Summer is coming back to us with lots of lightning and thunder... and a strange phenomenological event that occured just yesterday, was that I saw a pair of Chukars wandering between the barn and the clothesline yesterday. I've seen them over in Makena side before, and actually on the Hana Highway between Haumana and Holokai, but never on this property...
I have been doing the lovely headless chicken thing around the property this week, gradually getting a little bit of a lot of different stuff done.
Today I potted on 18 Sesbania grandifloras into one gallon pots, and maybe 12 Eucalyptus deglupta into one gallon bags, I planted 50 cocoyams on the middle swale, I planted about 30 leftover perennial peanuts in Takako's food forest, and some what do you call them, Brasilian spinach or Alternanthera sissoo, in there as well. I tried again to get the tractor shed barrel collection to all hold water in unison once again, and I squirted penetrating oil into the pitman arms on the 8N. I dug a hole and buried sister meaty (her head was ripped off by Loki's chihuahua) and did some more of my sawdust really thick sheet mulch vs nahiku grass experiment. I planted a pterocarpus indicus at the top of the driveway...

So, we have been buggering around with non-P/c type stuff. Showing people around etc. Yesterday we went on a mission to Lahaina to look at a cheap piece of crap F150. The 4wd worked, but no windshield wipers or signals, and no harnesses or anything to wire them up. So we passed. Couldn't really find a good spot ot park to pick the small mangos at the catholic school, which is the only tree that has really ripe fruit yet. But it will be a good summer over that side for mangos I think.

Before the rains tapered off I put in a bunch of trees that hopefully will grow well and prevent views of our gulch from maltes barn, or more to the point, will hide their barn from us as we move around the gulch... PLanted about 10 moluccan albizzias, 1 marang, 1 pterocarpus, 2 casuarina, 3 qld maple, a litchi, a coconut and a malabar chestnut. THey are all pretty close together, so that hopefully will encourage them to grow up quickly, and reach full canopy quickly... then once they have had a headstart we can seque in bamboo's and rainbow euc's.
Simulatneously put in a bunch more peanut in takako's food forest, also some cacao and hawaiian chili plants.
and, a hedge of multiplex alphonse karr in "roo's paddock" which is the space between the barn and the containers, yeah?

Yesterday Lorinda and I took down the tank that was catching water at the Lillikoi cabin. Lichen helped me take apart the gulch solar show. Or was that the day before yesterday? No, it was yesterday... Last night, before and after school I picked up parts to put them back together again.
Sort of amazed myself at getting the soldering for the shower manifold right the first time, although I had to go borrow Malte's torch, because the one that I bought last summer inexplicably crapped itself. Also managed to get the steering wheel off the tractor. Realised late in the day, what a fairly overwhelming task it will be to rebuild the steering box. Oh well, I don't have much to lose at this point.
I cleaned the tank, inside and out, but just as I was getting ready to take it up the hill the truck ran out of gas. Ha!
My plan to divert the greywater is still on hold, as I realised that the reduction down to 3/4" pipe is almost certainly going to get clogged and back up into the sinks and so on... So, I don't I guess having an opening that we can use to flush it out will be necessary. I settled on this position after bailing out about 50 gallons of really festy water. Fertilised the monastery bamboo's, the amplexifolias and the jakfruit...

Yesterday was a good day on the farm, not least because the sun came out for a while. Also the baby goats started to frolic, which is really a pretty amzingly beautifil thing to see.
First off I milked Sheba. She was a complete bitch about it. She kicked so much I had to tie up both her legs. She tried to sit down on the job so much I had her tie her collar to the top of the milk stand. In the end she only gave me one cup. Still, it tasted damn fine in the coffee, and I expect she will get a bit more relazex about it as we progess...
Spent a few hours in the nursery next, potting up more of the deglupta's and cocoyams, and propagating a a tray of sesbans, and then I got busy building a rain catching roof for the 20 000 gallon tank on the hill. Even with all this rain it has been getting grained faster than I can pump water up there, (electricity being scarce in periods of rainy weather) so the obvious solution is to use some of the recycled roofing and timber that we have scavenged to catch some water. There is actually a pretty big clearing next to the tank, so that a 15 x 15 foot roof fits in there where noone but green harvest helicopters will ever see it. I got the frame put up yesterday, and when I get some roofing screws today or tomorrow it won't take long I expect to put on the tin.
I thought a lot about building it with secondary functions in mind. It did seem like a bit of a waste to use all that material and not get a dwelling or an animal shelter out of it or anything. I suppose it is possible that is could be a shelter for goats, or even pigs at some stage, or a wwoofer could hang a hammock under the roof and sleep up there... It could also be a shed for batteries/inverter if we put a wind turbine up there one day.
Well I guess I better get ready to go milk that she-goat.

Yesterday was a good day on the farm, not least because the sun came out for a while. Also the baby goats started to frolic, which is really a pretty amzingly beautifil thing to see.
First off I milked Sheba. She was a complete bitch about it. She kicked so much I had to tie up both her legs. She tried to sit down on the job so much I had her tie her collar to the top of the milk stand. In the end she only gave me one cup. Still, it tasted damn fine in the coffee, and I expect she will get a bit more relazex about it as we progess...
Spent a few hours in the nursery next, potting up more of the deglupta's and cocoyams, and propagating a a tray of sesbans, and then I got busy building a rain catching roof for the 20 000 gallon tank on the hill. Even with all this rain it has been getting grained faster than I can pump water up there, (electricity being scarce in periods of rainy weather) so the obvious solution is to use some of the recycled roofing and timber that we have scavenged to catch some water. There is actually a pretty big clearing next to the tank, so that a 15 x 15 foot roof fits in there where noone but green harvest helicopters will ever see it. I got the frame put up yesterday, and when I get some roofing screws today or tomorrow it won't take long I expect to put on the tin.
I thought a lot about building it with secondary functions in mind. It did seem like a bit of a waste to use all that material and not get a dwelling or an animal shelter out of it or anything. I suppose it is possible that is could be a shelter for goats, or even pigs at some stage, or a wwoofer could hang a hammock under the roof and sleep up there... It could also be a shed for batteries/inverter if we put a wind turbine up there one day.
Well I guess I better get ready to go milk that she-goat.

Yesterday we went and looked at a too good to be true f350 dump truck 4wd for just $7500. It was all the way over in Lahaina and the guy was adamant over the phone that it had no big issues. As soon as it got to over 45 mph the front end start shaking violently. The guy was a big fat property developing bufo/snake man. I pretended to be pretty clueless (it isn't that hard for me to pull that off because it ain't that far from the truth) and it was just pitiful to see how dishonest he was prepared to be in order to get me to buy the truck. "Oh yeah, you probably just need to get the wheels balanced and that will all go away...". What an arsehole...

So anyway, I was pretty excited for a while there yesterday, at the prospect of having a 4wd dump truck, and a 4wd tractor with which to really rock this thing out... Oh well.

On a brighter more down to earth note, I collected a bunch of Pheasant Wood seeds the other day. This is a legume tree with very good quality wood. Had Bach clean and sort the seeds yesterday morning while I took a load of sugar canes up to the fruit stand.

The baby goats have all survived and are doing pretty well.

Not much blogging ltely because we've had incessantly cloudy weather just lately, so computer use has been a bit minimal, but today's events were kind of momentous... Sheba had her kids this afternoon at about 3pm! 3 cute little ones. Two bucks and a doe. Because Keoni and Jerise are moving to Kauai Lorinda wants to call the doe Kauai, and because there is a Kona storm brewing Lorinda wants to call the two bucks Kona and Storm. I would just as soon call the bucks Paradise and Mart, and we will probably give the doe to Loki for the breeders fee anyway, and she doesn't even name her goats so who cares. Lorinda went and got Loki because we didn't know what the hell we should do for them... I went in there and sort of tried to help them find their mothers teats, but not sure I needed to really. Loki gave them the seal of approval and cooed and clucked over them with us too.
Another big deal that occured today was that Ruby caught her first rat and was very proud about it. The vet actually said that if Ruby chases rats there is a good chance that Uzi might unleash some of his Jack Russell nature and start chasing them too. So there is hope.
Did I mention that Mingo had to go to the vet the other day? he had an absess from fighting Malte and Jen's cats. Hope he got a few good ones in.