I appologize for making you wait over a week for a new post. Today, the crew worked up near the top of the property planting a new plot. We planted 137 new plants, not including all the nitrogen fixing plants. 4 jack fruit 10 sandal wood 12 peach palm 8 nene leau 68 koa 12 kukui 23 a’ali’i . after we finished the planting the crew worked in the nursery weeding and maintaining the plants.
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The construction crew working has now finished the footer for the quonset hut. The stem wall pour comes next, and then after that, the concrete floor. All of our achievements always excite us and make us feel grateful for the blessings of this life.
The other workers went back up into our most recent planting and finished weeding the young plants and replacing the ones that the California grass swallowed. We replaced the empty spots with 10 Kokui, 13 Koa, and 5 Sandlewood trees!
P.S. If my posts seem a little boring, please forgive me, I’m still figuring out life (haha Ryan Funny edit) the details of this website. Any comments on my postings would be appreciated.
We have two new workers from Hana on the construction crew: Bryer and Lyman. We are right at this moment pouring the foundation for the quonset hut! Here are some pictures I took about 30 minutes ago. I’ll add the video when I figure out how to upload it from my phone in the right format.
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In the nursery,The Malay Dwarf propagation is going well. We have more than 500 cuttings started so far with a total of 1000 being our goal.
Check in again often to see more on the construction and other farm activities!
Thanks to Obama’s new program for putting youth in full time jobs, the first month’s salary comes courtesy of the federal government. Two new workers are here on the farm to help us build the building for the bamboo treatment center. Uila (We-La) and James have been doing a professional job and both are great workers with experience in construction. The purpose of this program is to put young people in full time jobs hoping that they will end up finding themselves invaluable to the employer and staying on.
In other news, the crew worked in the upper plantation weeding our young plants and doing some guava clearing. In the areas where the trees didn’t survive, the crew planted Koa and Sandalwood trees.
Happy May 19th and timber maintenance! Today the crew went up into our forest and pruned some older Narra (pterocarpus indicus) trees with a pole saw. The coppice material was chipped back onto the forest floor. Teak, Kamani, and Narra were also fertilized with organic seabird guano. The Schizolobium parahyba trees are beginning to flower again. Sometimes called a yellow jacaranda, they are fast growing ornamental trees. Also, the monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) is putting on a lot of new growth. (Correction on 6/4/10. Sorry, the tree is not a monkeypuzzle, it is a bunya bunya tree (Araucaria bidwillii) from Australia, sometimes called a false monkeypuzzle. The pine cones are edible too!)
On another front, our new cook, Michael, is starting tomorrow. Jade, our devoted, generous, loving and kind friend who has graced us with breakfast and lunch for 4 1/2 months will be joining the crew in the field work until she returns to the mainland in July. We are up to 8 “apprentices” right now, which is all we have housing for. Our most recent addition started on Monday. Aloha.
Photos by Ryan Zucco
Apologies for the delay in updating the blog, we’ve been working overtime on the new Whispering Winds website. We’re very excited about the new site and hope to share it with you soon.
Earlier this week we went out to fertilize our peach palm trees in the lower orchard. Peach palms, or Bactris gasipaes, are known in Central America as the favorite Pehibaye, and produce a wonderful potato-like fruit that is very flavorful. Peach palms are also a great source of heart of palm, which can be harvested sustainably since the tree grows in clumps rather than as a single trunk.
We learned how to clean heart of pal,m and enjoyed them for lunch the next day with some ginger.
A few of us hiked down from Haleakala through the Kaupo gap this weekend so we’re a bit sore this morning. We all spread out and did different work: some of us continued laying forms for the driveway, a few worked in the nursery propagating more bamboo, and some worked with our newly subsidized chicken community, setting up a new coop.
In the mean time, bamboo continues to be a major source of innovation in the world around us. Here are a few great links to some design projects that feature bamboo as the primary design material. We’re especially impressed by the craftsmanship shown by Beppu’s best bamboo craftsmen.
These eyeglasses are another clever approach at shaping bamboo into a unique and modern product.
After more work on the driveway this morning, we went up to our workshop to learn about bending bamboo. The most basic bamboo bending technique is quite simple: add heat to a bamboo pole and bend as needed. We used a propane torch, and experimented with different bamboo species and varying degrees of dryness. In our rather unscientific analysis, we found that partially dried guadua (a few weeks after cutting, but still green) seemed to yield the best results. It’s important to gradually heat the pole rather than burn it too quickly, as the pole can split if there is too much pressure or heat applied at once.
All photos © 2010 Dan Bloch
Today we worked in the nursery splitting up gracilis and textilis bamboo for propagation. We made our own potting soil mixutres, one specifically designed for younger plants, which contains finely ground coconut husks, and another for more mature plants that had more wood chips and cinder.
We also recently learned how to properly sharpen a chainsaw. Chainsaws can be tricky to sharpen, but the best way is to first sharpen the cutting tooth with a round file, either following the same angle line indicated on the top of the cutting tooth, or at a 90 degree angle, to avoid hitting the tooth with your hands.
Here’s an image of a sharp cutting tooth:
and here’s a dull cutting tooth:
Note that the sharp cutting tooth has a straight edge, while the dull tooth is rounded.
Next, it’s important to file down the rake or depth gauge. If the depth gauge is too high then the chip size, which is based on the difference in height between the depth gauge and the cutting tooth, will be too small and the chainsaw won’t cut efficiently.
Always remember to wear protective gear when working with a chainsaw. We use protective eyewear, kevlar chaps, heavy gloves, and ear protection.
All photos © 2010 Dan Bloch
While we spend most of our time out on the farm working with things that grow, there are moments when we have to do some more mundane tasks, like continuing work on our steep driveway. Yesterday afternoon we scraped down the second half of the driveway, using a traditional Hawaiian ‘O’o stick, a pickaxe, shovels, and some heavily gloved hands. We laid out new molds and rebar, and returned this morning to pour the concrete. We managed to get most of it poured, floated, and finished before getting hit with torrential rain. Ten minutes later the sun was out again, and we finished up before heading up to the farm house for some great rice and curry.
Photos 1 and 2 by Andy Moore, all others © 2010 Dan Bloch
