Covenant College Farm - Crops

The aim of Covenant College Farm is to provide food for the students during term time and to provide agricultural training for them and the local farmers. With this in mind we grow all the local crops and try to find ways of improving the production methods. We hope to trial new crops in the future such as coffee and different vegetables.

Maize

Our main crop is maize from which the locals make their main staple food called nsima (maize porridge). The maize cobs are harvested once dry and then the corn is removed and ground down into maize flour by hand or at the hammer mill.

In-between the maize we are growing Tephrosia which is a fast growing, nitrogen ‘soil-fixing’ tree which improves the soil and also provides poles for building and fodder for the goats and cattle. Pumpkins are grown amongst the maize.

Cotton

The cotton is formed in the fruit of the flower. When the fruit is ripe it bursts open revealing the soft cotton wool which is then picked. The cotton is sold to a local ginnery where it is processed before being exported.

Sunflower

We have a large area of sunflowers which will be left to dry in the field just to the point before the flower heads shed their seed. The seed is taken to an oil mill in Petauke where it is crushed between rollers leaving us with a black oil and dried sunflower ‘cake’. The black oil is heated over an open fire until the nice yellow oil comes to the top leaving a black sludge at the bottom. The yellow oil is then used by the locals to cook their vegetable relish in which they eat with the nshima. The black sludge is mixed with maize bran (the surplus material after grinding the maize) and fed to the pigs and the ‘cake’ is ground down further and then used as the protein part of our homemade chicken feed for the local chickens.

Groundnuts (peanuts)

Groundnuts are another good protein stable food which are eaten fresh, dried or roasted in a frying pan over an open fire. We harvest by digging up the plants and leaving in the sun to dry before removing the ‘nuts’ which grow in their shells (monkey nuts) as nodules on the roots of the plants.

The locals also grind down the peanuts in their mortars until it becomes a paste. They add a little salt and call it peanut butter!!

Others

Sun Hemp is used for animal fodder.

We grow several types of beans including soya, velvet, white, red and fine beans. These are used as relish with the local meal. They also benefit the soil by replacing nitrogen so are good when used in rotation with the maize and the cotton. The dried plant material after harvesting is good fodder food for the cows, goats and donkeys.

Other crops we are growing are potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, pumpkins, cucumbers, squash, water melons and okra. All these grow well with plenty of water and flourish during a good rain season. We sell some as well as supplementing the student’s daily menu with these fruits and vegetables.