Hello Hive...
Introduction.
Who wouldn't be excited to discuss about what they love to do or how they can tech others to do the same.
Farming is what I love to do and has been like a heritage for my family line.
Coming from Benue state in Nigeria, no single citizen of that state would say that they do not love farming and gardening.
The slogan of the state reads "Food Basket of the nation" meaning that the state produces a large percentage of the food consumed in the country.
All occupants of this Nigerian state is a farmer and from history some of the crops you can get range from Palm oil, Cassava, Yam, Rice, Pepper, Sesame seed, Ogbono and all the other classes of vegetables.
We also have fruits tress like cashew, orange, mangoes, bananas African Cherry and others.
From all of these mentioned you can see where I got the love and passion for farming from.
My mum used to tell me that once Hunger is out of mans list of problems, that the situations is half solved. Hunger is one of the most challenging human conditions that needs utmost attention aside shelter or clothes.
I farm so I can feed my family, I have nurtured this dream that someday I would have larger space to farm as much variety of food that can feed numerous people. Alot of human resources, capital, land spAce and other input might be required but someday soon this might just be possible.
From all of my previous farm blogs you might have come across the crops that I have grown this year, both grains and veggies, talking about
grains like rice, beans, guinea corn, maize etc, I also produced tubers like yams, potatoes, wateryams etc, vegetables were fluted pumpkin, jute mallow and others.
Those were the list of what we have grown this year in the family farm much larger than a garden, even though we have relocated from Benue state to Kwara state our current location, we still carried the farming occupation with us.
Yardfishing
Like the concept of yardfishing, I may not have a tiny garden by the house but I guess you can imagine the categories of weed I have to deal with in the larger farms.
Funny enough different types of weed is associated with different farm and crop type based on location.
For instance in between maize plants, groundnuts, beans and Guinea corn we often have grass like the elephant gras types and other smaller plants we used hoes or hands to uproot you can see those in between the plants here
Moving into rice farms, which we often plant in swampy areas, soft grasses like liverworts and mosses are often the types of species found in this places.
When it is a topland rice you can find carpet grass's before and after planting.
Proper care is taking when uprooting these carpet grass in order not to pull out the plants alongside the weeds.
Liver worth grows on in swampy areas just like the way potato plants spreads across the ground. They are cover crops and large quantity of these grasses is common among rice in swamps.
Before now we often do the weeding with hands pulling up the plants which can be very long by hands and keeping them on the bank of the field but recently chemicals have been of help in killing these plants after spraying the whole farms.
Even though these are some special species of weeds found in these farms it does not necessarily exempt the presence of other types alongside those mentioned.
To be completely honest with you, I do not necessarily love yardfishing, I consider this a tedious task with gardening and farming but since we have very large farms to clear weeds from and using hoes and cutlass it is a stressful and tiring work unlike when you are working in a very small garden within the compound.
Without yard fishing, it will be difficult for plants to grow well as these weeds disrupt their proper growth, I had to develop a liking for the task, since I would love to see my plants growing well.
The hardest kind of yard fishing
Clearing a virgin field for planting is the hardest kind of yard fishing as you will have thick bush and small shrubs to deal with.
After a years planting season we often have debris from previous planting that needs to be cleared as well before one can proceed to plant new crops, these unwanted debris can be really hard to pull off just like the ones you see here
guinea corn debris from this year planting season
All of these have to be pulled up, gathered with cutlass and burnt to have a clear field like this for a new planting season
That been said, tiny Shrubs are the most difficult ones to deal with, if we need the space for farming, first we cut off all the big benches close to the root, allow the whole plant to die before such spots can be used for planting, this is usually common in virgin farming sites.
Clearing rice debris, this one is an interesting aspect for me.
Before now we often set fire on rice debris from previous year planting and the whole field like the ones here gets burnt, both grasses and rice fodders until we now have animal farmers mostly cattle rearers who come around to picks these fodders to feed their animals.
Before burning
After burning
Burnt rice field
Now we have nomadic farmers who carry their cattles round every field to eat up all the leftovers from harvest.
This is a win-win situation for us as these castles often defeacate while eating and we have cow dungs as natural and organic fertilizers for next farming season while still clearing the field along side.
This is quite an interesting story of the journey of my yard fishing and how we carry out weeding in our farms.
Although its winter here, it usually gets cold in the morning while the afternoons comes with hot unbearable sun we have to wear caps while working in the farm, thank goodness for this mango tree we can sit under its shades to relax when we are tired and the weather is unbearable.
This is the long process of the different yardfishing techniques we use in our farms.
There are both the manual wedding with our hand and the chemical weeding both have their advantages and disadvantages. We get to learn this in subsequent post.
All pictures are mine both from earlier this year and recent clearing of the farm to prepare the land for another year of farming season.
There is more of this to come and this post has to be summaries here so you don't get bored reading through.
If you have come this far, thank you for putting out time to read through the lines.
Monica-ene, Farmers pride.