Update - April 17th 2021

An interesting & humbling time at the farm. I had a group of deaf farmers visiting. I sometimes wonder why life sends certain experiences. I reached the conclusion that this visit was life’s way of reminding me about humility. Spending time with these guys was humbling. Life dealt them a bad hand. They have gone and made the most of it & thrived. Above all, they have a burning ambition to be successful. They are engaged in the normal economic activity of farming & have done it well. They have built a livelihood out of it. We who have every one of our faculties functioning normally, have access to all sorts of opportunities have absolutely zero reasons to complain. Our setbacks are secondary when you think that we have a head start over these guys. We should be humble when trying to make the most of our situation.

And so back to farming. I resolved to just push on regardless. We had a mega downpour yesterday that devastated quite a few banana stems. But what I saw is that we need to harvest more of this water. We need to protect against erosion by storm water run off. We need to protect our roads from being washed away. Most importantly what can we do to keep the water longer. Basically, we need to use the most of our time now at the farm to work on all the things that normally take long to sort out. Between now and the end of the year, it will be like night & day.

I had a wonderful time with three visitors who came by. Paul Rugambwa, Samuel Rubanga & Mandela Suruma. The discussion around the business of coffee, it’s economics, the agronomy, the management etc. The questions were many and the discussion was vibrant. Afterwards we loaded a ton of coffee on the back of the new set of wheels called Kivuuvu. It is going to be hulled and then roasted so I can fulfill an order from a potentially big client.

And oh, as we talked , we also walked a lot. By the end of it we had done 3kms up and down the farm. It was also worth it in terms of exercise. Life has changed.