Lots and lots of rain just lately. The swales burst their banks in a couple of places on Malte's side, I guess probably because we planted them up later. Still, they had to go somewhere. I tried to get him to think about extending the overflows to his gutter, but he still wants to make a channel in the middle of the gully... Oh well...
I spent all of yesterday pretty much sorting pidgeon peas and stashing them in jars, waiting for the ground to dry out enough that I can drive the load of mulch I made last week around to the pidgeon pea/peanut patch I need to mulch next...

The Eucalyptus deglupta count is getting up to the 5 or 6 hundred mark, and there are so many more to be potted up...
I picked up a bunch of plants from Ramana's the other day to complete our trade for the Burmanica's. He was very generous and gave us heaps of nice stuff. Maybe 30 or 40 Jaboticaba seedlings to pot on that he was too busy to do anything with. Two african oil palms, two areca palms, a Bambusa malingensis, 2 Bambusa textilis, a Gigantichloa luteostriata, and a Gigantichloa sumatra... So, still no latiflorus, but he did promise that he would give us a couple of cuttings when his plants are ready in a month or two...
Today I gathered mulch material from the gulch again and put it through Greg's chipper. Got a good truck load and now I am beat...

I don't think that I noted that the other day, whilst moving things out of the nursery into wind and sun hardening positions I noticed that the membranaceous was about to throw a big new shoot, so I decided to plant it out underneath the top swale next to the Java plum, so pretty much in the middle of the "gulch" up here on the ridge... It has been raining pretty well ever since so it is getting a good homecoming...
Um, today I worked all fucking day at trying to make enough mulch to cover a few square metres... I don't mind, really a few square metres in a day is pretty good progess... Still, it got me thinking a lot about having the equipment to go around trimming trees for people and getting paid to collect mulch to bring back here...
I remember looking at Geoff Lawton on one of his visits home to Tagari Farm when we were sitting dow to lunch and he had been working his arse off... I think he had taken his third huge big plate of food, and I looked at him and said, "Oh, you're hungry eh Geoff?" His reply has stuck with me, "You've gotta eat, mate!". Another time, I was sort of bemused by his behaviour and he gave me a similarly impassioned rejoiner... I said to him something like, "You're a crazy fucking hard worker aren't you Geoff?" and his preply was all about "I'm interested in square metres per day Rich! That's all I'm thinking about! I'm not thinking about how tough I am or whatever, I'm thinking about how many square metres per day I can get under ground covers and productive sustainable systems... !".
Today I was reminded of those words because after feeding the animals in the morning, I spent a greater part of the day pushing wheelbarrows, hacking down arundodinax cane grass with a machete, and harvesting heliconias and that flowering thing that sort of looks like tobacco, from down in the gulch, chipping them up and then spreading them on top of newspaper around the pidgeon peas and perennial peanuts that we put in a couple of weeks ago. The peanut was looking pretty shithouse, but maybe it will come back now that it has some mulch...
I also ended up talking to tenants for more of the day than I had wanted, but that is the way, right?

Well, a lightning visit from Uncle Brad sort of changed our rhythm for a little while, in a good way, of course. It is always nice to be taken out to eat at the Hana Hou by your benefactor, after all.
We also had a chance to review the status of various aspects of the project, face to face, which is of course a bit more susbstantial than email or phone communications...
The on ground stuff that has been happening lately includes another replacement starter for the aerostar, and the continuing intransience of the 8N's steering wheel, which is the first thing that has to be removed in order for us to replace the bearings in the steering box...
We also planted the two Guadua amplexifolia (amplex meaning to wind around, or clasp), which will sort of connects the line all the way from the Oldhammi hedge behind the barn now, and the Monastery bamboo's, the brandisii and the Guadua "less thorny's" behind the dunny...
We also started potting on the eucalyptus deglupta seedlings. We have about 250+ in 4 inch pots so far. Probably we will have about 1000 or so this round. I did some sums last night, and figured that if we do do 1000, and pot them into 1 gallon plastic bags with the basic 50/50% cinder/compost mixture, with 1 cubic foot = 7.48 gallons, and there being 27 cubic feet in a cubic yard, well, we'll need about 5 yards of potting mix to do it. That would cost us about $200. So, 20cents a tree, not counting the cost of the four inch pots used so far, nor the labour, but still a pretty good price, when you consider that this nursery http://www.forestnursery.com/ doesn't even grow their deglupta's to that size, but would charge $5 a tree for a smiliar quantity of other species... Now, if we plant each tree into a hole twice the size of a 1 gallon pot, with that hole being mixed 50/50 with topsoil and a cinder/compost mix, well, I guess, that would cost another $200 near enough, and would push the price per tree up to 40cents each, of course, without any labor or costs associated with mulching, weed suppression and pruning. Still, while it isn't advisable to count your board feet before they are milled, that still seems like a winner, eh?
I guess we need to research a little bit about foresting delgupta's... What spacings, are they allelopathic to other forest trees, what trees and bamboo will grow well with them? What pruning regime if any is necessary?

We spread sawdust and newspaper in garden pathways, and picked up a couple more bags from Vanover cabinets. Still waiting for the motherload of fine dust to come out of his hopper...
More beets were planted in the old zinnia gallery and a new dome bed was planted up.

What a couple of days... That bloody van. Jeez. It has eaten another starter...
Wasted most of the day trying to figure that out and got a lot of grease all over me...
After lunch I just decided to give up on it and go mulch the pterocarps and albizzia's that I put in last week, using the mulch that I shredded yesterday, which was an accumulation of several months worth of goat fodder... While doing that, I drained Geoff's roof tanks onto the guadua hedge and decided to plant another one in one of the big holes we dug last month. I had put some cinders in last week when I borrowed Geoff's truck, and today there was some sand/compost blend left in the truck from the other day at malte's and when that came out with a mix of gliricida/pidgeon pea chips I realised that I had a good amount of material for the super hole for a bamboo. I added a bucket of goat poo's to the mixture too. I think it will do pretty well...

Okay, so putting the several months worth of prunings through the borrowed chipper, used perhaps a gallon of gas, and took about an hour and a half at least. So, it was quite a lot of labour all together, when you count all the trips to feed the goats. In the end we mulched about 5 trees with it. Bit of an anto climax. Sure would like to have one of those bigarse chippers that can grind 6 inch trunks up...

I also lately weedwacked the field above the barn, and today I raked it off... now that our thinking is more to make it a raised beds sort of market garden, instead of a cacao based food forest, I am thinking to move all the williams bananas out to the edges so that they serve as windbreak and don't well, get in the way...

What a couple of days... That bloody van. Jeez. It has eaten another starter...
Wasted most of the day trying to figure that out and got a lot of grease all over me...
After lunch I just decided to give up on it and go mulch the pterocarps and albizzia's that I put in last week, using the mulch that I shredded yesterday, which was an accumulation of several months worth of goat fodder... While doing that, I drained Geoff's roof tanks onto the guadua hedge and decided to plant another one in one of the big holes we dug last month. I had put some cinders in last week when I borrowed Geoff's truck, and today there was some sand/compost blend left in the truck from the other day at malte's and when that came out with a mix of gliricida/pidgeon pea chips I realised that I had a good amount of material for the super hole for a bamboo. I added a bucket of goat poo's to the mixture too. I think it will do pretty well...

Okay, so putting the several months worth of prunings through the borrowed chipper, used perhaps a gallon of gas, and took about an hour and a half at least. So, it was quite a lot of labour all together, when you count all the trips to feed the goats. In the end we mulched about 5 trees with it. Bit of an anto climax. Sure would like to have one of those bigarse chippers that can grind 6 inch trunks up...

I also lately weedwacked the field above the barn, and today I raked it off... now that our thinking is more to make it a raised beds sort of market garden, instead of a cacao based food forest, I am thinking to move all the williams bananas out to the edges so that they serve as windbreak and don't well, get in the way...

Today I felt mostly overwhelmed and underpowered. In the nursery I discovered that the rats have been into not only the peanut sprouts but also the calliandras and the sesbania grandifloras... It is my own fault for not being more careful about providing habitat for them, I suppose, to an extent, but it is still pretty frustrating.
Of course, I was back to weedwacking to keep "Roo's Paddock" down, and so I spent several hours doing that, feeling worried about whether or not I will be able to repair the tractors steering and pissed off at the bastards who stole the first weedwacker. Ie, if we had had the good weedwacker all winter we would have kept on top of the grass much easier and the edges wouldn't be so overgrown with nahiku. Maybe...
Anyway, this morning I stuck little pieces of bamboo into the ground all around the lower chicken paddockl in an effort to stop them getting out through the smaller holes. Also pruned off the pidgeon peas in that part of the garden, gave the pods to the birds over the fence and through the remainder of the stems around the papayas there.
Planted another 27 pidgeon peas after Roo's tractor.
Fed the goats sesbania sesban cuttings and picked up a bunch of pidgeon pea stems to be mulched.
Thinned out some corn, transplanting some of the thinnings to a new bed.
Fixed a leaking water line...

We finally got around to finishing the goat house roof... We actually did a very ramshackle job, sticking bits of 2 x 4 in here and there where the bamboo looked like it was going to die soon, and so we could nail up a piece of wood that would hold a gutter. We added some pieces of the fibreglass roofing, which is pretty dodgy... But hopefully the guttering will run most of the water away from the goats feet, and reduce the muddiness in there... So, I didn't get the upper container covered, as there simply wasn't enough of that kind of roofing left to do it properly. Walking around up there though, it is getting pretty thin and I guess it will be leaking sooner than later, so I will be keeping my eyes open for something for that...
After lunch we removed most of the remaining fibreglass to a spot in between the swales to suppress the nahiku and be a floor for a new nursery area. It will get a little afternoon shade from a Java Plum, and it has hose access from the new line that went in yesterday. We moved down a bunch of trays full of 4 inch pots using the red truck.
We also dropped in pidgeon pea seedlings and peanut cuttings in an area we are going to sheet mulch this morning, that should give some windbreak for the proposed dwarf citrus orchard... And then the sun went down and bad light stopped play.

Today I woke up pretty late as I didn't get to bed before midnight. Struggled up to the nursery to get everyone wet, and was then pleasantly suprised to see that the corn that Bach planted last friday had come up. No carrots yet though...
Then I tried to get on with the water system, and besides a few interuptions managed to get it happening by about 2pm. One of the interruptions was one of those classic Permaculture things, where you set out to do one thing and you get led away on various interelated tasks... I had to prune back a lot of pidgeon peas just to be able to roll the pipe out, and there was some nahiku grass popping up that I really had to pull before I did the chop and drop in that area... so, I guess in effect I spent about an hour weeding and mulching the two Bambusa oldhammii's in that part of the windbreak... after the water system was in place I gave those two plants a good drink too. They are just starting to leaf out, am expecting some good action from them in the next few months...
After lunch I brought in two loads of mulch... I could probably rake up about another load or two from what I cut the other day before the steering on the tractor went out, but it will be tough raking as it was the first very rough cut... oh my god. I can feel a lower back spasm coming on. Oh for a 50 hp tractor with an 8foot landscaping rake. sigh....
I also mulched a couple of the Inge's over on the other side of the gulch. They and the Jacarandas I planted in there, well, back in November I suppose, they are doing well...

I thought today, about making metal plant tags and inscribing some sort of code on them which would identify when they went in the ground. It would be nice to compile some kind of research database like that as we have discussed before. Of course, it is yet another task, and it is hard enough getting them in the ground, and fed and watered and mulched, without adding the whole extra dimension of being a database to boot... Still, we should give it a go...

The fork and the rake fell off the back of the truck on the second load out of the gulch, so on my way back I took the ladder down to the secret mango tree. It will be such a cool little hideaway I tell you...

I drained the 50 gallon tank on Geoff's roof to the three Guaduas I transplanted the other day after that, in the meantime I rode the purple cruiser back and forth to the black sapote's where I dropped in some pidgeon peas in rings around them so that we have a nice mulch crop for those lovely diospyros trees...

So, tomorrow there are so many things that I would love to try to achieve, but who knows what we will actually get done. I am afraid to make a list because it would be ridiculous.

Okay, so on Tuesday I went to work for Joan, and she sent me to Kahului to run various errands... which was cool as I got to do some stuff for this place a the same time... stopped in at the irrigation supply and got the fittings needed to run lines out into the new ocean side of the barn food forest development.
Oh, before I went to Joan's I got up really early and watered the nursery and as much of the swales as I could get without dragging hoses... maybe this was impetus for me to get the hose points set up properly as it has been dry and I have been barely keeping up...
I tried to order the bearings and the manual for the tractor but it came to more than we had in the cheque account so I had to put it off until we could deposit some more in there, which I was also able to do whilst running Joan's errands, one of which was to go to the property maps section of the county building and search the numbers for the whole haiku area, as she is working on a committee that is working on affordable housing... of course, I had a look at the maps for this property and was interested to see that EMI owns .2 of an acre within the boundaries of this property? Brad, did you know that? It is the "New Haiku Ditch" so, I wonder if they have an underground line going through this place. WOuld love to know what you know about this...
In the evening I did actually do a little grocery shopping, and I did get a load of paper, although I could have fit more in the van if I had been really committed to the idea... Maybe writing lists out helps to focus me on what I need to achieve for the day...