What we do at Old Orchard Organic Farm

Old Orchard Organic Farm has been running since October 2007. Our farm is situated in the Kafue river watershed in the foothills near the Kafue river and Kafue town. The farm was originally cleared from bush land and planted to citrus around 40 years ago, hence our name. Our goal from the outset has been to develop a platform for experimentation and training in small scale organic farming in the Zambian environment and marketplace. We feel the best way to achieve these goals is to be small-scale farmers where we can do our own research and those who wish to learn can come and participate in the the running of the farm. All the work here has been done by Sebastian Scott's family and one other. Our land is almost 10Ha in size but we only use 2 for cropping and another 1 for grazing for the pigs and chickens. Our soils are mostly sandy loam but we also have some clayey soils toward the annual stream at the lowest point of the property. All our buildings are made with locally sourced materials with the main buildings made with stones from our hillside as foundations and sundried mudbricks for the walls. As much as possible we use second hand building materials to keep our costs and environmental impact low. Our journey so far has been challenging and fullfilling.



Tuesday 5 July 2011

2011 season

Velvet bean/maize modulated inter-cropping.
Some good tomatoes despite the frost!
Mama pig with her 11 lovely piglets.
Organic no-till (apart from this very light weeding) potatoes...

Ups and downs so far in the season.
At last we got our free range pigs!
We had a frost which almost killed our tomatoes.
We got great yeild with our organic maize trials!
A nightmare weeding onions.
We worked out a way to plant no-till potatoes!
The chickens got into the nursery and ate the seedlings.
No-till / no compost tomatoes doing wonders!
Poor germination in garlic.
Layer hens doing well on farm made feed!
Lost 3 maccadamia trees to termites.
Got some building done with the wwoofers!
Had a bushfire on a windy day.
Isn't life fun!
Look aroud our blog and see more of the farm - you're welcome!