If you are a regular reader of this column, you will have heard me pour my farming lamentations onto this page once. I purportedly rear sheep and goats somewhere deep in the sticks of eastern Laikipia.
I love and hate my farming life in equal measure for no other reason than it is the one aspect of my life where all my academic and corporate qualifications mean absolutely nothing. Farming is where thoroughly uneducated city slickers and their wallets go to die an ignominious death.
Two years ago, I made the sensible decision to become food secure after the drought of early 2023 almost brought my sheep and my wallet to starvation point. You see, those four-legged critters need to eat. A lot. My hay stocks rapidly depleted, and I had to start buying bales of hay that were being sold for three times the price of a Tusker beer at a local pub when, pre-drought, they were going for the price of a Cocacola can in the refrigerator at Shell Select.
I got tired of figuring things out from my Nairobi-based desktop and decided to hire a farm manager. Prior to a manager, I had a farm supervisor who fired himself when he got run out of the village for dipping his hand into other men’s honey pots. Turns out he liked the local married female population more than he liked my sheep, and the villagers were not enamoured by his amorous motivations. Which worked out well, to be honest, as now I could look for someone who had the right end-to-end animal husbandry skills.
Having learnt the painful lesson, I leased land from a neighbour, and our new farm manager got us to plant sorghum and maize for silage storage so that we could have at least a year’s supply of animal feed without fear of renting all the rooms in my head. He also advised that we plant sunflowers because they provided an alternative source of energy for the feed. I thought they looked particularly pretty in the sun, to be honest, and would add much added colour to the drab green of maize and sorghum. Yes, I had a blond moment, and I own it.
What farm manager didn’t tell me is that the sunflower seeds are highly valuable for oil, and you only feed animals the crushed sunflower cake after the oil has been pressed out.
What farm manager also did not tell me is that birds love sunflower seeds more than they love to fly. After patiently waiting for the sunflower to mature, those pesky little vagrants landed on the crop and leisurely embarked on a three-course meal that consisted of puréed seed for starters, Laikipia sun-baked seed for the main course, and, for dessert, 2 seed parfait. I bought those kites you see being sold by street hustlers in Nairobi traffic, believing they would make perfect scarecrows. Four of them were in the shape of what I thought looked like a menacing eagle. We mounted them on some poles. They worked.
Miraculously, actually. For all of 10 minutes. We got a worker to stand in the sunflower field with a catapult and chase the birds when they came. It worked. For all of the 30 minutes the worker would pretend to be working when I was around.
In summary, I ended up harvesting about 50 percent of the planted sunflowers. But if I ran for an elected seat in bird parliament, I would quite likely get a landslide win. Now, what farm manager conveniently forgot to tell me is that sunflower seed pressing machines cannot be found on aisle 5 at Quickmart Nanyuki.
For the last eight months, we have been looking for anyone with the machine, and it turns out they are harder to find than an honest politician. However, a wonderful soul has eventually helped me find one located in Laikipia. But it is apparently so heavy that I have to take my seed to the machine, which is jointly owned by a community about 40 kilometres away and administered by their local Member of County Assembly.
So, I’ve decided to wait until I harvest the current crop of sunflower and then consolidate my seeds for the onward jaunt to the mystery machine. And the birds have not gotten to this crop because, wait for it, I bought protection, and no, not the mafia kind. I had to buy bags to cover each sunflower head. Each and every one of those suckers. Which means I had to get casual labourers to come in and bag each head.
So, add the cost of the bags, plus the cost of the labourers, and what do you get? A very broke and uneducated city slicker. And what is likely to be the most expensive sunflower seed oil and crushed sunflower cake in Laikipia East. If you’re thinking of farming, don’t. Stay in your educated, rich lane.
The writer is a former banker and currently a corporate governance specialist. X:@carolmusyoka
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