Today is the 28th of February and the window closes for planting sugar beans in Saul Mkhize Village.

Guess what!? My team and I finished replanting the whole 3ha+ garden by hand yesterday, 27th February, my late father’s birthday! What a beautiful ode to my old man , my hero!

So, in celebration I treated my staff to a braai in true South African style🇿🇦💚pap,wors,hoender en chakalaka😋

Their loud happy chirpy voices at the table and off just took my breath away. Every challenge from the past week seemed like a distant memory. Yes, there’s still lots to be done, de-weed by hand, prepare land to plant vegetables but you know what? Take time to celebrate and be grateful for the victories🙏🏾.

Ever seen a triumphant boxer after a gruelling 12 round title fight? Closed eye and all, they’ll celebrate, take happy pictures, kiss and hug loved ones and lick their wounds out of sight all while planning how retain the just won title.

That’s Moitheki Farms for you at this point, ready to defend our hard work. And ready we are, armed to the teeth.

So stay tuned for my final instalment of my sugar bean journey whereafter I’ll share my farming experiences with my sisters in farming…and the journey begins with my beautiful sisters, my siblings, oMthembu, Abavelase! My prayer warriors!

Simangele Siko
0710758523

Creating Generational Wealth…An Imperative

Sugar beans are my main crop and I intend mastering the art of growing them because it is an art right? Sugar beans are very delicate the first few days of their lives and I intended giving it my all to give them the TLC and I did. I even hired extra help to deweed by hand! Everything was going according to plan as I’d escaped the heavy December rains.  I’d only started planting the second week of January. Whew! That was a close call, I was on safe ground…or was I?

A week to a week and a half after planting my seeds germinated and started growing into beautiful plants. I was enjoying the ride 

Well the elements, Mother Nature had other ideas and s soon showed me who’s boss. We’ve had incessant heavy downpours since then and you know sugar beans can’t swim…even as I write today, 19th February, it’s still raining. My garden looks like pond city.

Well that’s not all. The birds, wild geese to be exact, decimated sections of my garden. I’ve learned, they love tender legume plants, what!?🤦🏽‍♀️

And so I’m back in the boxing ring with two mighty opponents, rain and wild geese.

Guess what! I’m going to float like a butterfly and sting like a bee aka Muhammad Ali because I have the ingredients to knock em out!

And knock em out I will. I have no choice.

As a small farmer I can be agile and I intend using what I’ve learnt when I go commercial.

Thank God I have a hardworking and dedicated team and I’ll turn things around and still be profitable.

Yes, my team and I will have to put in twice as much work so Moitheki Farms can smile all the way to the bank.

That’d be awesome don’t you think?

Till next we meet to share my sugar bean journey.💚

This time in 2021, I should have thrown in the towel. The summer rains of Saul Mkhize village eMkhondo had decimated my freshly planted garden. Everything was washed away by the floods.
My team and I had to start reconstruction on almost 85% of my 0.25ha vegetable garden. Remember this was my first attempt, solo (story for another day) and I’m a complete novice at this point.
Thank God for my young team, all girls I must add, we rebuilt our garden and replanted what seed was left. There was jubilation, we triumphed!

Sad to say the celebration was shortlived. Whoosh! The rain came down hard again on our garden. This time the damage wasn’t as much as we had dug out an area in the garden to redirect the floods.
The very moist ground was a blessing on the one hand and oh not such a blessing on the other.

Most of the vegetables drowned as they were immature only some Swiss chard survived and the glorious carrot grew to maturity! What a wonderful surprise!
So we sold all the spinach and most of the carrots, most because at harvest time we realised that the water from the rain had caused some of the carrots to rot due to water logging.
During this whole time what seized my mind was not the damage and reconstruction but the how to do it better next time plan. And plan I did…
2022 has been good to Moitheki Farms thus far and I plan to keep it that way for a long time.
The blood, sweat and little tears (no time to cry a bucketful of tears when there’s work to be done…) has been worth the lessons learnt.

So next time, allow me to take you through my journey, blow by blow because it has been like a boxing match.