Maynard Mission Report

Horton Chapel Church of Christ

Farming

Harvest season is over and we are excited to share the results with all of you and a little about corn and it’s harvesting and use here. First, the corn they eat is white field corn, not the sweet yellow we are used to. It is left and not harvested until it has fully dried. Once dried we took machete like knives and cut down all the stalks that were stacked in 5 large piles around the farm. For two weeks we then shucked the corn and created a pile of corn and several piles of stalks. When everything was shucked we then spent one day using our new sheller (thank you Central Church of Christ in Augusta, Georgia) and separated the kernels from the cobs. The next day was spent filling and sealing triple layer bags to store the corn kernels.

Last year we harvested 25 bags which was more than a years worth of food for the school. This year, because of the donation of the tractor and other machinery, we were able to utilize more land. As a result, we harvested 85 bags of corn! This is more than 3 years worth of corn for the school.

We will now be able to focus on crop rotation and growing other needed foods (like beans) in large quantities for the school.

Why corn? The main staple food of Tanzania is called ugali. It is made from grinding corn into a fine powder and then boiling it. It is a tasteless, odorless filler. It is eaten with greens.

The corn stalks and cobs will be used to make silage to feed our cows through the dry season. 

We also had the opportunity this month to join a friend of ours, Edwin Kashumba, and go out to Neema Village, a home for orphans, and install raised beds with drip irrigation for them. While Kashumba talked to women from the community about raised bed drip irrigation, Justin leveled where we would be working. We were able to put in 6 beds for the orphanage to grow their own vegetables. 30 women from the community attended and 30 Neema staff. We love being able to share our work with the communities around us and pray to have more opportunities in the future.

While we did not stop evangelizing this month we did decide to focus this report on farming. We will update you on the other great things going on here in our mid-September report. We thank all of you for your constant support and encouragement.

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