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:
The "desert orchard" and water from Kilimanjaro
Without water, there is no life. With little water, there is life, but it is only alive. With abundant water, life thrives. When I bought this land, there was no water. It is Mateves, a traditional Massai land, and the hill was known thirty years ago as Goat Hill because they ate everything alive. Sometimes, its so dry the Massai live by drinking the blo…
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!
Jerome, Thanks for sharing this. This is inspiring my orchard-forward thoughts. :) Hope you're well this week. Cheers, -Thalia
Oh, how every part of me longs for this. Just beautiful. I love it. Thank you for sharing.