The maize garden looks good at this time and our prayer is that the neighbouring families do not encroach on the maize since we have no fence.
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The maize garden looks good at this time and our prayer is that the neighbouring families do not encroach on the maize since we have no fence.
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We hope the harvest is great for the need is even greater
wow…its like just yesterday the maize plants were just seedlings
Just some thoughts “OUT OF THE BOX “, about what could be done with this maize for two reasons:
(a) To avoid the neighbors being tempted to take some of this maize
(b) To avoid this maize becoming to old and loosing some nutritive value, since the girls have gone away for holidays.
MAIZE SILAGE FOR THE DAIRY CATTLE:
I SUGGEST WE MAKE “MAIZE SILAGE” FOR OUR DAIRY HERD. Silage is made by cutting this maize, cutting (THE WHOLE PLANT) it into small pieces and mixing the cut maize with mollases (the liquid remaining after sugar making), compacting the same with big pressure and covering it tightly to remove the air (mainly oxygen) with a strong polythene sheet and covering the whole big hip with soil.
The maize/ mollases undergoes chemical reaction, in which the compaction removes the oxygen and this leads to death of all the bacteria which would multiply in the presence of Oxygen. What then remains are bacteria which can multiply when there is no oxygen (i.e. anaerobic conditions), these bacteria act on the mollases to produce mainly Lactic acid and some a few other acids to a Ph between 4.5 – 5.6. The lactic acid produced, greatly contributes to preservation of the cut maize and this can keep for even as long as two to four years.
The silage can then made can be used for dry season feeding leading to high production of milk at a time when most other dairy farmers have low milk production due to the lack of both feeds and water. The excess milk not used by the school can be sold to increase income for the school.
By the way, how many acres do we have? I would like to estimate how much silage we can make.
NB. I AM READY TO COME AND HELP THROUGH THE WHOLE PROCESS
Regards.
That very garden you looked at is about one acre but on the whole we have about three acres.Making Silage?Why not.We shall call you and we arrange.