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I want to share my little farming experience through pictures. I had initially wanted to make it a sort of documentary detailing my journey but I know I won't have the time to do proper justice to it. So I decided to share pictures instead and maybe add little description to them.

This journey has taken me through lots of paid trainings (physical onsite/hands-on & virtual online classes) and also self-learning from personal researches and online videos etc. While profit is ultimately at mind, what has really driven me more is raw passion.

I’ll be posting a backlog of events starting from as far back as 2016/2017 or there about up to present date and hopefully I’ll continue to share my journey updates from time to time as I’m able to spare the time to do so.

I'll start with my 2017 cultivation of cassava, corn, watermelon and fluted pumpkin.

Following pictures are from the 1st land I'd acquired in 2016 for farming but later sold it in 2022.

My inspiration to go in to farming came from reading several farming success stories on nairaland.com. I also fancied the idea of growing my own food and being in control of the quality of some or most of the food I eat.

While I was still brooding over these ideas, I had a health challenge that necessitated a change of lifestyle. The nature of main career is such that I often spend extremely long hours sitting in one place and I was advised to include exercising as a major part of my lifestyle. Unfortunately, regular exercising seems to be a chore for me. I’d bought 2 simple gym gadgets but could only use them in the initial few days after purchase. I later bought a bicycle hoping that one will be more interesting, but only rode it once and abandoned it. The only standard form of sport I could have enough interest in is table tennis (I don’t play football), but finding a partner to play with is often a problem. When I’m free, the few friends I can play with may not be free and vice versa.

Along the line I considered that an easier way would be to have my exercise driven by passion, I realized that farming activities would be more interesting for me. Doing farm work and seeing beautiful results from them is motivating for me. This gave me more drive to go into farming. And ever since even when I have people to assist, I also personally get involved and engage in activities like tilling, digging, planting, fertilizer application, even clearing and weeding. These engagements fulfill my exercising needs and have seriously improved my health and overall wellbeing.

The big picture is to run an integrated farm with livestock like pigs, goats, broilers, layers, turkey and fish while also cultivating plantain and vegetables.

Around the time of the first acquired land I explored rearing rabbits at home. I won’t remember if the rabbits came before the 1st farm land or after, but at some point, I had both the rabbits and the farm land.

1st & 2nd pictures are my first 2 rabbits in the cage I made for them by myself.
3rd & 4th pictures are when I now had 3 rabbits.

First 2 were Hyla rabbits. The 3rd was a cross of Hyla and what people called local or ekuke rabbit.

My journey with Rabbits came to a pause when I started the main farm and moved them there.

I initially moved a few when I had the 1st worker. After being on the farm for a while the rabbits lost weight rapidly and soon began to die.

When the new worker resumed I moved the remaining rabbits to the farm and same thing happened. I had to slaughter the last 3 for meat to avoid just loosing them all like that.

What I realized that caused the deaths was feeding. The workers were not feeding the rabbits.

Pictures below are when the rabbits multiplied. At one time I had up to 19 rabbits (excluding the few I had sold).

3rd picture is a rabbit preparing a nest ahead of kindling.
4th picture is rabbit meat before cooking.

Along the line I bought cucumber seeds and planted in sags.
I remember encountering pollination challenge with the cucumbers which I think had to do with insufficient availability of pollinators. I can’t really remember ever seeing any pollinator during the time. So, I got an artist brush to transfer pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers.

That same 2017 or there about I decided to start exploring vegetables farming in my backyard using sacks and plastic rubbers. I got soil and mixed with manure before putting them in the bags and plastic rubbers. I extracted seeds from fresh tomatoes we bought from the market for home use and nursed them. Later transplanted them to the containers and continued to manage them following information I acquired from YouTube videos.
My tomatoes grow quite big and took about 7 months or so to started flowering. That was strange and confusing. And when they started fruiting, they kept growing while fruiting. At a point one had become taller than me and got to height of my fence. I began to wonder if the tomato was an indeterminate type. I believe this must have been caused by too much rains and excess manure I had applied.
However, several of the flowers will fall off without producing fruits. I suspected pollination problems. A Google search confirmed my fears and provided solutions that worked.
Along the line my first disease showed up. Some fruits will have a dark scalding on the bottom and some will begin to rot from the end without properly ripening. My Google search revealed that it was tomato end rot cause by calcium deficiency. I crushed egg shells and applied to the soil and the diseased didn’t manifest again in new fruits.
This beautiful experiment came to an end when nematodes began to manifest and killed the tomatoes one by one till all was gone.

In 2019 I acquired another land at a much better location with about 20 to 30 mins drive to my town residence. This one is just at the outskirt of town and more lively and closer to basic services.

After acquiring this land, I began intensive research and learning about running a farm. I watched several YouTube videos, participated in lots of WhatsApp paid trainings, including one that involved practical aspect that saw me travel to Ogun state to complete. Ever since I’m still learning and gathering information from diverse sources up till this moment.


The first thing cultivated here was corn.
I didn't actually take pictures of the first cultivation. The attached pictures are those of another batch of corn about a year or 2 later. This time around it was sweet corn and I had noiler chickens on the farm at this time. So the egg & corn seen here are from the farm.

The farm house was being constructed around the main farming season when rains were starting, so, I decided to cultivate corn. I also transplanted the fruit trees (pawpaw, orange & mango) I’d nursed in town to the farm.
One day I came to the farm to notice cow footprints. I went to further to see some of my corn had been eaten up by cows. The night security guy explained that before I acquired the land the herders used to pass through the farm as a short cut through the bush track that I had seen that crossed the length of the farm. He explained further that he had to drive them out and warn them not to use the path again and if he wasn’t there, they could have completely destroyed my corn.

The next crop I attempted was fluted pumpkin. The cultivation went well and it grew well but sales was a bit challenging. I was expecting to have farm gate sales but I didn’t know potential buyers. I struggled with sales and got discouraged. If it were today, I don’t think I should be having that challenge but I’ve already lost interest in commercial production of crops that are common as they don’t usually command high value. However, the last straw that sealed the fate of the pumpkin I’d already cultivated was the 1st worker I’d employed who was selling it behind my back as I wasn’t living on the farm.

During cultivation I tried out an experiment I had seen here on Nairaland. Seeds were a bit expensive that year, so I multiplied the seeds.

1. Seeds pre-sprouting
2. Some split seeds
3. More split seeds and unsplit ones
4. Flourishing pumpkin

1. Another pumpkin bed
2. Praying mantis doing their thing on a pumpkin stem
3. A pumpkin fruit
4. Some harvested pumpkin fruits

1. Pumpkin seeds spread out to loose a bit of moisture before bagging
2. Bagged pumpkin seeds that I'd sent to someone in Lagos

I've made multiple attempts at cultivating okra but didn't have very good results.

I later tried cucumber cultivation on the main farm and got my fingers burnt. First attempt with the first farm worker resulted in almost equal revenue as my input so basically no profit. Major issue was having an unmotivated worker who didn’t find avenue to steal as much as he would have wished to. And I wasn’t available enough to supervise him.

1. Manure
2. Prepared soil/bed
3 & 4. Sprouted cucumber

After just about 3 months I had to get another worker who was better hardworking but doesn’t follow instructions. I never saw any sign of stealing from this one but without supervision he’s not likely to follow laid down instructions. He seemed to believe that the instructions were unnecessary stress that made no difference. I believe level of education and IQ played a role here.

1. Staking posts
2. Growing cucumbers with trailing hands
3. Staked cucumbers
4. Mature cucumbers ready to fruit

On one occasion the boy planted cucumber in December but didn’t water. 4 days after I called to find out about the cucumber and he said they had not germinated. I was surprised and confused. Then I asked him if he’d watered after planting and he said no. I couldn’t believe my ears. The last batch that I planted along with him as example in September or so was watered after plating even though we were in the rainy season, but this guy planted in December and didn’t bother to water. After my expression of disappointment with him he told me he will water that day and tried to assure me that they would still germinate. The end result was about 10% germination.

safarifarms:
The farm house was being constructed around the main farming season when rains were starting, so, I decided to cultivate corn. I also transplanted the fruit trees (pawpaw, orange & mango) I’d nursed in town to the farm.
One day I came to the farm to notice cow footprints. I went to further to see some of my corn had been eaten up by cows. The night security guy explained that before I acquired the land the herders used to pass through the farm as a short cut through the bush track that I had seen that crossed the length of the farm. He explained further that he had to drive them out and warn them not to use the path again and if he wasn’t there, they could have completely destroyed my corn.

I love what you are doing, Sir. You are very detailed and clear with your writing. Thanks for this thread. You have just encouraged me to start my own farming though it will be done on a small piece of land initially and then I will lease and buy land as time goes on. We are still in the raining season and I want to start planting things. I have already planted fruits in my compound. One of the plantains suckers I cultivated last year has started to fruit. Hopefully, the others will bear fruit very soon. I have planted bananas, pawpaws, guava, coconut , mango, Cocoa and some Zobo seedlings. You have inspired me to follow through with my farming ideas.

Redman44:
I love what you are doing, Sir. You are very detailed and clear with your writing. Thanks for this thread. You have just encouraged me to start my own farming though it will be done on a small piece of land initially and then I will lease and buy land as time goes on. We are still in the raining season and I want to start planting things. I have already planted fruits in my compound. One of the plantains suckers I cultivated last year has started to fruit. Hopefully, the others will bear fruit very soon. I have planted bananas, pawpaws, guava, coconut , mango, Cocoa and some Zobo seedlings. You have inspired me to follow through with my farming ideas.

Congrats. Keep it up.

Having problem again with uploading pictures.
I will upload but pictures don't get attached.

Sometimes it gets attached after multiple attempts.

1. Some fruits
2. Customer washing fruits before bagging.
3 & 4. The disease challenge I later had that I wasn't able to find solution to.

safarifarms:
I later tried cucumber cultivation on the main farm and got my fingers burnt. First attempt with the first farm worker resulted in almost equal revenue as my input so basically no profit. Major issue was having an unmotivated worker who didn’t find avenue to steal as much as he would have wished to. And I wasn’t available enough to supervise him.

1. Manure
2. Prepared soil/bed
3 & 4. Sprouted cucumber

I have a question about the manure in the blue container. Is it chicken manure? What kind of manure is it? And then did you apply it fresh to the soil or how did you cure it and make it fit for use immediately, Sir? Thanks.

All this while I’ve always engaged adhoc workers from time to time to assist when there is more work than one person can do. One day I engaged an adhoc to make hollow beds for dry season cucumber. Gave the boy instructions and also gave my worker similar explanation on how the bed should be done. When I got to the farm the next day, the boy did raised beds instead of hollow beds. When I queried him, he told me that it was my worker who disagreed with him and insisted he should do the same raised bed he saw that was one on the last planting. So the adhoc understood the instructions but my own worker did not.

Redman44:
I have a question about the manure in the blue container. Is it chicken manure? What kind of manure is it? And then did you apply it fresh to the soil or how did you cure it and make it fit for use immediately, Sir? Thanks.

It was chicken manure that was emptied into the container and soaked in water for days before application. However, it was still applied with care avoiding direct contact with the plants.

But before planting, the manure was applied to the holes dug for the cucumber and allowed for at least 4 days (during rainy season) or a week (during dry season). When the sun dries manure it looses some of the nitrogen which is what causes killing of crops.

The handwork of my 1st farm worker.

Staking that I'd explained and demonstrated to him how to do.

This is what he achieved. No consideration on how the cucumbers would be accessed for harvest


Other pictures are of an insect that once attacked at fruiting stage and caused poor quality fruits. I think they are called leave foot bug.
Experience with the insect controlled made me learn a valuable lesson of not doing telephone farming.
On the first day of harvest, I saw a few of these insects and told my worker to spray against them.
2nd day of harvest the insect population increased instead of reducing. I asked my worker if he'd sprayed after the last harvest and he claimed he did. I told him to spray again that evening and left.
When I can on for the 3rd harvest, these insects were just hitting me from all directions. The population had exploded and the fruits were now malformed. The customers now bought at half the price. That day I decided to stay till evening time and see how my worker was spraying.

Oh, boy. The guy set the nozzle to produce a single streak of flowing liquid like a guy is peeing instead of a spray form or mist that would cover the leaves. This setting will waste the chemicals and only touch just about a line on some leaves. I couldn't believe my eyes. I allowed him go through a row and next thing he skips the other side of the row. I was in shock.

If you don't have time to be on site and don't have a reliable person to supervise your farm, you are going to have losses from workers not following instructions. That's if they are not stealing also.

Good documentaire of farm activités, challenges navigation, expériences and growth.

Thanks for your sincere blogging about your humble beginnings and growth through the years to your level.

Many people will have lever to gain from your story here on NL.

FavouriteOfGod:
Good documentaire of farm activités, challenges navigation, expériences and growth.

Thanks for your sincere blogging about your humble beginnings and growth through the years to your level.

Many people will have lever to gain from your story here on NL.

Thanks for the encouragement

FarmTech why are my uploaded pictures not showing.

This thread was meant to be mostly a picture based documentary but I'm not able to continue as pictures I upload don't show.

I wish to continue now that I have a little time to spare, but nairaland is not attaching pictures I upload.
Pictures are less than 200kb but they are not attached and there's no error message.
Is there a maximum number of pictures to upload on a thread.

safarifarms:
I wish to continue now that I have a little time to spare, but nairaland is not attaching pictures I upload.
Pictures are less than 200kb but they are not attached and there's no error message.
Is there a maximum number of pictures to upload on a thread.

Maybe you should try another telecom service operator for data. MTN or T2 might be good.

FavouriteOfGod:
Maybe you should try another telecom service operator for data. MTN or T2 might be good.

You think it's network issues? My location is an interior where network is often poor but this doesn't look like a network issue. I'm using MTN & glo but having same problem with both.

I later planted tomatoes on the main farm some years ago. Following are a few pictures.

One of my goats kidded twins yesterday. Just few minutes ago, the sister that had partial miscarriage kidded one. One must have died during the miscarriage.

The two goats were supposed to be triplet birthing goats. One did kidded 1 about 7 months ago. The sister that had a partial miscarriage is kidding for the 1st time.

I wish I can upload pictures.

Still expecting 2 other goats to kid soon. Mother and daughter goats with twinning gene.

1. The black goat that kidded twins on 20/08/2025
2. The sister that had partial miscarriage about a month ago but kidded 1 on 21/08/2025
3. Both mothers in their apartment

One goat has kidded one this morning. Just about 30 mins ago. But it is just one kid. I was expecting twins.

Its mother is the only one remaining now. The mother has been kidding twins from its first kidding. This will be its 3rd time.


1. The goat that kidded today 22/08/2025. Just one kid. Was expecting 2 though.
2. The goat's mother that is also expected to kid soon. I'm expecting twins as usual.
3. Mother and daughter goats with the grand kid in their own apartment.

Update:
The mother goat in 2nd picture finally kidded twin female hybrids as expected around 5am of Sunday 24th August, 2025. They are crosses of Sahelian (male) and WAD goats. While the other kids weighed 1kg (twin births) and 1.3 (single birth). These ones weighed 1.5kg each because of the Sahelian gene. And they are taller than the other goats as expected.


Pictures are on page 5

Last year (I think around April or May), I picked interest in ducks based on a nairaland thread. But I didn't like the stress of Muscovy ducks that will possibly fly away if you don't consistently plug their wing feathers, so I came to settle for Pekin ducks. I'd also read that Pekin ducks grow quite fast and attain table size of about 3 to 4kg or so in just about 8 weeks (2 months). But I was so disappointed with the ones I got as they only attain about 1.5kg in 2 months. However, I didn't know they lay eggs so much even with little below standard feed. So while I'm disappointed with their growth rate, I'm impressed with their egg laying.

Unlike Muscovy, these ones may or may not sit on eggs and they commonly lay eggs just anywhere carelessly.

1. My first set of 5 pekin ducks
2. One of the ducks taking care of 7 ducklings that it hatched by itself
3. Some ducks after a bit of multiplication
4. The swimming pool for the ducks

The swimming pool is actually very shallow (just about 1 foot deep), but I decided to raise it to reduce the risk of small goats mistakenly getting into it. But goats naturally avoid pools of water anyway.

I now have about 15 pekin ducks. But a local chicken is sitting on some pekin duck eggs.
Even though I didn't want to rear muscovy ducks, my father-in-law gave me 2 when my wife visited them about 2 or 3 weeks ago.
The muscovy are in a cage as they have not yet fully developed true feathers.

Attached pictures has the muscovy ducks (about 5 weeks old if my in-laws information is correct) in cages along with pekin ducks that about 7 weeks old). They'll soon be ready to be released to move about outside within the farm house fenced area.

I also have local chickens to help me hatch. At one point (in 2023) I had up to 19 local chickens.
I use them to hatch Noiler, Turkey and Duck eggs.

The hen sitting on eggs is actually sitting on duck eggs. The other has young noiler birds along with it's on chicks (the black ones).