I really hope that we don't have to sheet mulch over this nahiku patch again, but you know, I wouldn't be suprised...

And this would be without the tree.

This is before the java plum is cut down.

Yesterday I randomed about the place. Pulled weeds in the pineapple/peanut patch above the house, and in general took stock of the situation thereabouts.
Sally was feeling sick witha bit of hay fever or something. It is possible that she breathed in some gas from the green waste the day before, I guess. I told her to take the day to rest but even so she surfaced in the afternoon and had a go at cleaning out the nursery. Even cleaned the mulch from the Sesbania off the roof. Not sure what she did with it, but pretty good initiative, and now the nursery has some more space for her/us to propagate loads of peanut and legumes.
I tried making another barrel of biochar, but started the fire with just split bamboo from part of the old chicken fence that had blown over, and without a couple of solid logs the fire actually didn't stay alight. I guess I could have put less wood shavings in there. Anyway, I put the half charred barrel into the Knox Fort to soak up the chookshit.
In the evening I started sheet mulching the grasses that had regrown along the fenceline in the citrus orchard.
Continued that process this morning and actually used the whole 9 yards (probably it was closer to 6 or 7 yards) of mulch and a bale of cardboard I had brought back last week just to cover the fenceline area... Still, it really had to be done, since the grasses if not suppressed will invade the peanut areas... In the end there wasn't quite enough mulch to cover the cardboard as thickly as I had wanted to, so I took down the Java Plum that was going to come out sooner or later anyway, and used the brush to hold down the rest of the cardboard...

Finally got some rain out of the Kona storms. An inch all at once. I got some peanut cuttings in as it was coming down and while it was still overcast in the afternoon and the next morning. It was nice to have the stockpile of mulch there to be able to mulch them as they were planted... Sally helped for a while, and then when the rain stopped I took her to show her around. Almost everywhere I went I was shocked at how badly the winds had whipped us. Lots of leaves were whipped off the young trees. The Mammee apple was snapped off just above the graft. (we stripped off the leaves and planted the cutting, sort of hopefully). The Langsat, though still intact, had been pretty badly ravaged. One of the Salaks was sort of blown over, but I was able to mound up the soil around it and stand it up again. All this in the very bottom of the gulch, where I would have thought they would have been safer. I guess they are really young, and perhaps turbulence down there is pretty bad... The plastic killing off the grass on the lower terrace there was really messed up.
One of the largest gliricidias by the upper pond had snapped off at the base, and most of the crown was in the water. We cut it up and pulled it out of the pond before the wind gouged (worse) holes in the liner and made cuttings out of the best truncheons, put them in a bin of water. Threw the twigs on to the cardboard by the brandisii hedge. Took some pallets down to the big pond and rearranged the plastic to keep killing off the grass.
Seems like Marshalls tarps have held out so far so good.
Last night we went into town to a free showing of the incontinent truth, (Lichen and I chased sandpipers and quails outside, because we are all too well familiar with the potential for global disaster) and saw our ula lena side neighbour, Becky, in there. She said she is buying a new machete to clean up all her blown down bananas, and that we are supposed to get some respite for the weekend and then another kona wind is supposed to rear up. Bring it on!

January 31st on which I dropped Brad off at the airport and then went out to the Green Waste dump to see a spontaneous combustion of green waste. Several water trucks were called in to put out the blaze. It smelled quite like biochar... A guess the heat of the massive pile had been stoked by the 50 mph winds and there it was...
So, they asked me to come back in a few hours when they had things under control if I wanted my mulch. I went back into town and waited for the Sears warehouse to open. Read some Mimamsa philosophy while I waited for the forklifts to get cranked up...
Unloaded the cardboard back in Huelo and then headed in, this time got the load of mulch before going on to class. Almost fell asleep under the fluro's once or twice, and even though I had to keep it under 45mph most of the way home because of the crazy winds and wet roads, I made it home. A long day...
Lorinda reported that Marshall's Costco garage tent had imploded in the near hurricane winds. Ace was able to borrow tarps from Jim to save the day, though on refelection, with worse winds coming, perhaps Marshall should have taken Lorinda up on the offer to shelter in the barn with us until the storm blows itself out and then replace the tarps. Anyway, we'll see. Apparently it was one of those scenes of human cooperation the face of diversity with Greg Jones and several others who just happened to be here at the time helping to get it tied down...
Dorothy, my history teacher says that in her 45 years on Maui, she has seen it blow this hard a few times before, but not in such a sustained manner. Interesting...
Guess I better go unload the mulch so I can head back to the airport to pick up Sally. This will be my 5th visit to OGG in 8days. (!)

I finally got the process right for making the biochar in a barrel with the woodshavings. This is the second barrel's worth of char. It basically takes 8-10 hours to get over 90% of the wood to char. There is still some wood shavings in tact even after that long, but too much longer and too much of the char starts to turn into ash I think. But I think there is not too much uncharred wood to use as an amendment, especially since it is so fine and has so much surface area that it will probably break down quickly. We will give the citrus a good dose of nitrogen anyway.

This out of focus caterpillar has been having a go at the citrus trees. Lorinda and Lichen have been squashing them. I wanna know what they are. I wonder if google will ever have a function where you can put a photo in the search bar and it will tell you what it is?

Haven't seen it here before, so we might have brought it in on the citrus...

I'll take it to the extension office today and reconfirm my prejudice that those people are worthless.

New dog proof chook run. I think I have broken my back wrestling with the 30 foot section of fencing with the vinyl inserts you can see around the back. The whole outer fence is buried, as is the inner sanctum, and I am going to pile heavy logs and rocks around the base too to further deter the canines.

Oh, I guess I should document here that the bamboo goat fence fell over yesterday. Not entirely, you understand, but it was leaning at 45* angle when I spotted it... We have had some ferocious winds lately and the african tulip posts that have been carpenter bee condo's for this past couple of years finally snapped at the ground level, so basically it was the horizontal bamboo poles wired onto the kiawe posts at the corners that were holding the whole thing up...
The new chook pen is going to be smaller than the goat yard was, so that section of fence was going to be redundant now anyway... I started pulling it down and I guess I will use it to start charcoal fires or something.
Oh, yeah, yesterday I had my most succesful attempt at charring the woodshavings yet. I still stopped the process too early. I guess it was smoking for about 5 hours when I turned it off, and probably 60% of the material was nicely charred. 20% was just sort of blackened, but not actually charred, and the remainder was still whole. A portion at the bottom was probably ash actually. I guess next time I will try to leave it for like, 7 or 8 hours and hopefully I will have something I can use as a soil amendment.

One aspect of life on the farm that I have failed to document, though it has been a daily feature for the last few weeks, is the activity of the trail bike club that has taken up residence in the gulch between hoolawa rd and honokala. Seems like they have two sessions a day, from about 9am to 11am, and then again in the afternoon any time after 2pm. They are really loud. At first I felt like I had entered the Maui version of the Peter Weir film, "the Cars that Ate Paris", or more obviously, "Mad Max", but as with most annoying things I have gradually become accustomed to the noise. I guess at least they aren't breaking into any houses... of course, if I owned that land I might be less than impressed at the erosion issues... I do fantasize idly about getting dressed in camoflauge and hiding in one of the christmas berry thickets with a wrist rocket...
Yesterday I broke into the pile of e.robusta chips that has been curing in the swale above the citrus grove. Quite paranoid that I was picking up nahiku cuttings that had invaded the pile, I carefully sifted through it as I spread it onto the peanut cuttings in the citrus grove... Put the remainder that was choke with nahiku around the two oldhammi's adjacent who were also already choke with nahiku...
Made more peanut cuttings.
Got some calls about the tractor from the bulletin, so I cleaned up around it to make access easier. In the end the guy never showed up. Another fellow who is on Oahu right now sounds pretty serious about looking at it next week though.
Dug trenches to bury fencing for the fort knox chook pen.
Turned the chook/goat compost pile. Was impressed at the transmogrifcation. It was still quite gruesome, of course, but not as bad as my worst fears. Compost is a crazy, wonderful thing.

coral ginger

This afternoon while I was watching Lichen so that Lorinda could attend a meeting with DoE people, we wandered around the bottom of the garden and picked some flowers. You remember the walk you, Jay and I took around Honokala in 2004? That piece of coral ginger we yanked out of the embankment on the side of the road? That plant had a dozen flowers on it, some of which are on the kitchen table right now. I think they are one of my favourites. There is something to be said for hanging out with a little girl and picking flowers.

Flame earns his keep.

"Flame" earns his keep.

Peanut gallery operations have continued lately. Each rooted piece of "peanut grass" is a small step towards liberation from fossil fuels and yoke of the graminaceae. Cuttings have been coming out of the nahiku ridden Guadua planting on the driveway, just below the carpark. Some pretty good cutting material out of there actually. It is interesting that the peanut has coexisted with the nahiku, better than I actually thought it was doing. I hope that we can get it to bounce back from the cuttings and not let it get too swamped by the grass before it does.
Have had to start watering the planted "long cuttings" in the dwarf citrus grove, since the rains have abated for a while, and the wind and sun is drying things up again. Its a relief though, because we were started to get muddy and running low on the solar power.
This afternoon the truck was finally released from the mechanic. $3055. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUCH!
Still, that sense of powerlessness in the face of so much rampant tropical grass sort of relaxed its grip on my psyche a little bit just looking into the bed and imaging it full of mulch that won't grow. Stopped by Greg Jones' place on the way home ostensibly because Lichen wanted to meet the kitties Mama, but Greg wasn't around, so I also couldn't really get too far in scoping out the wild coffee situation which was part of my alterior motive there. His place is looking great.