@ amorphous, Fencing is in itself a very expensive affair. A good cedar pole costs approx 400 Kshs (traded illegally so not easy to find them in open yards, avoid those green pasted poles are they are useless), digging a hole about 30Kshs, A roll of good qualit berded wire 4,500 Kshs, Chainlink ranges from 2,200 Kshs, then add the fundi costs and labourers and the total acreage, and you can get the cost per acre.


Tree seedlings, depending on variety and prevalence of Nurseries, you can get good seedloings with as low as 30 Kshs. If you have a big size of land and watewr source available, you can do own nursery as its cheaper and can grow quite number over time.


A casual labourer will set you back another 10K per month. If you get a Jeuri one, they will be as absentee as yourself and only be available to collected monthly rent


Sometimes its best not to fence and incur Zero costs and less headache until that time you are ready to invest in the land.


My 2 cents

@ Gathige asante sana for the great feedback. I think the starting a tree nursery idea is brilliant. I think that is what I will implement to save on cost big time.

Sorry for not making it clear, but there is already an existing (although battered) barbed wire chain link on site covering everything except the main gate space. Leaving that gate space open has been a blessing because the herders do not interfere with the fence as long as they have access to the grass. But inside, thanks to said herder activity, the land is pure savannah with not a single tree!

I wish I could wait until ready but this is simply not an option given the live fence will take years to grow and you never know when squatters can decide to invade at any time, so the quicker I start developing the place the better.

I am thinking maybe I just sacrifice and take the long drive there very early in the morning each Friday, to leave for the place by 4.30 am latest so as to arrive latest by 10am and then return the next afternoon. That way I can start putting up a basic solid bungalow structure, gate and presence hapo as well as establishing the tree nursery pole pole there as well.

Thanks for the pricing on the casual, that price sounds good...if I can get one to shikilia things in a mabati house there for a few months until the gate and basic planting has been done, as well as the starter bungalow, the better. I can also get them to chop nearby acacia thorny branches and start placing them on chainlink immediately to protect against the herders having their cows and mbuzis munch the seedlings! Once the place is established and comfortable enough to live in, I can organise for someone a bit more professional to live there and supervise the preparations until the pressure of my activities in DC eases and I can afford to go there and spend weeks at a time and really get going. This is a very high potential land that I need to start making use of soonest.I feel like I am really wasting it as of now.