrey’s boys. I will upload the videos to Substack, but here are the links to them on YouTube: Year One and Year Two

Year One:

Year Two:

I started with 69 fruit trees. Then, we had to cut down about 40 acacia trees and replace them with non-invasive shade trees. They are to the West of the orchard to provide the fruit trees with fewer hours of sun.

Water was a huge problem, as I was on the dry old water line. But the new one was 600 meters away and through the property of others. I finished it just before the rainy season hit by a day. I wrote a post about that here:

We are up to 86 fruit trees, around 40 bananas (six different varieties), and 56 shade trees. Other trees were planted this past trip across three other acres. Lots of trees, bushes, and succulents, as I attempted to focus on native trees that don’t require a lot of water after the first few years.

I have another post coming up about 2024. Dream big!