animal systems
Tim assembled most of the rest of the next chicken paddock over a couple of his work days earlier this week. first he had to cut back the long grass that had grown up in the meantime since I first started on the project, then he did a little bit of work rebuilding the frame work that I had half finished before throwing up the diagonal splits. It looks pretty good. Should be ready to run the chooks in by the time the watermelons have finished, and probably about the same time the area they are in right now will be ready to plant up. We were talking about doing an onion patch there at lunch today.
I spent the last couple of days planting up my birthday swale, and putting together the goat fence above it which will give us the capacity to move the goats around without tethering according to the weather, so that will be wonderful. We will finally be able to get them pregnant and start getting milk out of them, which will be a great thing.
Eve's cat got stuck down the big hole, so I had to get the ladder down there and climb down and rescue it. Serves me right for not covering it I guess.

the idea of the perimeter of cardboard and mulch is that eventually the peanut will establish and spread out into the sheet mulch. I think it will go about 2 feet a year or maybe more...

Some shots of the guadua plantings with their support species, from the ground up; perennial peanut and mung bean, pidgeon peas, sugar cane and bananas...

well... maybe I will try again later. seems like the blogspot is having trouble uploading my photo's. godamnit.

this is the plt of pidgeon peas that you planted a little less than a year ago, Brad. Just below the barn garden. There is other stuff in there, including the sweet potato for ground cover, and gliricidia, calliandra, bambusa etc but the pidgeon pea is the dominant species right now.

new swale

the new swale. It is only wheelbarrow size, being hand dug, but it should do a lot to stop runoff getting down to the barn and will help to establish windbreak trees that will provide good fodder for the goats and chooks.

new swale

the new swale. It is only wheelbarrow size, being hand dug, but it should do a lot to stop runoff getting down to the barn and will help to establish windbreak trees that will provide good fodder for the goats and chooks.

chores

Woke up got out of bed, neglected to drag a comb across my head.

This morning I didn't even need to check the rain gauge as I could tell it hadn't rained overnight, so first thing I watered the nursery. Most of the pots were still pretty moist, but I wanted to give the new bamboo divisions a hit as they are in that critical phase.
Feeding the animals. First off I went after some fodder for the two goats. I think I took a bundle of cassava from the patch next to the house, as I headed in that direction after the nursery, and kept going toward the outhouse when I realised there was a wwoofer in the toilet. Also pruned some guave on the way. Later, whilst taking care of chickens I took off some side branches of some sesbania sesbans by the little pond in the garden, and some nearby pidgeon peas. It was a nice "harvest is your maintenance" sort of moment, as the branches were obstructing the pathway.
I fed the chooks grain. There are four different flocks of poultry right now. Two mobile tractors of chickens, and one stationary house with rotational pens, plus the ducks. So, for each flock I did things like make sure they had clean fresh water. For the stationary flock I fiddled around and found some screen to over a barrel to catch water from their roof so that I don't have to carry the drinking vessel outside every time it needs to be filled. For the other chickens who are tractorinng between the nursery and the barn, I found a hose end so I can not walk back and forward... I threw a little more straw into the main chicken yard and wasted a bit of time trying to pounce on a free ranging drake who would have gone in the pot if I'd been a bit quicker.
All told, I was finished with the animals in about an hour.
'Til lunch then I worked on the new swale which will pick up runoff from the driveway and hopefully divert the bog that is the area immediately outside the barn.

Justin has a recurring hockey injury so he has been laid up for a few days.
Tim has done some weeding in the pinto patch he and Justin and I put in on the "annoying berm", cracked coconuts for human and animal consumption, gathered guavas for animals, and done some weedwhacking on the trails where I would normally use the lawn mower, but it is broken right now.

Lorinda has been working the solar cookers, making banana breads and muffins, coconut, pumpkin & macadamia pies. And readin Lichen bookies.

luckily hurriucane jova gave us a swerve and we have just been getting plenty of rain. planted 30 odd jacarandas and inges and a few coconuts on the western side of the gulch.
pruned back gliricidia hedge on loomis lane, chipped it all up for mulching the barn herb spiral/pennyroyal bed.

I had to do the chores today, with Lichen convalescing inside and I guess I remembered what a big job those two do... After that I pottered around, raking mulch and cutting some grass with a rice knife, mostly in the zone between the barn and the nursery. We have it pretty ready to be conquered by chicken tractor and sesbania I think... After lunch I went into Paia and scored some different materials, plywood and composite board that was getting pulled out of an office in Geoff's building. Grabbed some cardboard on the way back.
Did some weedeeating paths in the gulch. Installed the propane tanks in the kitchen that Eve went and filled. Fed animals...
Did the first chop and drop into the first banana circle that I dug when I first got here. It is about a year old today I guess, so that was a nice moment for me. Then I kinda just pulled weeds that were growing amongst the sweet potato in that area. I did spend a little time in the nursery pottering also.
It feels like winter is returning a bit early. Of course, there is no such thing here anyway...
The pond is still there, still holding water...

I'm a bit soggy and addled but I think this is a couple of shots of different parts of the gulch. Donald trying to address some drainage issues by his buses, and a view of the very full ditch behind the Pavillion.

the flood!

last night I went to bed before even the sun had set. I had thought that after eating some food I might go back out and rake some mulch but I was so exhausted. i slept from about 6pm to 8am the next day. We haven't been working that hard here lately, I have just been missing a few hours of sleep every night for too long and it finally caught up with me I suppose.
Anyway, I seem to remember falling to sleep with a question on my mind along the lines of "now that the tanks are full, should I divert some water down to the big pond and see if it is going to work out when it is full?"... When I woke up this morning Tim asked me if I had emptied the rain gauge yesterday. Sleepily I told him, "Yeah, at about 7:30am, like usual...", and he rsponded that this morning it was overflowing! I sort of didn't really believe him, as that would mean more than 6 inches in 24 hours. More than 5 and a 1/2 inches ovefrnight, as we got about 10 mm during the day yesterday...
So, I set off to have a look at the pond. On the way I found that the gravel we added to the driveway in several places had been cut out, and I ran into Malte who told me that his driveway had been severely gutted out where some straw mulch had blocked his drainways... I ran into Eve, our new tenant, who is in the process of moving into the Dollhouse so had her car down there overnight and almost didn't get it out!
Of course, the pond was full(!) but not exactly overflowing in the right place! I had built up the spillway in order to get more storage at the back of the pond, in the shallows, thinking we had enough room to play with. So, now the pond was flooding the anchor trench which could be bad... So we excavated the spillway a little and moved some more soil around and hopefully it will be cool. I came up here to get some sweet potato cuttings, and then it started bucketing again, so Lorinda asked me to take Lichen inside and dry her off. So, I think I'm going to go back now and see if it is still overflowing... If it stops raining long enough I'll try and get a pic or two...

I have been neglecting you my little blog.
This last week we have been pulling down the UNe Place shed. Tim was a treasure being able to walk around 15 feet in the air like his feet were on the ground, and Donald came up with a good method for jacking the posts out of the ground so we got an extra 3 feet to what I had thought we would get. Justin got a nail ni his foot but besides that and a few scraped knuckles and splinters we came out without too much loss of life.
Other stuff included the trip to Puunene for cinders for potting mixes, potting up trees in the nursery, planting out perennial peanut... We made a trip for some bamboo poles to continue the chicken fence craziness...
The pond is filling out slowly but surely.
The swales have been put off for the 8003rd time. Richard Jacinto can't do any slashing right now because he is waiting for a part for his tractor...
Everythings pretty good. I feel like a headless chicken most days but I wouldn't expect much different...

Oh yeah, we got a ripe watermelon today too. Pretty sweet too. And huge. Chicken Tractors really are pretty good...

The rains have returned lately, just as I was starting to get worried. We have been planting perennial peanut and pidgeon peas in the areas we tilled. Tim and I shaped up some beds in the chicken paddock. We planted sweet potatoes, soy beans, carrots, pumpkins and milo in there today. There is still some space that we could sheet mulch and maybe room for climbing beans or peas... Have collected more plastic 50 gallon barrels and started experimenting with valve options, so we can collect rainwater from all the little roofs and have local applications...
Today I had a tutorial with Geoff on how to use Illustrator and we are going to collaborate on doing some maps of the property.
We positioned all the spare tarps we could find today to run extra water into the pond. Of course, they will suppress the grasses and make that bit of ground ready to plant up after the pond has filled. Nice, eh? It was actually Tims idea...

Well you can imagine some of the filthy language I uttered on wandering down to check the pond and finding that we had laid it in way too tight and that the little puddle in the bottom had lifted up the sides and stretched them tight. Much more weight in there was going to tear a seam or something for sure.
So, we rexcavated the trench and pulled out as much slack as possible, and hopefully it will be enough to still hold the pond up without making a weak spot... Jeez... We were pretty lucky that it didn't rain in the meantime, because more water in the hole might have made it very hard to manouvre. I have a much better idea of the best way to go about installing pond liners now. I think.
My shoulder has still been hurting like hell, so I have been trying to go easy on it. I showed Justin where I wanted to plant some windbreak trees and he went crazy and dug a bunch of awesome holes... So we have spots to drop our casuarina and Kukui's when we get some serious rains.
I mowed the lawn and gave the lawn mower a good clean with Donalds air compressor. Later in the day I realised that the pidgeon peas really needed to go in the ground so I put them in in support locations for the guaduas.
Added water to the batteries in the barn. Did the Ll relations thing with Jenna and Nick (egad!).
Was greatful that I don't live in New Orleans right now.