Volunteers Kadie, Junior and Osman attend Hope Sakuma's regular quarterly meeting to presnt the roaster and sheller (and our monthly supplies) and to find out how fared our groundnut harvest and it's not the fantabulous news as we find our hopes of a bumper harvest reduced to 60 bushels because of a dispute about planting times. But it's far from a disaster and will enable us to more than double planting!
Back in early March, the ladies wanted to plant the 15 bushels of groundnut but were overuled by the boys who wanted to spread the planting to make the harvest manageable. A good idea but they ignored a folklore rule of planting groundnut before the end of March and as a result the whole co-op suffers as the late-planted harvest spoilt in the sun, wizened. So the members agree that 4 bushel can be divided up between the members and 4 bushel can come to Mama Mayila's Cradle to feed our children and the remainder will be replanted next season more than doubling the amount we can plant.
Even better, the boys promised to listen to the Ladies in future and to start planting earlier to enable their sequential planting.
