Maeleole Vegetable Farm

Maeleole Vegetable Farm, operating in The Oaks village in Maruleng municipality has been working with HiHSA for over 2 years now. They are a family enterprise owned by a husband and wife who have created jobs for 3 women and 1 man from the village where they come from. The enterprise doesn't have electricity and its water source is the river that runs near their farm where the use a petrol pump, which they bought with EIF funds, to pump water so that they can irrigate their crops. They make use of both furrow irrigation systems to water their crops on different sections of the farm. It took them a few months to recover from the heavy storms that damaged most of our farmers' crops from last year December but have recovered well.

 The recent wind and coldness of June has affected their yield for green beans, damaging their crops, however, they are being revived using 1:2:1 fertilizer to revive them which is working up to so far. They are currently harvesting cabbages which bakkie traders come to the farm to buy at R8 per cabbage. Local community buys one cabbage at R10 each. The farmers also have green beans, tomatoes and cabbages that will be due for harvest July/Aug and also have onions, beetroot, Chinese spinach and mustard that they will be harvesting in Aug/Sep months. It seems they have recovered very well after the heavy storms and cold weather that has tried to damage their crops.

 They are planning on clearing land where they harvested cabbages to start preparing to plant butternuts as well as expand scale of production using the profits that they will make from selling current products. The female owner is currently in a competition for Female Farmer of the Year with LDA and has made it through the Municipal competitions and heading for District level. The enterprise keeps records of income vs expenditure.

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