There are some random photo's of the pond as a work in progress. We had some big help from Marshalll and Donald, and of course quite a lot of preparation work was done by Tim and Justin.
Overnight we got 4mm of rain and there is a good little puddle in the bottom already. I think it won't take many inches of rainfall before we see the spillway flow.
Unfortunately I seem to have tweaked my shoulder in a big way. I can't think of any one moment where I did anything, but I guess dragging carpet and plastic around as much as we did will do that to you...
Right now, Justin is making some cuttings of the garden sweet potato's to plant around the edges. I think that will be the quickest way to cover the ground and stop too much erosion. Perhaps we'll do clumps of vetiver and lemon grasses too. Maybe I should actually get some landscaping water features type books and have a good think about it...

We got the pond liner in. It took a whole lot of person hours but there it is. Now we wait for rain and lets hope like hell it actually works. Will post some photos soon.
Made heaps more peanut cuttings.
Met with Jen and Malte re the school this year. Seems like we'll do the barn thing, but we'll see. They have to take it back to the rest of the co-op.

we had planned to get into the pond hole again, but the day woke up raining so we decided to plant out some of the area tilled. we had some good peanut cuttings rooted. we planted out a handful of bananas and a bunch of pidgeon pea and mung bean seed. mulched the edges with cardboard and the shredded goat fodder prunings, so that the peanut has an edge to colonise once it gets going. I figure that it will be pretty easy to gradually expand that egde as the peanut expands. It is different in the areas with more vigourous running grasses, sorta... donald came up and helped me move the carpet out of the dead vw with his jeep.
left Tim to feed the animals and went in to k'lui to embark on my new academic career.

Greg came to get the tiller on Monday and we ate a nice meal with him of young rooster. He brought round some green beans from his garden. We went on a walk and I showed him the bamboo's that I got from him that are doing quite well in the ground...
Earlier in the day we did some more tilling to make the most of the dry weather and its availability. I Tim erect the temporary wire and bamboo run for the egg laying hens, while Greg and I wandered and waffled. Then we did some potting up of Sesbania's and Marang's in the nurserym and finally a little bit of work on the pond. Removing rocks painstakingly and then dragging carpet into place.
Over the course of the day, Tim also did some weeding and he harvested a few pounds of okras and cherry tomatoes and even some full sized tomatoes...
In the evening we took Lorinda to harp circle and then Lichen, Tim and I went further in to Paia. I got a notice telling me I had been selected for Jury Duty, which is funny since I'm not even a citizen. Pretty sure that that little point disqualifies me. We also put an ad in the Mana board for rentals (again) and Lichen made friends and influenced people with her youthful insousiance.

the roar of machinery

could be heard here all day, as I spent the morning tilling the chicken paddock. we'll rig up some scrap wire for their next run and then shape up beds for the crop. the plan is to make a nice bamboo fence for the lower area, hopefully by the time we are next ready to move them. we seem to have gotten over the mites by the way. Lorinda did some cleaning in the henhouse today. You just have to stay on top of your fowl hygiene I suppose.
Greg came around midmorning and told me in so many words to snap out of my despondency re the truck. he had the belt for the chipper and wasn't even in a hurry to take the tiller as he had his mothers little car. invited him round tomorrow night for chicken supper.
after too long tilling the chicken paddock (and a nice midday swim in the hole nearest the highway) I went to chipping and shredding. reduced the two big piles of goat fodder prunings to one pretty good sized pile. It is nice stuff. I am tempted to use it on bamboo's and fruit trees but fear I will need to spread it kind of thin to hold dopwn cardboard edges of the new plantings...
killed two more roosters. talked to Donald about potential vehicle sharing. he may be into letting us use his 4wd jeep for farm work if we can find a trailer etc. He has saved my bacon a few times now.

tragedy strikes

Well, after all the false alarms this time I think the rabbit really died. Such a shame. Coming back from kahului with loads of carpet for the pond and bags of peanut cuttings one of the radiator hoses popped off and dumped all the water and by the time I could get off the highway in rush hour traffic the head was toast... Donald came to my rescue and towed me back here at 10.30pm last night.
I am still in shock, although after last months dramas I guess was emotionally prepared for it. Still, it sucks. We'll pull the head and see if it looks like rebuilding, but I fear even for a biodieseler it will be more trouble than it is worth...
How the hell are we going to move mulch around the farm? or get materials to the farm? My god that truck was worth its weight in worm castings for what we are doing here. I suppose at least I didn't reregister it yet!
Lorindas birthday today so we went for a stroll up to twin falls and had a swim. ramana is running the fruit stand...

It has been pretty dry, so we kept running the tiller, the three of us taking turns to loosen up the soil in an arc that more or less follows the driveway. Perhaps we are biting off a little more than we can chew, you know, but probably not... The idea being to till as much as we can while the soil is dry enough that it doesn't get too compacted. And we're expecting Greg to come around and borrow the tiller in exchange for lending the chipper so we won't have access to that for a while.
After lunch, the three of us borrowed malte's transit and I showed Justin and Tim how to mark out the contour. We now have three swales marked out that Malte might want to go in on. Then Justin and I worked on preparing the gulch pond while Tim did some more tillage. Donald even came and helped me position carpet at one point. I even moved some gravel by the moonlight a little later...
I better go water the peanut before I go to work at Joanies this morning.

No posts in a few days becuase the solar power has been a little low. Not sure why as it ahs been nice nad sunny for the most part...
We've been trucking along. Tim and I did some work on getting the ground ready to plant support species for the main guadua hedge yesterday. Today, they worked with Lorinda in the garden and then after lunch Tim helped me, or rather I helped him sweat together some actual copper connections for the schoolhouse solar shower...
We hooked up the gas fridge and killed a bunch of roosters. Susan and Brooke who have been trading garden produce with us came by as we were in the middle of it and they were so amused that we ended up giving them a small one!
Did I mention we got load of Maui Earth compost the other day? Will be interesting to see how long this load lasts...

I'm not even sure when I last posted. Maybe I should go backwards just this once and I'll figure it out.
Today, Tim and I worked for Jen & Malte. Pruned the gliricidia hedge on Loomis road and met Rick Bickford who cuts the grass on the road. He urged me to cut the gliricidia back even more... We shredded the prunings with Greg Jones' 8 hp chipper/shredder. It worked pretty well until we broke the belt. The shredder function will be wonderful for making composts. Absolutely wonderful!
We also planted about 50 gliricidia's in a block down amongst Malte's bamboo's. It will make good mulch material for the guadua hedge I am going to convince him to buy from Greg to extend the one I plant on our place!
Yesterday, Lichen, Lorinda and I went to the fish bowl, and Iao valley, and we got our TB clearances, and we gathered a bunch of fineleaved pinto cuttings...
Thursday I worked at Joan's and didn't really bring much home, except for some extra cash, and Greg Jones chipper...
Have I done wednesday? I think that was the day that Tim and I worked at planting out the lemongrass and sugar cane divisions that we moved from the "annoying berm". We did other stuff too, but it seems like a month ago now...

Seems like the thermocouple will need replacing after all, by the way, god damn it... Why can't they make shit to last?

Lichen and Justin examining part of our aphid control army, a cute little Praying mantis...

And here are Tim & Justin clearing and mulching more of the berm...

We have a a good sheet mulch down over most of the annoying berm now... We will have to stay on it and hammer any "nahiku" that pops out, and when our flats of peanut are well established whack them in and hope that they claim the berm before the grasses can reestablish! I think we have got it this time...

I had Tim do some aquaculture... he took some guppies out of the lower barn garden pond and put them in the white barrel we have catching water at the edge of the power shed/laundry, so as to eat any mozzies... He also harvested two more buckets of lilikoi, some of which he and Justin cut up for chicken fodder, and a good bucket of carambola's or star fruit. I believe the first harvest from that tree in the gulch...

After lunch we set off for town on various errands. Tim and Justin chilled at the Kava bar while Lorinda and I did banking and went to Del's where we scored on half priced industrial chicken food, and filled the biodiesel family car with biodiesel... Then it was onto Wailuku where Tim had business in the state building and Justin was directed to a "public breadfruit" tree... Lorinda and I got TB tests at the Wailuku medical centre so that we can qualify for tertiary edu. Lorinda is trying to get me into the Alternative Energy associate diploma... night school!

Then we raided the macadamia orchard and got about 50 pounds... awright!

Unfortunately the F250 on the side of the road had already had its solenoid fuel selector valve removed, so the vegie conversions still aren't going anywhere...

Well, the oft spoken of day when we would have a team of wwoofers working away came true today.
Justin and Tim were an amazing help clearing weeds and sheet mulching the bank. Of course we ran out of paper around midday and had to make a run to town to get more paper. There were some dudes there from the Recycling Co but they were happy to let us take what we wanted and even helped us load it all in the truck!
We would have finished the whole bank for sure if it hadn't been for the water heater going on the blink. I ended up spending most of the mid afternoon taking it apart and cleaning out a blocked nozzle - don't know if I damaged it in the process of removing the tube to clean it, but after we cleaned it out and reassembled it it was still not working. Of course, with all the rain the phone wouldn't work, so getting on line was a trip and when we did there was nothing about how to service it anyway. Called Chris Baz and he explained the principles of a thermocouple. Armed with this information and Tim's mechanical aptitude we managed to have hot showers. And we got a lot of mulching done too. And had an awesome lunch with food off the land (including some monstera deliciosa)and those yummy maca nuts. Yay!

Sunday morning I showed Tim around the farm pointing out activities that we might be involved in and try to give him some bearings. Found a "vine ripened" Monstera deliciosa that is chilling in the fridge right now. Also harvested another pineapple form near the barn garden...
Then we did some work in the nursery, moving some large pots out of the middle space into a "hardening off" environment and started moving the shelving into place. Unfoturnately, I think we need another piece to properly assemble the shelves, so we postponed that until I raid Joan's once more and did a little housekeeping up there. Got Tim to sift out all the crap from the potting mix that had accumulated on the floor of the nursery and we prepared some trays of little pots for planting...
Then we solar cooked some pumpkin and had lunch...
Rather than make him work all day on his first day, we elected to take him over to the sunny side of the island. We stopped for a dip at Makena landing before pushing on to the fishbowl. Welcome to the tropical wonderland!
On the way home we stopped at the abandoned Mac grove in Wailuku and harvested maybe five pounds of nuts in about 20 minutes! They are on! We will probably go back with the pickup and some five gallon buckets and glean until we are challenged by someone this week! Today we have Justin and Tim on board, so I think we are once and for all going to attack the annoying berm between the barn and the barn garden and really roll out the pinto carpet...

Friday we did the same old same old perennial peanut prop stuff... I planted out some mulberries from pots and some cuttings from Joan's for the chicken fedge (fence/hedge). Also a fig and a handful of papaya's around the chicken house to cash in on their manure, and grow some food for them in situ... Then I went around to Joans and loaded some shelving that she had offered for me. Some of it should work well in the nursery to increase its capacity, and we'll probably have enough to line the walls of the other container...
Saturday, Lorinda had harp circle Lichen and I dropped her off and then cruised up to Makawao library. We also drove around the backrounds heading out to Olinda. Saw a few nice crows ash trees, but nothing interesting was seeding that I saw...
At home I processed more peanut cuttings, and potted some more up. After about 5 I went out and pulled weeds in different spots around the barn garden. Amazingly some of the weed border plantings are so dense that the sweet potato is getting shaded out already... The side closest to the house is a real hassle, with so much good stuff amongst so many running weeds.
Around dusk the phone rang, and Tim our newest wwoofer had made it to Door of Faith Rd, so I went and picked him up in the biodiesel family car...

Busy couple of days on the farm... Justin came around to help so we had him doing dome neglected chores in the garden. Pulling weeds that are starting to come up in the pathways and beds. We made a big compost pile - salvinia and hyacinth, goat and chicken straw, one coppiced gliricidia worth of leaves, a barrow full of lawn clippings from the morning's lawn mowing, and a bucket of comfrey... Justin also took care of some planting and sheet mulching while I ran the lawn mower around.
We moved the chicken dome yesterday, wednesday the 3rd, and planted it up. We also mounded up the other half of the long chicken tractored bed and planted it up with an experimental timestacking guild of tomatoes (which will die after an initial flush if they are anything like all the other tomatoes we have grown here - although these ones had some of Robs Azomite trace minerals and we'll see if that makes a diff) with sweet potatoes which will last longer no doubt. We also dropped in bunching onions, beet berries and eggplants. Happily I was able to catch the araucana that keeps getting out of the bamboo corall. I threw her in with "speckles" as Lorinda and Lichen have taken to calling him. Oh, I also caught one of the free ranging ducks and we had her in fried rice for dinner.
Justin came up to the site of the bag with me and we dragged the carpet back and rolled it up and I sort of wrang my hands over it. I still can't decide the best course of action. Leaning towards making the most of what we actually have on the farm right now and dragging all that carpet down to the gulch and following through with Iruka's pond, even though it is not an immediate solution to irrigation water. I know we don't have the money, but a tank right up there on the top of the hill would be kind of cool. I don't know... Justin is open to spending part of his time for us helping with pond work, rather than gardening, which is his primary interest which is great, and if this Tim Farmer bloke shows up we will have the nucleus of a team for dragging carpet and plastic around!
What else, oh the usual ongoing things, like adding water to the batteries, feeding the goats, etc. Oh, and first thing yesterday I spent some time pulling weeds in that annoying area between the garden and the greywater trench. It is a strange reverse tardis like area that seems so much bigger than it is until you get in there and start clearing it. I actually cut out some stupid stuff like the self sown guavas and I trimmed back a big agave and used it to mulch a Jakfruit growing there, as those plants while providing some windbreak and groundcover, were really doing more to harbour weeds than anything.

Here for instance, there is some cardboard at the edge of the expanding peanut, and if we added a little mulch here, it would work even better, but sooner or later, the coardboard will be covered with nitrogen fixing living mulch.
I think a good strategy if we can get enough carboard, mulch and rooted cuttings together at the same time, will be to plant thoroughly weeded strips either side of sheet mulched areas, rather than trying to plant into sheet mulched areas en masse, or even actually weed massive areas, as some people do...
Of course, we'll try lots of different things here by the time we've finished!

This is that spot that we started on back in December/January. I had the weedmat out over it, and you were asking if I was making a slip and slide. I'm pretty happy with it. We have done a bit of weeding on it. Perhaps 3 major concerted efforts a dozen or two dozen half hearted little pulls as we walked past. We will have to weed parts of it again, to be sure, but most of the area is now covered, and the peanut is starting to spread out from either side. So, we can work the edges and gradually expand it out.

Oh I am forgetting that this could be read by anyone and have started to address this directly to you, Brad! I was hoping to do that only obliquely, but I guess I got a little too much sun today...

Speaking of groundcovers, this watermelon patch is going off on the chicken tractored soil. It is an annual, but it sure is covering the ground. If we had put peanut in underneath it, or in the space that it has climbed all over, the peanut would be establishing well in the shade and when we harvest the watermelons and the vine dies off the peanut would come into its own...

Well, you get the idea. I'll figure out how to insert pictures soon enough I suppose.
Got a good phone message from Brad, he sounded excited about the bamboo plantings, and perhaps a bit gratified that I too can get overwhelmed by the rampant growth of the tropical pasture grasses.
I really should be pulling back and trying to hold onto what I have already planted but I just can't help myself! With the bamboo, well the sooner it gets in the ground the better, and well, the grass is growing quickly, but so is all the good stuff. I can get around to smothering the grass with paper and mulch in the winter when the growth slows down, maybe...
After lunch I cleared out the chook shed for a compost and realised how bad the spider mites are in there. Got out the scrubbing brush and hosed out all the cracks as best I could. Was totally covered in crawling terror by the end of it. Doused myself in a tea tree oil solution and stood under the hottest water I could get. But I did move the broodies out of there, as I think they are the primary breeding ground. I dunked them in the Melia bath, which killed beetles who got stuck in there, even when they had sticks they could have crawled out on, so you never know...
In the later afternoon I planted more peanut around the barn garden perimeter... It would be nice to get that all planted by the end of the summer... I do think that we are on the right track. Soon we will have some pretty substantial motherbeds of the peanut that we can constantly take cuttings from... Same with the seed from the various legume trees and shrubs... I don't know how Stevo did his place exactly. One time he told me he had a lot of help, and another time he told me he did it all himself??? I know I have seen teams of workers there pulling weeds out of his peanut patches though!
Of course, we are assembling a variety of plants that will work as useful groundcovers and understories... Cocoyams are something that will grown in shade that you can actually eat, as are the Monstera's. Of course, we're also working with the sweet potato, and are getting to the point where we can propagate several different flowering shrubs that will make good insectary ground covers...
So, it is going well.
Okay, some pictures...

boil it, peel it, fry it!

Seems like that is what you do to a lot of the tropical staples. We have some cassava boiling right now...
Uzi just got home from the vet. They took his cast off and said he could run around as much as he wants. What a relief! Looks like he is still going to favour that leg for a while.
Jesus, what a day. I started out trying to rearrange the godamn mulch pile and managed to get the truck stuck in the wet ground around the edge. Had Lorinda come out and sit in the bonnet and all sorts before we finally get her free. In the end did manage to move the pile where we want it before lunch, and got the bare, grass killed soil underneath it planted up to mung beans, flax, marigolds, perenial peanut and pidgeon peanut. Right now it looks like this:

Well... I was shceduled to work for J & M Saturday but when I went over there they weren't around... So, I came home and planted a tray of peanut... pulled some nahiku... went to kahului, did some grocery shopping and made 4 bags of fineleaf peanut from the nature strip on the main drag... also picked up some carpet for the pond, and some paper and cardboard for sheet mulch...
processed half of the peanut, and then went around to Rob Storey's and took some D. Membranaceous cuttings... got them cut up and put them into the prop house...

Sunday, I did basically what I did on Saturday, except I didn't go to town, and I did pick four eggplants, 5 leaks, a capsicum and a cucumber, and I pulled various weeds and pruned some legumes for mulch. I got the weedwacker on and skinned the grass in the current chook run. Got a bit overwhelmed at the rampant growth of the grass and weeds, and our failure to adequately plant up several areas that we laboriously prepared over a period of months...! Planted a little plot of eggplants on a chicken tractored spot above the ficus... Had an argument with Lorinda about where to move the dome! Went to Rob's again and made some Guadua bicolour cuttings...