YAP Proposal #2: “The One Muscle Borehole” (Andrew Kang’ang’i Machina, Kenya)

My name is Andrew; a young passionate farmer aged 32 years, based at the heart of Nyandarua-county in Kenya. I grew up and schooled in this part of the world, my parents were small scale subsistence farmers, venturing in dairy, wheat, pyre-thrum, maize among others.

My love and passion for farming was ignited then while a very young boy, as most of the time I was in-charge of the daily activities of the farm, though we used to experience perennial droughts, since the farm is located on the leeward side of the Nyandarua ranges, and now with the global warming, farming depending with rainfall water has proved to be ineffective.

It’s in regard to this; the ‘young one muscle’ farmer dug a water borehole to facilitate his passion of farming late last year-2015 . With the help of my parents, we managed to extract a 50 feet deep water borehole; this has helped not only the other members of the community to access water for their basic needs, but the growing of greens and vegetables in small portion for domestic use thus improving eating healthy.

With every breakthrough it comes forth with enough portion of challenges, one, pulling water 40 feet deep has proven a strenuous task and being the only young man in the family and a left handed my left hand has developed a bulging muscle, thus “ONE MUSCLE BOREHOLE”. 🙂 Two, there is no electricity power within the farm to help pump water.

My plan and desire is to have a solar pump to pump water from the bottom of the bore hole to the tanks. Two, start a green house with a drip irrigation kit, thus increasing the growing of vegetables and other farm produce for local consumption or commercial. I have inquired from various agriculture organisations and they have given quotes ranging from $2,000-$7,000 USD.

The solar Pump will cost around $1,500, the drip irrigation kit will cost around $2,000 for an acre of land and the green house measuring 40ft will cost around $2,500.

With these in place will be able to grow tomatoes and vegetables among others which will sustain the community and sell others to the nearby markets. The farming will absorb if few 7-10 members of the community directly and others indirectly.If granted this grant it will help achieve my vision and passion of farming without relying much with rain water, while I shall motivate other young farmers as I mentor the upcoming ones.

(signed: One Muscle farmer, Andrew-Kalampton)

Blogpost and picture submitted by Andrew Kang’ang’i Machina (Nyandarua county, Kenya) – cheleqventures(at)gmail.com

The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.

This post is published as proposal #2 of “YAP” – our “Youth Agripreneur Project”.

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