Laurie first wrote for us back in 2014 about her journey as an owner-builder and the challenges of building with mud on the edge of Hwange National park, Zimbabwe. She recently posted an update and we knew our readers would want to see what she’s been up to… Their family home is complete and their gardens are thriving as they continue to live a simple life alongside wildlife.
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- Pawpaws growing
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- For the fairies and the birds
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- The banana circle with its compost pit fed only from grey water is producing bananas.
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- The many herbs growing in pots and wicking pots and beds, using very little water.
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- 20 litres of chilies collected so far this season.
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- Cassava
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- The wormery producing composts and worm tea through the drain. A great fertilizer.
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- Taro, the root is delicious, and needs a lot of water so grows in places like this next to the dogs’ drinking bowl.
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- More of the creatures living in and around our home. We have seen more and more diversity as we regenerate.
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- Pigeon peas, moringa, sweet potato, chia, millets, cow peas, jelly melons, just a few of the species growing
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- Purple beans climbing a mango tree
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- Washing hands after ‘completing the cycle’ on the compost toilet. The water feeds an orange tree.
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- Chillies drying inside
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- Passive solar drier made from pallets
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- Some Indian millet
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- Terrible rainy season… 2 months of high temperatures and no rain, but some of the red maize survived. I need to grow more of these as baboons don’t like the colour!
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- Tomatoes growing out of the humanure pile
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- Bees pollinating millet
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- Bees pollinating millet
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- Bees pollinating millet
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- Pigeon peas
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- Sesbania fixing nitrogen
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- Bees pollinating the pumpkins.
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- Rosella seeds fall to the ground and grow every rainy season, no need to replant every year.
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- Chia seeds growing all over. Bio-carbon has really helped to retain moisture and nutrients in some of the beds.
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- Amaranth
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- Preparing materials for compost making. Compost is key for building the soil.
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- The banana circle thriving with multiple species around the compost pit and grey water outlet, this micro-climate is flourishing, full of worms, banana, pawpaw, chillies, comfrey and ridge gourd (for sponges).
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- Winnowing amaranth seeds. This has been a favorite leafy green throughout the rainy season and the seeds are a healthy grain to eat too.
We still share our home with many creatures who are welcome, such as this wasp nest. The wasps pollinate fruit trees and eat caterpillars so are more than welcome to take some plaster and make their nests.
Nyimo (after our favorite indigenous legume) is a new addition to our home full of life, he goes into everything he does with 100% energy, inspiring.
Our work as the Soft Foot Alliance is going really well, with many initiatives taking off in the less than 2 years we have been operating. The Soft Foot Alliance is dedicated to improving the lives and landscapes of people living on the boundary of Hwange National Park and at the same time achieving a sustainable co-existence with wildlife.
The Soft Foot Alliance serves to design and implement long-term sustainable solutions that promote human-wildlife co-existence. Lion, Hyena, Elephant, Baboon and Honey Badger are the main focal species as they impact people’s livelihoods on the park’s boundaries. By designing actions that firstly improve the lives and the livelihoods of the people living with these animals and, secondly promote the conservation of the animal, we hope to achieve co-existence between the two.
We have 2 hives and love love love the bees! We have been learning about bee keeping as one of our conflict mitigation initiatives is to test out fences made of bee hives throughout the community to stop elephants raiding crops. This has had great results in Kenya and is a win-win-win: protecting pollinators, increasing crops, protecting people and elephants, and generating income from the sale of honey and wax products.
This rocket stove is almost 3 years old, we use it every day and it makes our lives so much easier, using just tiny sticks. More than 100 women have been trained by us to make these stoves and many have gone away to make more to sell.
Our new years resolution is to go plastic free by the end of the year, this takes time to plan but creating a plastic free system doesn’t have to be so hard. This is a hand cranked oil press and flour mill. Baking bread once or twice a week, using cloth bags to buy any produce anywhere, growing our own natural sponges are just some of the ways we are using to eliminate plastic from our lives and the environment.
This post was first posted on Laurie’s blog Dance like an elephant, and is reposted here with her permission.