This blog follows the progress of our project. If you’re new, visit the Project page for an introduction and if you’re feeling generous, PLEASE visit the contributions page to see how you can help support us!
Updates for Sep/Oct
Nov 21
Living out here can be quite a contrast to life in the city. Animals and weather bring a dimension of unpredictability, and routines and practices don’t always go to plan. Yesterday we wanted to get started on building some beehives but the storm kept us inside all morning. As it began to clear, we left our rooms to find the kitchen being raided by army ants. While we were doing damage limitations and creating a vinegar force-field to contain the ants, a bucket of honey was opened and bees filled the space around our heads. Meanwhile, a persistent piglet repeatedly attempted to introduce mud to our sandals on the veranda (see below).
It’s been two months since the honey harvest, and we’re still well stocked with jars in the office. Some of these honeys are the best I’ve ever tasted, and they’re definitely doing our reputation a service. Tea and coffee is ready to go, but the official paperwork needs ironing out, and another successful training session on-site has led us to an order for hives and catch boxes that we will begin to process today. Our farmers are happy with the harvest, and have joined us for meetings, as well as teamed up without us to help Grace catch her first two colonies. Rosette, our area manager for Kyanyawara, has already found a use for her skills in making green tea, and is now selling it to her own customers!
Rainy season is still in full-force, but we’ve managed to give tours, improve the apiary and continue improving the land with flowers, new trees and shrubs, and building improvements for the structure at the top.
We also got a pig. Say hi to Gnorf!
Things have definitely slowed down since the rains came. Work gets put on hold, everything is muddy, people don’t go out as much, and even our Hilux gets stuck trying to get up the hill from our home, so we’re often stranded here. Still, there’s plenty to do at home, and we’ve made some nice additions to the land, as well as planted lots of crops for the next season. Jim, a friend of mine from university, has joined us, and he brought with him some asparagus and habanero pepper seeds, so I’m excited to see if we can get those moving in this climate. Robert, our diligent groundskeeper, has also helped us build planting boxes and we’ve been composting the chicken (and now pig) poop along with our grass and vegetable scraps to enrich our soil.
The hangout structure up the hill is making slow progress, we’ve had it varnished, but window frames are proving to be a problem. We’ve been through as many carpenters as we have wasted 2x4s and it’s starting to look like we’ll have to do it ourselves. Otherewise, I’m hoping to have it done by the end of the year, and hopefully it can bring in some side-income via AirBnB guests.
I’m still processing buckets of honey from harvest season. This weekend we started filling the shelves in our office with three of our best honey batches. We have some dark and rich savannah honey from Queen Elizabeth, some syrupy caramel-toned honey from our local farmers and some citrussy, sweet nectar honey from around Kibale forest. They’re all top-quality and we’re proud to be selling them.
Tea and coffee is still in the works, and we’ve now run three training sessions for green and red tea. We’re still sorting out our supply for coffee, but our branding and processing is all set, and we can’t help but drink it ourselves, several times a day.
We were able to host another training session here on-site, and it was a total success! [10] more qualified beekeepers in our local area! One of whom has just ordered hives and catch boxes from us. We are trying to increase our reach as much as possible in time for the harvest in March, so we can have more farmers bringing us the best honey. March is usually a weaker harvest than August, so we have to try and compensate for the lower yield by reaching more apiaries.
November looks to be busy already. We’re hoping to have a Christmas selection prepared, and we’re working on avocado oil.. but at the rate things move out here, it’s not a good idea to make any promises.
Still, we are optimistic, and looking forward to making enough money to expand to more Enjojo Farmers next year.
More to come!
Back in Business
September 2021
Honey harvest season is almost over, and we’ve been lucky enough to find the best honey so far. I think we’re starting to get the hang of this! Our farmers had really good yields this season – one of our new farmers even produced 15kg from colonies only a couple of months old – and many local farmers, some who were turned away last season for low-grade honey, have come back with exactly what we’re looking for. We even took a trip down to Queen Elizabeth National Park, where we were able to source some really high-quality, dark savannah honey (see above). All of these honeys are getting amazing feedback, and we’re happy to finally be supplying our customers again.
We harvested with our farmers over three evenings. We harvest at night to reduce the chances of angry bees tormenting the neighbours or harming their animals. The apiary in these photos is only a few months old and already some of the hives were packed with honey. We leave plenty for the bees to use during the rains, and in exchange for what we take, we help them keep their hives healthy by removing old, dark, brittle comb – something that they can’t do themselves. It won’t take them long to replace these with fresh wax; combs which seem to be a lot less prone to pest infestations.
I was hoping to announce our new products here this month, but as with everything (ever), we are a bit delayed. Still, I can give a sneak-peek at what will hopefully be our insurance against bad honey seasons in the coming years. Our tea and coffee packaging issue has been solved, and I think the labels look great (even if I do say so myself). Now we just need to get on top of the supply chain and we’ll have a regular feed of buffer-crop, elephant-friendly produce to add to our collection.
As we are packaging the remaining honey, we’re also planting crops. The rains have arrived, and with them, the elephants. We’ve had one raid already, and again they ate all our ripe cassava. I’m beginning to think we need to plant it somewhere else. I really wanted to eat that cassava. However, these raids give us more opportunities to plan and implement beehives to protect ourselves. This year we might be installing some small colonies inside catch boxes along the fence, to see if they’re effective at keeping the elephants away.
We will be having our post-harvest meeting with the farmers tomorrow, to discuss what went well and what could have gone better, and get feedback from them on how we can continue to improve the experience. Since the internet is behaving well today, I’ll leave you with some cool wildlife we have found around the land in the last month or so.
Approaching Independence
As the butterfly season comes to an end, the distant rumblings suggest the dry season might about to as well. Lockdown has also just lifted, and we are eager to meet with our farmers for an update. Rosette has been keeping us updated on the condition of the apiaries, and almost everybody has been making good progress. Soon, we’ll be able to visit the one struggling farmer and help her set the hives in a place where she can finally catch some bees. We’re gathering data on weight of individual hives, in preparation for harvest at the end of the month.
Our new colonies are settling into the new apiary, and we’re keeping an eye on the health of some of the weaker colonies we received from Margaret’s apiary last month. These bees have been neglected a bit over the last couple of years, so we’re hopeful that they will recover. We also brought in all the scattered hives and catch boxes dotted about over our land, and our apiary now has 21 active hives in it. I expect we might lose one or two of these in the coming weeks, but we’re doing what we can to avoid that. The empty catch boxes have been scattered back out and we’ve already got two new swarms in those, so we’ve set a target of 35 colonies in the apiary by the end of the year.
Local honey is still coming in! It’s really nice to have more supply than demand, for once. We’ve sent two boxes of it to friends in Kampala and Entebbe, to act as pick-up points for people who want to buy it, and we’re making good progress in the packaging for the coffee and tea, which should arrive this week. All being well, we should have a range of products completed this month, and ready to put on the market.
At the beginning of the month, we were asked to visit a community project, an hour from here. We were told that the group had received KTB hives, but they weren’t getting colonised. We were also told that in the traditional hives, colonies were leaving right after harvest. We were asked to investigate and advise the farmers in a report. This was a great day out, the scenery and the weather were beautiful, and the work was very rewarding. We visited numerous apiaries belonging to the community members and gave them some on-site recommendations. What we found were hives that had not been baited properly, and destructive harvesting practices that were chasing away the bees. The report was well received and we are hoping to be called back to give formal training soon.
We’ve had a very tight year so far, financially. The previous season was a huge let-down in terms of marketable product, and the donations we were asking for went directly into adding farmers to the project, so we haven’t had much to spend of our own. However, the headquarters we have designed and built here has looked after us well. We are reducing the amount of food we need to buy every season by cultivating crops, farming laying hens, and making use of recycled water bottles as planters for our nursery. We have plenty of rainwater collected to get us through the dry season, and our power all comes from solar panels. At the top of the land, we’ve cleared more space for activities; calisthenics bars are going up this week, and there are plans for more objects to come. We are almost self-sufficient here, and as such have been able to weather this low season well. It really feels as though the holistic approach to the project is paying off, and we’re looking forward to becoming more independent over the coming years.
The honey must flow
Jul 21
This is nice! After an abysmal harvest in March/April we have been seeing a huge jump in honey production recently. Three local farmers have brought us their honey in the past three weeks, and they say there is more on the way. The best thing about this is that they have followed our requests perfectly and harvested mature, capped honey, just the way we like it. Looks like we’re back in business. We haven’t checked our hives lately because we have been renovating the apiary and didn’t want to disturb the bees too much, but tonight we’ll take a look inside and see how our own bees are doing.
As I mentioned before, climate change seems to have really scrambled the seasons in Uganda. It rains when it’s not supposed to, and is often dry when it’s expected to be wet. This causes havoc with the planting schedules of the local farmers, and, apparently, the honey-collection schedules of our bees. For this reason, we have begun to rebuild our apiary, and have asked our farmers to do the same. We will all be installing a frame above the hives, from which it will be simple enough to hang a basic scale, to weigh each one during inspection week. This method allows us to monitor the progress of the honey collection in individual hives without disturbing the bees by opening them. Ideally, it will be done without even using smoke. Secondly, it will allow us to tell very easily if there has been any theft of honey – a sudden drop in weight wouldn’t occur naturally, and would mean someone has taken out some of the heavier, honey-laden combs.
As if to emphasise the significance of this last point, Last week we went through the unfortunate process of removing one of our oldest farmers from the agreement. For over two years we had worked with her – she was one of the original pioneers of the project – so it was very sad to have to do this, but after repeatedly neglecting her responsibilities, presenting us with a very bad attitude and ultimately being caught stealing both honey and materials from us, we had to call it quits. Three hives had been destroyed from neglect, some were being used as chairs in the garden. We recovered seven mature colonies from her overgrown apiary, though the suit and some of our materials were not found. To add insult to injury, she subsequently set about slandering our area manager, Rosette, in the village, and has caused a lot of spiteful turmoil for one of our most valued and hardworking employees. We deal with a lot of unsavory people here, but it never gets easier to process just how unpleasant a person can be. Of the three original farmers we started with here in Kyanyawara, we now have only one. On the plus side, the one we do have is doing tremendous work and has contributed to the project perfectly. He currently manages thirty hives and is harvesting more honey than ever.
We don’t do these things lightly; although the hives, materials and suits are technically on lease from us until the agreement is completed, we never plan on taking them back. The two occasions when we have decided to, have been in response to blatant theft and a clear disregard for the project. All empty hives will be redistributed to other farmers, and we have taken the colonised hives to our headquarters. This project is about empowerment, not blind charity. We have limited resources and we intend to supply those who want to help themselves with the opportunities to do so. In this case, it was decided that our efforts would be more valuable elsewhere.
In lighter news, our new farmers are doing well; one has already received her second installment of empty hives, having colonised and looked-after her first four so well. Her land is so popular with bee swarms that some of our other farmers are hanging their hives there to be colonised too!
During the past few weeks, we have seen a very unusual phenomenon at the headquarters here: Thousands and thousands of butterflies. They seem to be moving up the hill from the forest, and what seems cute and exciting for the first 20 minutes quickly becomes a bit of a hassle as butterflies invade your mouth and land in your food, or get trapped in their fluttering masses inside your window. Nonetheless, it’s hard to be angry or sad when you’re surrounded by butterflies, so we appreciate the visit.
In other areas, we are gradually building a name for ourselves. This week we will be assessing a community-based apiary not far from here, to advise on how they can improve our practices and make better honey. This group has 100 beehives, traditional and KTB, and it will be our job to figure out why they’re having a hard time colonising the modern hives, and whether it’s worth keeping them.
We’re also planning a training course for another group in Queen Elizabeth, but that may have to wait until after lockdown.
Our tea and coffee products are coming along, but we are a bit stuck with the packaging. Airtight, non-plastic packaging is hard to come by, and we’re looking for ways around this, but it’s a slow process at the moment, with everything else going on and lots of honey to focus on. This is fine, however, because we like to drink a lot of tea and coffee.
While we are receiving a lot of honey this month, we aren’t really selling much yet. It’s hard to afford transport with the lockdown situation, but fortunately, honey never goes bad! So once things open up again, we’ll be ready. Meanwhile, we will strain and package the honey, process the wax for candles, and keep working to improve our setup here at the headquarters.
That’s more or less everything for this update. I was going to talk about the owl that kept killing our juvenile chickens but there’s enough bad news in this one already. Maybe next time. See you then!
No Honey, No Problems
This has been a particularly busy month, and I think we’re all feeling it. Things have settled a little now, and everyone is taking advantage of the opportunity to slow down. Time for a blog post!
The training course for our new farmers went well. Although we had a low turnout, which is something I think we will work on for the next one, all participants were engaged, curious and enthusiastic. Each of our new recruits completed the course and went home as certified Enjojo Farmer. already, we’ve received news that several of their new hives are colonised! Here is some of the feedback we’ve received:
“I am grateful to the donors for the new hives and training. I hope Enjojo Farms will help me make honey and provide a market for it” – Allen
“I’m looking forward to filling these hives and getting more so that I can make a lot of honey” – Grace
“I hope Enjojo Farms will support me to become a prominent beekeeper” – Johnathan
More detailed information on our farmers is being compiled every month to publish in our new Donor Newsletter; a place for people who have contributed directly to the farmers to follow their progress. If you’ve donated and you’re not on the list, let us know!
Immediately off the back of the training course, we threw together a business model canvas to assess what went well and what we need to improve upon. Since we have almost no honey to sell, running training courses will help us increase the yield for next harvest. We’ve isolated a handful of areas to work on, and we’re already working towards running some more courses. We’re also improving our apiary here at the headquarters.
One of the areas we are looking to expand the education to is a mountain valley community in Ruboni, in a Rwenzori mountain valley. I’ve visited Ruboni a handful of times now. It’s a quietly beautiful little place with clean, cool mountain air, actual cold showers (finally) and no phone network, so you have no choice but to decompress. Having stayed in the community camp each time, I’ve made a few contacts and we got talking about arranging a training course for the beekeepers in the region. As it happens, TJ and I were able to visit a group of 25 community members who were handed 70 KTB hives by the WWF. In typical charity fashion, they were provided a high-profile resource with no education on how to use it, and no idea to whom or how to sell the honey. Great news for us, though! After giving them some tips on how to improve colonisation and how to rebuild the stands so they won’t collapse or be too difficult to work on, we talked about their plans for the apiary in general. They agreed that they really need training, and so we will be aiming to get over there as soon as we can to help them along. And of course, when the time comes, to buy some quality Mountain honey! A brand-new product.
Speaking of new products, our tea process has been almost perfected now. We’re preparing to give out samples and test the market. Our process is similar to that of oolong tea: it’s a partially oxidised tea, with qualities of both green and black, and it’s versatile, in as much as you can choose which side of the spectrum you want to drink by shortening or lengthening the time it steeps. We’re also preparing wax blocks for selling, and still experimenting with candle designs. Our coffee is so good we keep drinking it all, but we might be able to start selling that too, if the market isn’t too saturated. Expect an update on the ‘products’ page in the coming month..
To help us raise some of the money for running these training courses, of course we are welcoming all the help we can get from donors, but we want to produce a limited-edition honey jar with a sample of our new tea attached. These will be premium products, sold at a price which includes a contribution to the training course fund. Keep an eye on our social media for news on this too! While all of these things were going on in May, we also had the pleasure to host a personal friend of mine, Master Badru Ntulage from the Taekwondo Federation. For a couple of days, we visited some local schools to give out these awesome new books. They are written with Ugandans in mind; covering Ugandan topics, and most importantly, have characters that are relatable to the kids here. With these books, we’re hoping to inspire and encourage a reading culture among the new generations. Also, we got some cool taekwondo demonstrations.
Finally, we are saying good luck to TJ, our social media manager, who has managed to snag herself a sweet deal managing an eco-lodge the other side of town. She’s going to be continuing with us occasionally, but no longer as a resident, and we are wishing her the best. She has worked so hard to increase our visibility and we couldn’t be more grateful for her efforts. Although she has only been here for six months, she and I worked together for well over a year in all, and she will be dearly missed.
Next month we hope to have completed our product development for the tea and coffee and be significantly closer to self-sufficiency. One last thing: we have very slow network out here, and this blog site doesn’t respond well to it at all. It has, in the past, taken days to upload photos. Hence, some of the images might be a little low-quality. Sorry about that, but on days like today, when the upload speed is almost nonexistent, it’s the best I can do.
In closing, I leave you with some highlights from TJ’s time with us.
Expansion
The last few weeks have been a blast. After receiving substantial donations to sponsor more farmers, we have been scrambling to put them into action.
As mentioned, we have improved our selection process a lot since the first round, two years ago. We’ve learned to pay attention to the red flags early, and protect our (and our donors’) investments accordingly. This extra caution has already paid off, and out of several potential partners, by a process of ruthless elimination, we’ve happily landed three new members of our team. Here’s how that went:
First of all, we put the word out that we were looking for new partners. Of course, this draws plenty of attention because who doesn’t love free stuff? Then we arranged interviews at a convenient time, in a slightly less convenient place – our headquarters, here in Isunga. In order to make it to the interview, people would have to pay a little for their transport and arrive here on time. Immediately, the number of potential candidates dropped to a handful. From this handful, we got really good vibes from 4, and although the donations were only intended to cover three, at this point we were considering stretching materials and adding a few of our empty hives to recruit them all. We visited their land, and helped them pick a spot for the apiary. Then we left them with some simple instructions on how to prepare the space for their new hives. These involved basic tasks like flattening the ground, planting a fence perimeter, or cutting a clear path in order to reach the area comfortably while suited up. Three weeks later, we returned to check on their progress. Three of the farmers had shown strong initiative, clearing the space, and erecting frames or stands for the hives. One had not lifted a finger until that same morning and showed limited interest in our suggestions for improvement. So the process works, and we remain with three tried and tested individuals whom we are optimistic about. The agreements were happily signed the same day, and suits and hives were provided in return.
New farmers aren’t the only thing we’re adding. Last month I mentioned that this season was bad for honey. As such, we’re left in a tight spot, with little to sell, and a whole bunch of disappointed stakeholders who had been expecting more from their two years of hard work. We had been considering expanding our product range, and now seems like a good time to divert resources into this. Without realising it, we’ve already done a bit of the R&D: we’ve been experimenting with different coffee processing methods for a while now, after buying the fresh cherries from Andrew, one of our pioneer farmers. We’ve got a decent process down, and we think it’s good enough to sell to our guests here at the AirBnB, and maybe to some anyone else who want to help support us.
We’ve also been experimenting with tea. Black tea is readily available and cheap here, but green tea is harder to find and costs a lot more. We’ve made a few batches ourselves, and are happy with the results. The next step will be to train our farmers in our desired process, and buy the finished product from them. What makes tea and coffee particularly appealing is that they are buffer crops. What this means, as with our honey, selling them provides support to our three key goals: Improving local livelihoods, protecting primary forest resources and reducing human-wildlife conflict. The last two, they accomplish by being particularly disgusting to elephants. The very attributes we enjoy in these plants are the same things elephants don’t, and it just so happens that many of our farmers are already growing these crops for that reason.
green and pleasant
So the plan for this season is to improve our processes to make the best green tea this side of Kampala. Coffee is a tougher market to break into, but I think we will get some loyal customers, at least. Meanwhile, we will also be concentrating on expanding and improving the apiaries of our new and current farmers, as well as developing our maintenance practices to set ourselves up for a much better yield next season. We want to give more people some great opportunities to improve their situation here, and we are realising that we could need more than just honey to achieve this. Diversifying our product range should bring more security to everyone’s revenue streams, so we’re looking forward to presenting our new products as soon as they’re ready.
Finally, we are trying out a newsletter format, to cover the progress of the individuals we’re working with. This will initially be aimed at sponsors of farmers, or people who have contributed substantially to the progress of the project, but we might open it up to more people if it goes well.
March /April updates
April 2021
Last month really flew by. After finding reliable people to work on our new structure, progress has taken a huge leap. While my friends in Europe are still stuck behind Covid travel restrictions, their hangout space is almost complete. It will be used as a gym until they come and claim it.
The export trial has hit a bit of a snag: no honey. It might be tempting to blame the bees for this, but I think it’s the weather. Seasons seem to be shifting, and the harvest was delayed from March until April. We last checked our bees on the 18th, and they were collecting a fair bit of honey, so we were hopeful that we’d get a decent yield when they’re done. Unfortunately, as it was with every beekeeper in this region, yields were exceptionally low. Some of the hives we opened had honey that wasn’t ready, others had already eaten their tenants; there was a strong sense of confusion in the apiaries, and we’ve been brainstorming solutions since the harvest. One of our local beekeepers harvested 220kg in August, and managed only 45kg this time. Looks like we’ll be aiming to export more next season.. The effects of climate change could mean we have to find new tactics to stay on top of the bees’ schedules, but we are also looking into how to manage and record the progress of each hive in a more detailed manner, so we don’t miss our chance with the honey next time.
We harvested about 20kg of comb honey. We are in the middle of sorting and straining that, and should get some nice wax and about 15kg of raw honey out of it. The harvest went pretty well, aside from the low yield. Only a few minor suit malfunctions this time!
We’ve had a few hive sales, and we finally had some activity in our AirBnB! We’ve had three bookings so far, guests have enjoyed learning about the project, taking in the views and we visiting the farmers, too.
Our chicks were growing up too slowly, an we don’t like buying eggs from commercial farmers so we’ve expanded the family a little bit. We now have four gorgeous black/iridescent birds to complement our mixed hens. Sadly, from the five we bought – three adults and two juveniles – we lost one to a particularly brutal Army ant raid one night.
Crazy Eyes – it’s always the pretty ones 
Half gym, half archer tower
We have also been visiting some of our local beekeepers. Last month we got to inspect a handful of the traditional hives. These are made with reeds and dung, and although they can produce a lot of honey, the combs are fixed to the body of the hive, which makes them comparatively hard to manage; combs have to be harvested from the back, and can’t be inspected or exchanged between hives.
Opening the hive 
A banana leaf ‘plug’ closes the back of the hive 
Bees start forming combs from the front
Perhaps the biggest news is that we’ve hit our target for sponsors! We were looking for three generous people to sponsor a farmer each for a year. This covers the setup and management of a new Enjojo Farmer for 12 months. We were lucky enough to receive a spontaneous visit from a couple of guests from Isunga lodge, who volunteered to sponsor one, while a friend of mine surprised me with a donation to cover two more on the same day. Interviews for the new farmers went well and we narrowed the selection to four very promising candidates. We are now trying to figure out whether we can contribute a little extra and stretch the resources to include all of them. Sponsoring a farmer is a substantial donation to our project and we were a little pessimistic about our chances of reaching all three this year, so we are grateful and delighted to be able to get started before swarming season has finished. Phase 1 of the selection process is complete, and this week we will be getting the feedback we need to complete phase 2. We have 13 of the 15 hives ready to go already, so as soon as we are certain of our selection, we’ll hit the ground running. This means we will also be running a training course for the new recruits, currently planned for the 5th to the 7th May.
A bit of a note on that: When we started this project, we were a little naïve about who we were dealing with. We approached the community through the LC 1 – the local chairperson of the council – and asked for recommendations. In the end, we received people familiar to the LC, rather than people with the right work ethic to partner with us. As a result, we lost 4 of our six farmers in the first year or so. One of them even raided his and his neighbour’s hives and left town. This lost us at least nine mature colonies. Others have been less than honest about their work, lying to us about the jobs they’ve done and sometimes disappearing for weeks without notice, or being altogether difficult to work with. This time around, we will be putting a lot more time into selecting the right people. Last time, it was only my money. This time, it’s yours. This time, the process will involve interviews with us, recommendations from our current farmers and area manager, character checks, etc. We intend to learn from our mistakes and make sure that we get a satisfactory return on the donations that people are making. It’s important to us that people are confident in where their money is going when they choose to support us, so with this in mind, we will be taking every step much more mindfully than before. Donors will be kept up-to-date with monthly reports on the progress of their farmers, so we will be fully accountable.
Yesterday we held our post-harvest meeting with the farmers and also met with Rosette, our area manager, to go over our new and improved routines and expectations for the coming season.
Oh yeah! And we all got vaccinated 🙂
Look forward to updates on this over the coming months!
News, everybody! And honey facts.
This will be a two-parter post, to make up for the lack of action.
Part 1. Updates!
I was able to re-enter the country from Ethiopia for New Year, and TJ (from Kristina’s Kitchen) joined me at the airport. She will be staying with us for six months to learn the ropes and run our social media. As February draws to a close [this post was delayed by a week because of internet troubles!], we are finally ready for some updates. Four months between posts is still more than I would have liked, but the pace of Corona compounds the pace of Uganda (known affectionately as ‘Africa time’), and some things have slowed to a bit of a crawl this side.
We were expecting some more volunteers from England mid-month, but lockdowns means they probably won’t be able to make it into the country until at least May. They were generous enough to fund a nice wooden structure here, though, which will provide a viewing deck over the forest and savannah, a communal kitchen space and hangout area, and perhaps a cool spot to pitch a tent. This is an important addition to our facilities in order to make the place more accommodating to volunteers and guests of our AirBnB. As it happens, the delay in getting reliable workers to help us build this has coincided with the travel delay of the volunteers, so in a way, nobody has missed out.
Whilst some things have been moving forward slowly, other have been racing ahead. Our friends at 180 Degrees Consulting have really come through for us, finding us the network to get our honey into Europe. We are now working on a collaboration with Matunda, run by David and Paul, who have been running an eerily similar project to our own: training Ugandan farmers to improve their livelihoods by growing organic fruits, which are exported to Europe. The farmers are well compensated for this, and like Enjojo Farms, the company is founded with social impact prioritised ahead of profit margins. We plan to try out the export network with a small batch of honey to export to Vienna through Paul and David next month [March], and if all goes well, we will be aiming to increase our shipments every season. This could mean a reliable, steady income stream to fund the expansion of the Enjojo Farms project, and I’m very optimistic about the prospects of working with Matunda on this!
We have just started a YouTube channel to allow us more freedom of our social media posting. So far, it’s just going to be a small video dump, but we hope to grow it into something a little more polished and professional with time. The first video (below) is a demonstration of how to return granulated honey back into its liquid state without losing any of the nutrients. Feel free to subscribe, as we’ll be adding more clips as we make them.
In other news, we have had another visit from the local elephants, which you can also see from our YouTube and Facebook posts, we’ve got five new additions to our animal family in the form of some adorable baby chickens (up to 8 more on the way) and the cat and dogs have all recovered well from their recent neutering. Our plant nursery is growing with herbs, grasses, shrubs and trees and we have more aubergines than we know what to do with. Any ideas?
Elsewhere on the land, we’ve been continually putting up catch boxes and hives – many of which were kindly donated in our last hive drive – and we’ve currently got five colonies dotted about. This number will go up and down as fussy colonies leave and new ones arrive. We usually leave them for at least a month before moving them to the apiary, so they can get comfortable and we can be sure they want to stay. We don’t prevent absconding by any forceful means – we only want colonies who want to stay in our hives, and are capable of defending them! This is swarming season, so we’re doing our best to increase our numbers, as well as the numbers of our farmers. A couple of weeks ago, we increased the number of hives on our Pioneer’s farms by 14, bringing the total of Enjojo Farms’ hives to 50. The original colonies of the Pioneers are now 2 years old and producing much improved honey yields, so we’re optimistic about this year’s harvest.
Since the Pioneers are doing so well, we’re hoping to fund another farmer to join our project. $400 US will cover their full set-up and the management fees and training for the first year. This gives us the opportunity to fulfill one of the three of our main objectives: to improve local livelihoods. If we are successful in finding the money, we’ll interview five new applicants and select the first new member of 2021. From there, they will be trained up and receive their hives and tools, and be welcomed into the group. Updates on their progress will come via this blog and/or our social media. Please contact us if you are interested in helping out with this!
Part 2. Honey!
Speaking of honey, as we come into harvest season, we have been hearing a lot of feedback involving misconceptions around what honey is and what it is not. I might make a more comprehensive post on this in the future, because the myths surrounding our main product are often problematic and sometimes downright dangerous. For now, I just want to debunk one myth and explain what makes our honey stand out against the competition here in Uganda.
The most common misconception we come across here is that crystallised (or granulated) honey is poor-quality. To address this, it’s probably worth explaining what honey is. When honeybees visit a flower for nectar, they collect a small amount of this sweet liquid, containing around 70 to 80% water, and dissolved sugars like sucrose, glucose and fructose [1]. These sugars are found in different ratios, depending on the flower species, and make up most of the remaining ~20-30% of the nectar [2]. This nectar is added to a cell in the comb, inside the hive. With such high water content, the readily-fermentable glucose is liable to spoil quickly, especially at the temperature of a beehive (35°C), so to prevent this, bees fan the mixture with their wings, to evaporate the water and reduce the moisture content. Once the ratio of water to sugar is flipped (20% water to 80% sugar), the cell is capped with wax and the honey processing is complete.
It is thought that the ratio of Fructose to Glucose is what determines the rate of granulation, or crystallisation in honey [3], with low-fructose honeys having a higher tendency to do so [4], and low-glucose honey remaining in liquid form for longer. Either way, granulation is not a sign of poor quality! On the contrary, impure, or watered-down honey is not as likely to crystallise.
This myth maintains a demand for runny honey, and one way store-bought honey is kept runny for longer is that it’s processed by heating to a high temperature. This comes with its own problems. After sugar and water, most of what’s left is what gives honey its benefits. A small amount of proteins, enzymes (which are small proteins), amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), and some vitamins and minerals. Generally, when you heat a protein to about 37 degrees, it begins to denature. Enzymes are destroyed around this temperature [5], meaning that mass-produced honey is often stripped of much of its nutritional benefits before it’s even packaged, in order to make it easier to pour, and to keep it in liquid form for longer.
There are a few other ways in which the honey you receive might be poor-quality.
First of all, if the farmer is too impatient or untrained, they may harvest too early. Honey that isn’t capped will absorb smoke particles and off-flavours from the harvesting procedure and is likely to be too high in water content to last long on the shelf. If they harvest good honey but want to increase their yield, some farmers can add sugar water to bulk up it up. This ruins the flavour and dilutes the quality and nutritional value of the honey. Our honey is harvested from capped cells and squeezed fresh from the comb soon after harvest. It’s strained through a mesh to remove bits of wax and fibres from the comb (but keep in pollen grains) and can be gently warmed if it has started to crystallise (example of this in the video above). As such, it’s unadulterated, unprocessed and retains its raw quality and flavour.
So, in summary: good, capped honey will crystallise naturally, depending on the ratios of the sugars in the nectar collected. This is a physical process, not a chemical one, and therefore it doesn’t affect the nutrient quality of the honey. We only buy and harvest pure, capped honey comb, to guarantee that our honey is ready to eat, and we don’t process it before packaging.
As usual, we’re on Facebook, Instagram and our Fundraiser is still up. I’ll also try to knock out a blog post every month or so, as we progress with our trials and developments.
Please leave a comment if there’s a topic you want covered here, and ask us any questions you like either here, or on our social media. This will help me prioritise keeping the blog up-to-date.
What a Difference a Year Makes
Well, this is a bit embarrassing. An upbeat burst of positivity followed by an entire year of silence. First of all, I’d like to apologise for the lack of posts during this time, and secondly, let me bring some context and the new exciting list of updates for the Enjojo Farms project.
Uganda is a beautiful country, but it is a hard place to live. For the 41% of people in poverty, the hardships of life here can’t be overstated, however, there are still plenty of troubles for everyone else. As a guest and a foreigner in the country, these can steadily build into a gnawing, persistent sense of disappointment and mental fatigue. Corruption is a significant issue in Uganda. Too many want a bribe, and some people will even go as far to deliberately make your life uncomfortable until you pay it. Finding reliable people to work with can also be tricky. Not too long after the last post, one of our farmers emptied all his hives (along with some of Margaret’s), sold the stolen honey in secret and left town with a number of our catch boxes. The litigation/penal system can be relatively inert until you pay a lot into it, so chasing these things up usually makes poor financial sense. We lost at least ten healthy, mature colonies and several pieces of hardware. I’ve tried not to go into too much detail, but this is just a handful of the plethora of disappointing encounters I’ve faced in the two years trying to dig my heels into this country. And it would eventually get to me.
Not all was bad, though. The gloriously-maned and hardworking Victor Scharnhorst volunteered many weeks (and much of his health) to help out at the headquarters. We were able to take advantage of his excellent photography (and Powerpoint editing) skills to make marketing materials for the project and its products. Moreover, Victor introduced us to 180 degrees consultancy team, through which we were gifted the social media expertise of Lisa Widmeyer who has given us a much more substantial online presence in the form of a Facebook, Instagram and fundraising page.
victor.scharnhorst@web.de
We were also grateful for the first ever harvest of our very own honey, born and bred entirely on the Enjojo Farms lot (The yield was low, as expected from brand new colonies, but in the time it’s taken me to update this blog there has been a second, and even a third very successful harvest from the same hives).
Then Covid-19 hit. Our only source of income, tourism, was stopped in its tracks. I took this opportunity to evacuate and headed over to Thailand to recoup. I had hoped to learn a thing or two about elephants and bees in another context, but unfortunately, lockdowns put a stop to that. I was able to begin building a platform for the project however: a (mostly) vegan foods delivery service, modified to drum up a little Enjojo Farms pocket money from the sale of home-made products. We would also come to market the project itself through this platform and were able to secure our largest donation so far in doing so. A very generous donor from Phuket (who prefers to remain anonymous) covered the overheads for the headquarters for an entire month. Thank you!
This process also provided us with one of our newest partners: TJ, from Kristina’s Kitchen in Phuket. When introduced to the project, TJ jumped in with both feet, pushing hard to draw attention to us on that side. She also designed a donations system based on a portion of the profit made from her vegan products sales, giving us inspiration for similar platforms elsewhere. We welcome her charisma and strong people-skills to the Enjojo Farms team as promoter and all-round awesome human being.
Having been left to her own devices on the land, the ever-industrious Nams wasted no time planting trees, vegetables and improving the headquarters. What was a base structure a year ago has been transformed under her skillful hands into a fully-functioning eco-lodge with solar power, 5000 litres of rainwater collection and of course the apiary, chicken house, patio and garden. With the right support, we hope to include a simple bar and gym space and begin welcoming donors, supporters, campers and other tourists in the months to come, now that Uganda has reopened its borders. This increases our ability to draw funding of our own.
We have also been expanding our network in East Africa: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, is now home to the newest platform for the project: Y’ami. Y’ami will soon be offering a portion of the profits as donations to the project.
Finally, we are again requesting the helpful enthusiasm of 180 degrees to assist us with figuring out how to export our products. With the aforementioned tangles of corruption and bureaucratic hurdles ahead, this might be our toughest battle so far. Samples are currently being shipped to Addis and Phuket though, and through these we hope to grab the attention of the right kind of people to aid us in this move.
More updates as they come, a little quicker this time, I promise.
Enjojo Farms 