So, our farming system to feed hungry street boys is to have them farm “weeds”. As we have all experienced, weeds are perfectly adapted to their climate, are robust and need no fertilizer nor any of the insecticides to enhance a good crop. Because we are aiming for long term diversified permaculture (this is a Shea native tree area), we needed some very quick marketable crops while we wait for the trees to mature. These field weeds intentionally farmed have a ready market in the big city 5 km north.

We have recently purchased an Anacardia plantation 4 acre piece – so now we are producing Anacardia from the mature trees. Anacardia is the Latin / French name for the Cashew nut tree. But Camerounians don’t much eat the nuts, they go for the juicy fruit as it ripens. If the fruit is eaten then the nut never ripens. If a person waits for the nut to ripen then the fruit is rotten. We got a washtub of fruits with a potential sale down the road but the 22 resident street boys and orphans managed to eat it all overnight. :)

In this part of the world, sorghum is roughly divided into the rainy season kind and the dry season kind. The rainy season kind is the typical red sorghum seen also in the US and called milo. There are many sub species in each category. The varieties allow farmers to harvest twice a year if they have the correct soil. The dry season sorghum requires a flat piece of mostly clay soil. During the rainy season, these flat fields are ploughed in a checkerboard fashion to make squarish ponds so the rainfall will soak into the soil and not drain away.