When I got up this morning, Jemrose and one of her daughters was heading off to the market. The market is like our farmers markets. Open stalls and there is lots of veg. and fish and chickens. It is very noisy. The vendors are trying to get your attention and show you their food. What I have heard if your a white person there is a higher price they charge you and if your Rwandes its a lower price. They think all white people have money.... wonder where they got that idea?
Jodi picked me up at 8:30am which this time she was on time. She had errands to do. The first thing we did was move some of her stuff from a storage shed to where she is stying at the moment. It is very hot today... don't know the temp. but its much warmer that the days before. I have my frozen water bottle and a few slices of bread in a baggy to snack on today. I also keep putting my sunblock on. After moving her stuff... which was an adventure cause one of our tires went flat and we had to have it pumped up.
Then onto the Sanctuary. But first we pick up Zivlana,( I am sure I didn't spell her name right) she is a Russian lady who works with plants and agriculture and her specialty is banana's. On our way to pick her up Jodi took me over some of her shortcuts..... I was holding on for dear life.
This is the sign to where Jodi's Sanctuary is
So Jodi wants her to check on her bananas and check out the rest of the agriculture at the Sanctuary. When we got there Jodi and Zivlana went to check the agriculture out and instruct the worker guys to start implementing her suggestions. I went and checked on the chickens and looked at the goats. Then I found a wicker chair to sit in the shade with and read my goat books. Its very quiet here and peaceful. I do notice at my feet a large amount of ants, so I had to move my chair a few times.
Zilvana is sitting in the middle. The other ladies are from the Women's Co-Op
Later that afternoon we had a meeting with the women's-co-op. I was to explain how much work it takes to do a goat dairy. Our main idea was to weed out the ones who were not going to take this task seriously. So that I could train the core group about dairy goats and milking. And again the biggest issue was they didn't want to buy goats for themselves, they wanted Jodi to do that. And Jodi said no way. Emiy, Jodi's right hand helper, translated for us and then translated for the women.
This lady was such a sweety. Her baby was very cute. All the mom's that have babies on thier backs carry umbrella's to shade the babies from the sun.
This lady decided to lay down with her little boy at the meeting.
Here is alittle bigger shot of the women from the co-op
We will meet again in a few days to see who comes back for the real deal.
We left the farm about 5:30pm. The conversation on the way home was how do we get the women to see that this is a good idea. We came up with the co-op buys the goats and that way each women would only have a very small investment. The co-op would then own the goats so it would make the money from selling the milk to Jodi. This way the co-op could pay each lady back her investment in order to make another investment. So to make their money back quicker we thought Jodi could buy the baby does back from them since their goats would of been bred by the Sanitaries Sannen buck. Jodi would agree to pay the price they paid for the adult goat for the baby goat... thus they would make their investment back in 7 months. And if they had a buck kid they could sell that at the market and again make their investment. So on Monday we will present this idea and see what happens.Today Jodi payed her employees their salary. Then we dropped Silvana off at a bus stop. And the went to Jodi's house so she could change clothes so we could go to a birthday party and a Rotary Club Meeting. (I was upset that we didn't have time to go let me change into clean clothes for this party). I had on my holey jeans, a t-shirt. I went and tried to stay away from people cause I smelled like sweat and goat. I went and got a glass of wine and sat in a corner. Jemrose came with Bobby , a friend. And they came and sat with me and visited. Later Jodi came over and sat too. It was a nice party. They had BBQ some goat and then made a bunch of traditional food. I met some business men and women at the meeting. It was a nice house and nice people. I got home about 11:45 and was very glad to hit the bed.
FARM NEWS: March 29
Our first Nigerian Dwaf baby was born. Mom's name is Willow and we think the babies name will be Alder. Willow had the baby last night and we found her this morning all cleaned up - but she was weak so we brought her in the house and milked Willow so we could get some colostrum down the baby. I looked at my tube for tubing my reg. sized kids and thought it might be to big. So today I will run to the vets and get a smaller tube that will fit these guys. I like to give them a tubing if they are alittle weak so they get a good start. We are feeding it a little colostrum from a bottle. I am making Chevre today and packaging up cheese for the weekend markets. Our car broke this week and we are having to have a new engine put in it. It should be ready by Friday this week if all goes according to plan. The goats are milking great and things are sort of running smooth.
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