I planted two fruit trees today, down there on the "bank" on the eastern side of the pond... One Kasturi, and one Lalee Jewo. These are both related to mango's, but are hopefully more suited to our wet climate, and are probably more primitive relatives... I did this after getting a load of mulch from the dump. I mulched the trees in well, then planted peanut around them, and pineapple tops under them, in sort of crescents to catch mulch ala the Maya Mountain Research farm method, and them spread the mulch around in the spaces between. In the next couple of weeks we'll see how many weeds come through the mulch, we'd weed it, then we'll hit it hard with peanut seedlings...

A long week, in which we discovered that the EkoCompost facility is giving away shredded green waste, and thus collect 8 yards of said material over 4 different trips. And in which we finally gave up on Gary's pond and filled it with organic matter and made it into a banana circle.
And in which we concentrated our efforts on weeding around the dome garden, and establishing a drip/leaky hose system for watering that garden. And in which many pineapple tops were planted in food forest sections and around the dome garden.
And in which we weeded back the bank immediately above the large pond and planted it to pidgeon peas, with the promise to ourselves that we will follow up with much mulch and many peanut seedlings when they have been well established.
And in which we changed the oil in the truck.

Haven't blogged much just lately, as I have been doing stuff with my parents who are visiting from Tasmania.
But, we've been doing stuff around here all the same. Major activity has been preparing holes for Aspers that are coming in the next weeks. Also clearing the bank between the two lower terraces in the gulch by the bottom pond.
Ran driplines to bamboo plantings; need to get more 1/2" pipe to continue that work.
The sunpump keeps pumping.
Hopefully we'll get some rains soon to top off our ponds and tanks...
We went on a boat this morning and saw spinner dolphins. bloody marvellous they were.

Another week with the wwoofers comes to an end. On wednesday our weeding program was partially interupted by a call from Greg. He was hoping to borrow the tiller to get some propagation beds for some Gigantachloa atroviolacea (a gorgeous, timber quality black bamboo) that he and Ramana had come upon at a wholesale rate, and needed to something with pronto. Of course, our tiller is still at the repair shop, but we decided that I should bring Eric and Tim up there and between us all we could get it done with hand tools. As it was, the plot had lots of roots so the tiller would have sucked at it anyway, and it was a good morning. I got them a load of cinders, and they put some extra good stuff like humates, and some charred, shredded coco fibres in the beds, so I am expected them to do really well! We will of course get a nice share of the atro's when they are ready, but they gave me a textilis gracilis at the end of the day as a token or whatever... which is cool, because I've wanted that species here for a while.
Sharesa and Tim worked in the garden thursday while Eric and I got ready to plant 9 Aspers that are coming next month. We cut back grasses and vines and dug holes on thursday. We also hauled rocks down there and filled in the spillway where it looked like it could erode and potentially break the dam. The majority of the Aspers from this round are going in underneath the dam wall, which ought to help stop erosion from there, I hope. I think we'll work on vetiver on the wall itself, where the wall isn't great boulders...
Friday, Eric went harvesting Lillikoi's and did a bunch of clearing around stuff in the gulch. The little mango that is always strangled by nahiku, and some coconuts up on the western ridge...
Tim fixed the wheelbarrow that I ran over with the truck, and made some small progress with the tractor, I think...
Lorinda has been doing a lot in the garden, I think, with Sharesa and Tim's help. I actually planted some lettuce seedlings in there last night...
Today, friday, I got a load of cinders, the majority of which went into the holes we dug for the Aspers. I went to the irrigation supply house and got parts for doing irrigation driplines for these bamboo's. After dinner I ran around trying to get lines setup for plants we already have in the ground. I guess in time, we will be able to reuse some of stuff in new places, although, a lot of the bamboo's will probably appreciate irrigation even when they are mature...

I started planting out sesbania sesbans and pidgeon peas on the terrace down by the pond yesterday afternoon, sort of against my better judgement, because I don't yet have the groundcovers to go with it, but we have them on the way in the nursery right next to that spot, and the trees are ready to get out of the pots. I space the sesbanias so that in lieu of an accurate map of the area, I can start to plan where the fruit trees will go, most of which require about 30 foot spacings... I actually handpulled a lot of the grass, it came pretty easily...

Yesterday we got the solar pump on line. It took about 3 hours to fill the 500 gallon tank at the top of the property. Pretty cool.
KNowingt that we had irrigation ability, we moved our attention to preparing the textilis holes and getting the dripline ready, only to have Malte come out and complain that he didn't want that high of a species right there. I thought that we had discussed this and that he had already accepted that was what was going there, and that he was having problems with another spot, so that was kind of frustrating and threw me for the rest of the day, which was annoying, since I had three workers to direct and had planned to keep them busy mulching and planting and watering that hedge.
So... we turned our attention to harvesting the salivinia from the top pond and mulching the barn dome garden, and seeing about culling the goldfish. Eric, Tim, Sharesa and myself all got into the pond and scooped the weed, and transfered it to the truck via a wheelbarrow and large buckets.
In the process we realised that the "goldfish" are in fact a golden kind of tilapia. The reason they are so small, I guess is that there are too many in there competing for food. So, I am not sure how to proceed. I think we will continue to try and drain the pond down to the point where we can cull the population down, but we probably won't try to replace them with the silvery blue variety we have in the bottom pond... and we'll probably start feeding them and develop a cantilever net system up there to harvest them too...
We also discovered how deep the silt is in that pond and began to try to remove it, and then realised that it would be much easier once we have drained the pond.
Of course, as luck would have it, the rains seem to be back now, 7mm last night!

Fairly constructive day. the top two swales got weeded by the whole crew, then the middle bottom swale was mulched by eric and sharesa after lunch. they also planted more peanut and pineapple under the coconuts in the new sugar patch above the barn ,while Tim and I worked at setting up the pole and frame to hold the solar panels for the pump, which came yesterday.

Tim spent some time this morning moving pots and weed supressing sheets of polycarbonate down into the gulch where he is going to propagate peanut.
Eric came by and did some more mulching and planting peanut/pineapple.
I tried to continue tilling the field immediately south of the barn, only to have the tiller start to belch white smoke furiously out the muffler. WHat could this mean? Does this mean that the valve is stuck? Does it mean there is a bunch of crap in the carb? Oil in the cylinder? Does this mean that something got terminally chewed up inside that small engine? Does this mean that it is actually a waste of my time as a Permaculture planter to be labouring behind a 24" tiller for days on end, and that a compact utitlity tractor could do the same work in minutes?
Well, anyway, I put the tiller in the barn and went back to planting peanut/pidgeon pea and pineapple tops, with the help of the occaisional light shower, and in the end I turned my attention to pulling weeds out of the peanut patches that were established about a year ago around the edge, and that were pretty much covered in grasses and hono hono (commelina). In the process I actually uncovered an Abiu that I thought had been lost forever.
I did the evening chores because Lorinda was in town doing laundry and getting a pallet load of compressed cardboard from a department store loading dock.

Today was overcast, but by lunchtime we had still not had any precipitation worth recording in the rainfall statistics. I made a comment that we should record the number of days where we get no sun and no rain - obviously not brilliant for you when you are off the grid and rely on both of those things falling out of the sky for your basic necessities.
Anyway, after lunch we actually got a few light showers which gradually built up in intensity until finally around dusk we actually got some heavy rain. By the time of writing we actually have 5mm in the gauge, first time this has happened in a month.
Had Tim work on the tractor today, and where I failed to remove races and seals he succeeded, and after months of that thing sitting all taken apart and generally dishevelled looking we actually managed to put it back together again, and had just one surplus bolt at the end of proceedings. !
Unfortunately the battery has no juice after all that time and the carb has developed a fuel leak, probably from us jerking the choke cable around. If its not one thing it is another. Still, full points to Tim for doing a sterling job as chief engineer, for the 3rd friday in a row.
I ran the tiller for a while in the new sugar cane field, and weeded some of the peanut in that area, and directed our newest volunteer Eric, who moved woodchips over an area that has just has cardboard and rough mulch for a while, and then he put in some pineapple tops and peanut seedlings, so really a nice thing that it rained.
Lorinda and Sharesa worked with the goats and in the annual garden...

We have designated wednesdays as the group weedpull. we covered the bottom swale today, which had the least peanut planted in it. really not enough enough peanut planted in it evidently. still, once we had weeded the whole bed, it does look like their is a lot more peanut than before.
we took a break in the midday, I went to town to dump the trash at the dump/ do banking/get compost/rescue a single mother from her drunken abusive boyfriend and pick up goat food (Del's is now being managed by a very switched on goat aware woman who has a flock of 80 in Haiku), and I picked up food scraps from vegout and twin falls (sold a box of lillikoi while I was at it - ones I had collected whilst planting degluptas in the bottom of the gulch yesterday - lillikoi's into brandisii yeah!) and in the afternoon we spread mulch on the swale and planted a few more peanut seedlings and used up so much more of the last available pond water. we also put out about 20 more pineapple tops that we collected as part of the food scraps from twin falls. also picked up eric who is going to do work trade for us while marshall is away in mainlandland.
spoke to jim from sunpumps about the solar pump for our needs before I went to town, and moved some money to pay for the order I will make tomorrow...

Dug more tree holes in the bottom of the gulch, planted a leftover bradisii that had been waiting in the shade, and some more pidgeon peas around the degluptas, because I was down there watering the brandisii's anyway. in the afternoon got the weedwacker out and hit around the guadua and bali white stripe on the driveway, and went along the top goat swale, trying to clear some grass to give some of that peanunt that so underwhelmed in the photo's some room to move. you are right of course, the peanut up there really looks terrible. I was actually saddened to see a big patch that seems to have died since the drought. That really sucks. I would have thought that that stuff would be well enough established to handle this dry spell. Probably it will come back when it gets some water.
Lorinda went to a party the other night and got a few offers to borrow cheap pumps, she is going to pick one up today (I hope) and so we'll see if they can help us here a little bit.

A week in which the pump stopped working and it rained less than one inch... Certain plants that we put in after it stopped raining are really looking crap. Nurseries that used to get gravity fed from the top pond aren't getting wet anymore. Normally, you can forget to water plants for a few days here and they don't die. Not right now...
Several financial challenges have prevented us from ordering the solar pump that would solve this water crisis, I think, but oh well... The main problem being that we sold a gas fridge to a certain long term tenant, and before we had recieved payment we went ahead and bought an AirX wind generator from a neighbour, only to find that the tenant had decided not to give us the money for the fridge since they don't feel it gets cold enough. So, we have the generator to power the pump, but not the money to buy the pump. Sucks. Of course, same tenant is also already in possession of 200 watts of solar that we never actually said he could use, and that would have been enough to run the pump, so you know, I am pretty disgusted with the situation, but the truth is, we could never make the monthly payment to London were it not for the tenant in question so I am really as they say, "stuck between a rock and a hard place", or "it is six of one, half a dozen of another".
The washing machine packed it in, which I guess is a big blessing, since we are so low on water. Now we all just stink a bit more than usual.
We have been collecting a lot of scraps from Twin Falls fruit stand. Peak tourist season and mango madness has meant that they were creating a huge fruit fly scenario, which they just couldn't cope with, so our worms, chickens and goats are living well... And the sweet stench of rotting mango's is mingling with our own odours in what might be described as odiforous comingling.
Today I scored a crate full of pineapple tops, which is just what I've been looking for... Pineapple tops all over those swales should be good. Pineapple fruit all over those swales in a couple of years will be even better I suppose.
Spent a lot of today interviewing a potential worker called Eric, and then the remainder repairing the steps to the lillikoi cabin, which really should be replaced all together. Tim spent a certain amount of time repairing the sink, which had it been put in properly originally wouldn't have needed it now, and so on...
We did get a swale weeded this week, and we finished digging holes for planting textilis to hide the neighbours "barn".
Here comes suburbia...