Farm Journals: How we ended up with over 200 hundred tiny avocado trees

It was not because of me

Hi and Welcome to Farm Journals!

This is something I started in 2023 when I had a lot of plans for my Substack. As you might have noticed I did not follow through on those plans, last year was a real bummer-Substack year for me, but now, I have decided to not give up. I had reasons to start writing about our farm and what we wanted to do with the land then, and I still resonate with those reasons.

If you are interested in reading the first post about our farm dreams read it here: Dreams of a slower life at the farm.

And a little warning, if you do not like reading about avocadoes, stop here and go read one of my more urban posts like this one instead: There is no power.

The farmers, belive it or not.

Truth to be told we have not done much at the farm since I wrote that 2023 post. The chalet even burnt last year so the roof is gone, and one of the walls have fallen. But what has happened is that the trees have grown. Before we bought the land trees had been cut by the previous owners and our plan before starting to grow things on our own was to see it all grow back. We like trees.

Eventually we will have to rinse a little bit, because what is coming up now is a forest, but we want to see what is coming. For example we found two figs tree on our last visit that we had not seen before.

And yes, both of us love trees and we want to live on a farm with trees growing even on the planted parts. My husband grew up learning farming like that. In his mothers village they do not cut the all the trees on the fields, they keep a lot for help with shade and it is really beautiful. Since I know very little about farming I have no objections. Let us keep as many trees as we can, and plant new ones!

This year we do have plans for the farm. The dreams, that you can read about above, is more or less still the same. We are not planning to make a fortune from the land, we want to eat from it, live with it and if there is a side income that will come from it we will welcome it.

One of the things we want to do is to plant an orchard. I see a sea of fruit trees taking up almost the whole western side of the land. Mangoes, bananas, avocadoes and more.

At home on our plot in Lusaka we have planted trees since before we started building the house. The plot is only 400 squaremetres, a typical city house plot, but we have an avocado, a mango, several papaya, a lemon (or my mother it is convinced it is a lime), an orange, a mulberry, a plum, grapes growing over our pergola and grenadilla bushes covering the wallfence.

The avocado tree was planted when we first started building the house in 2009. We spent the winter here that year. Our daughter was a baby and we took parental leave to be here for almost nine months and start building the house. That Christmas my husbands brothers came from the village to visit, one of them carried a 20 kg bag of avocadoes from my mother in law. My husbands village is in the north of Zambia, it is almost 1000 km to reach it so the climate is a bit different. Her avocadoe tree was already bearing fruit in December.

We enjoyed and ate from that big bag of avocado. I lived on them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. My husband then took a seed and planted it and it grew, and when it had grown enough, he planted it at our plot were we now live.

So, the avocado tree we have has a history and on top of that it has the best fruits. They get big and are not too nutty or too watery. When you are spoiled as we are here to be able to pick and chose from different avocado types you find your favorites. And if you know anything about buying avocadoes in Northern Europe, these avocadoes are not the same. See picture below just on pure size difference. The one to the left is from our tree, the one to the right is bought in a store in Sweden, and needless to say, I do not buy or eat avocadoes in Sweden anymore.

That big avocado on the photo above I brought with me to my parents when we visited Sweden last year. The avocado season had started and our tree was having a blast. We get maybe one hundred avocadoes each season from the one tree we have in our backyard. The 2023 season my husband had started propagating trees from the seeds left after eating them. When I left for Sweden in April we had maybe 30-40 small samplings growing from the year before. They reached around 50 cm.

I was gone for 3 months and when I came back my husband had managed to make at least 100 more. It looked like that anyway. All from our tree. But he also wants us to have different avocadoes, there are more varietes and they all have their good or bad things. So he started propagating all avocadoes we bought before and after our tree was ripe too. Now we have ended up with more than 200 avocado trees and our small plot is full av tiny trees. Every nook and corner looks like a garden centre. Not only avocadoes, no, there are more than 50 mangoes, several limes or lemons, bananas and more.

Of course they are not staying in our small yard in Lusaka. They are all moving to the farm. But to be sure they do survive and thrive we have to consider how they will be taken care of and the climate. Zambia has seasons, not the same seasons as Sweden but still very distinct seasons. Right now it is raining (rain season should be from late November to April) and from April/May we get into dry season. If we plant trees now, it is nice and raining and they will be happy for the moment, but later in the year it will be dry. We have to consider that from April/May there will be no rain (and I mean not one single drop of rain) until late November again.

Because of thi,s we can not plant too many trees without having a plan on how they should be watered. We have a small stream following one of the borders, but it goes dry some time in June. To make the trees thrive and survive we have to hire a care taker, and drill at least one borehole. Since an orchard of trees is in our dreams, this is on the to-do for 2025.

Road to the farm, stream, roof less chalet and farmers, one very tired after carrying at least 15 trees from the car to the place planting in 30 degrees heat.

But back to all the tree samplings hiding around our plot in Lusaka. When I came back home last year in August and saw all these trees, I honestly felt like he had gone mad.

There was not enough room for them and now I had to live with small trees everywhere? Yes, he said. Imagine what it will cost to buy all these trees from the Garden Centre, he said. And I realised what he had just managed was worth a lot of money. Like real money that we would hade needed to take from our investments account if he had not grown all these trees. I am not thinking like a farmer yet, but am learning.

So, I accepted and now live with them. They are like the three cats and two chickens, that also share space with us here in Lusaka. We feed them and take care of them. And one day, his efforst will give us the orchard we both want. How he did it, I dont know. I see him take care of the seed, dry it and then put it in a plastic bag with good soil. And then they grow. We are lucky like that here in Zambia, almost everything grows if you plant it and water it.

Thank you for reading about avocadoes and reaching all the way to the end of it. If you enjoyed it, please share, comment and subscribe. You can also Buy Me A Coffee or become a paid subscriber to support my work.

Will probably continue to ramble about trees, bore holes and other farm things this year so follow along to stay updated. Any questions are welcome too.

Take care and remember to cherish the small things in life when the big things are crazy and a bit scary.

With love, Jenny