Soko HarvestLiving Farm Estate
A field day in progress — a group gathered in the beds around one of the team.

I · Learn

Come for a day. Leave able to start.

Field days, short courses and a season-long apprenticeship for growers who intend to change how their own land is farmed — not to admire how ours is.

Field days
Monthly
Short course
4 days
Apprenticeship
One season
Cohort
6 — 18

Regenerative farming is not difficult to understand and it is very difficult to start. Almost everything that stops people is practical, local and unglamorous — and none of it is in a book.

Vegetable seedlings raised in trays.
Propagation, week one
Cabbages growing under greenhouse cover in Kenya.
Under cover, year round
A compost heap at capacity, turned and working.
Turning the heap

Four ways in, and each ends somewhere

You do not have to start at the bottom. Most people come for a field day and stop there, and that is a perfectly good outcome.

  1. 01

    Open field day

    Walk the whole estate with whoever is running it that month. Everything is open — the compost, the accounts, the failures. Ask anything.

    Commitment
    One day
    Runs
    Monthly, first Saturday
    You leave with
    A clear head about whether this is for you
  2. 02

    Short course

    Soil, water, planning and planting, taught in the beds rather than a room. You bring a real site; you leave with a design for it.

    Commitment
    Four days
    Runs
    Quarterly
    You leave with
    A worked plan for your own ground
  3. 03

    Apprenticeship

    Work the farm through a whole cycle — the rains, the dry, the harvest and the mistakes. Paid, hands-on, and deliberately small.

    Commitment
    One full season
    Runs
    Two intakes a year
    You leave with
    The judgement that only a season gives
  4. 04

    Your own land

    Everyone who has come through stays on a list. When something fails on your ground — and it will — there is somebody to ask.

    Commitment
    The rest of it
    Runs
    Ongoing
    You leave with
    People to call when it goes wrong
Agricultural landscape in the Kenyan highlands.

Nobody learns compost from a slide.

How the teaching works

In the beds, not in a room

Every module is taught where the thing actually happens. Nobody learns compost from a slide.

    01Reading your soilDigging a pit, reading the profile, and the three tests worth paying for.
    02Water firstWhere it lands, where it goes, and how to hold it without a pump.
    03Designing the layoutZones by visit frequency, and why the compost sits where it sits.
    04Building soilCompost, cover, and the year it takes before anything shows.
    05Beds that keep producingRotation, succession, and planting for a market rather than a plate.
    06Trees on a working farmSpecies, spacing, and the decade you have to be patient for.
    07Animals as a toolPlanned grazing, mobile housing, and moving stock without losing your day.
    08Selling itPricing, buyers, delivery rounds — the part most courses leave out.

Module 01 · Reading your soil

Taught at a pit, not a slide. This is the plate that goes with it.

3CM22CM44CM62CMOABC

A spade reaches 30cm. A pit tells you the rest.

What each layer tells you

O
Litter0–3cmCover. If you can see bare soil, start here.
A
Topsoil3–22cmDark, crumbly, smells of rain. This is the bank.
B
Subsoil22–44cmDenser, paler. Where roots go if you let them.
C
Parent material44–62cmWeathering rock. Nothing you can change quickly.

Depths are typical, not measured here — the module teaches reading a pit, not memorising one

Cattle at pasture.

Who this is for

Come

  • Smallholders with land already and yields going the wrong way
  • People who have bought a plot and do not know where to start
  • Agronomists and extension officers who want the practice, not the theory
  • Chefs and buyers who want to understand what they are sourcing
  • Schools and universities bringing a group

Probably not

  • Anyone looking for a certificate to hang up rather than a method to use
  • Investors wanting a tour — that is a private visit, and it is welcome
A group gathered in the beds during a field day.

Start with a field day

They run monthly and cost less than lunch in Nairobi. Come once, see whether the method is worth your season, and take it from there.

Join the next field dayAsk about the apprenticeship