Our Bean Crop

A close up of some of our bean plants

A field of beans just ending at the edge of the African bush (where you see the trees in the background)

Our farm has been a bean growing/producing farm for over 35 years now. We practice dry land bean farming, which means that nothing is irrigated. (In fact none of the crops which we grow on the farm are irrigated, we rely solely on rainfall, all year round).

The beans which we grow are seed beans (i.e. not for direct eating). We grow 6 different varieties on the farm, and all originate from Holland and are grown for export back to Holland each year.

This season we have planted 600 acres of beans. They were planted at the beginning of March, and will be harvested from mid July onwards. A good yield for us is around 500 kg’s per acre.

All the beans are harvested by hand. For this, we employ 250 casual “pickers” who come from the surrounding villages – men and women of all ages, both young and old. As a result, and as a result of other casual labour which we employ during the year (we only have a small handful of permanent staff) we help to provide a source of income for 100’s of families which would otherwise have little else than their own subsistence crops to rely on. In addition to their daily wage, once we have finished harvesting, they are allowed to take as much of the remaining bean hay as they like home with them, which they use to feed their livestock and sell / trade with other subsistence farmers.

The beans have to be harvested by hand because if we did it by machine, it could cause too much damage to the seeds. They are then transported by road from the farm to our head office / factory in the big city where they are graded by hand and then bagged and packed into containers. The containers are transported by truck to the Tanzanian coastal port town of Tanga, where they are loaded onto huge ships and taken across the ocean straight to Holland.

Once we start harvesting the beans next month, I’ll take some photo’s to put on the blog so that you can get a ‘feel’ for what the harvesting season is like here. It’s a very busy time for us, and of course each year we wait in anticipation to see what our yields are like compared to the previous season, and which bean varieties are performing better than others. (My husband gets terribly excited by this, but I have to admit that I do not – a bean is, after all, just a bean, isn’t it ?! Ha ha !)

Chicken Breasts In A Tangy Mustard Sauce

This dish tastes great served on a bed of noodles, or rice

I came up with this recipe one day when I felt like making a peri peri sort of chicken dish in a creamy sauce. But then that would have been too hot for my daughter, so I had to come up with something else that was more child friendly, so this is what I came up with ! She really enjoyed it, and so did we – so it has now been added to the family “menu” ….

If you use a mild mustard the sauce is not too hot, and the addition of the Worcester sauce gives it an extra bit of tang.


Chicken Breasts in a Tangy Mustard Sauce

4 Chicken breasts
4 heaped tbsp Flour
Salt & Pepper (to taste)
Garlic flakes
Olive Oil
2 Onions, sliced

Mix the flour, salt, pepper and garlic flakes together, then dip each chicken breast in this mixture to coat thoroughly. Heat some olive oil in a pan, and lightly fry the breasts on both sides until golden brown and cooked through, then remove from heat and place in a casserole dish. Next, fry the onion slices until golden (or you could cook them in the same pan alongside the chicken breasts if you have space). Once cooked, remove the onion slices from the heat and scatter over the chicken breasts in the casserole dish.

Next, you need to make the sauce -:

2 cups Milk
3 tbsp Flour
2 tbsp prepared Mustard (I used a Mild one)
4 tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 Chicken stock cube (dissolved in ½ cup boiling Water)
Salt & Pepper (to taste)
Mixed dried or fresh herbs for garnishing

Blend the flour with a little milk until a smooth paste is formed. Then add the remainder of the milk and stir well to blend. Place this on the stove top and bring to the boil, stirring constantly to prevent any lumps from forming. Once the mixture has come to the boil, reduce and simmer (stirring occasionally).

Now add to the mixture the Mustard, Worcestershire Sauce, chicken stock (cube dissolved in water) and salt & pepper to taste. Continue to stir every now and then, cooking the sauce for another 10 – 15 minutes (you want to really ‘cook’ the raw flour flavour out of the sauce !).

Once cooked, pour the sauce over the chicken breasts and onions which you have set aside in the casserole dish. Sprinkle some fresh or dried mixed herbs over the top to garnish, and serve immediately. This dish goes well with rice or noodles.

Our Guest Cottage

The farm guest cottage - the clouds behind her are where Kilimanjaro lies (on a clear day, that is !)

Dibble, Zonde, Josie & Mbwenya thoroughly enjoyed their walk. Here they are sniffing something beside a field of wheat.

On Sunday my husband was working on and off for most of the day – he had been hoping to have the day off, but some crop disease problems kept him busy as he had to spray to try and curb the disease (which seems to be under control now, thank goodness).

Instead of moping around the house (Sunday’s are traditionally family days for us and I really look forward to having my husband at home !) my daughter and I took the dogs for a short walk to the farm guest cottage which I told you about last week. I wanted to take some photo’s of it for the blog ! So, here is a photo above of the guest cottage ……

A couple of years ago my husband decided that it would be nice to paint the outside of the farm house green. He ran it by me first, and I agreed - as long as it was a pale green though, I said. When the paint arrived, it was a dark sea green colour (awful !) so I refused to allow him to paint the house with it ! As a result, the guest cottage was painted with it instead. Thankfully, over the years the green colour has faded in the relentless African sun, and last year we put a coat of white paint over it. But the green still shines through a little as it really still needs a second coat, which I plan to get Nelson (painter/handyman) to do soon. Then the green will be gone forever !

The guest cottage lies on the far side of the farm workshops, not very far from our house and is a good walk to do on a Sunday as there are not too many staff around this area so I can take the dogs with me without too many problems, as long as I don’t go far. (To read about the strange reason why I can't easily walk on the farm, click here.)

Next time I’ll take some interior photo’s to put on the blog. We had a student here last year who is an excellent artist, and she did a stunning black & white elephant painting which takes up one entire wall of the dining room/lounge area, and is really quite unique.