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.
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.
Yesterday everyone went up the hill and planted more trees. There is always more. Native and polynesian introduced species, with a glyricidia and narra NFT nurse crop were installed in good weather and good spirits. There were fun games played as everyone kept busy. It is such rewarding work to do, and at the end of the day makes me feel good to see the accomplishment that many hands make.
At around 4 pm we stirred the 500. Some cleaned the windows on the barn while we took turns stirring the biodynamic prep for the farm. For an hour, we stir it to create a vortex in the water, and then once it gets going create chaos in the barrel by switching directions. About 3 times a minute the direction of the stir changes direction. Then the prep is loaded in the pto driven pump mounted on the back of “Zeus,” our John Deere 5420 tractor. One load covers about 12-14 acres.
Today, two people stayed down in the nursery and cleaned plants that are going to another nursery in Hana. The rest of the crew went up to the planting to finish mulching and interplanting with NFTs. Ryan had a good week putting the Mule back together, replacing a hydraulic hose on the Kubota L5450, changing the blades on the chipper, replacing a high pressure power steering hose on the Dodge 3500, and fixing Jade’s car. What a tremendous week to be alive and to be doing good work on our blessed Earth.
One hundred sixty trees ranging from koa’ia, lignum vitae, breadnut, avocado, citrus, a’ali’i, ohi’a, coconut, peach palm, and macadamia nut. Eight people on the crew and we got all the holes cleaned, fertilized, and planted. More than half were watered and mulched only because we ran out of water. We’ll get back to it later this week and finish the job. We started down the hill a little early and rescued some lychees and koas from the california grass. It rained on us in the morning nicely and the sun came out later in the morning. Here are some pictures from this morning.
On Friday, we had good weather for planting. It was cloudy and drizzly. We planted 120 plus trees which consisted of A’ali’i, Ohi’a, Koa’ia, peach palm, a few coconuts, and an avocado. We also direct seeded some avocado and jackfruit. Most of the trees were growing in dibble tubes, so all we had to do was poke a hole in the ground and plant the tree. Spiked compost was added on top and then watered in. a 5 gallon bucket of wood chips was put around the tree to retain moisture and suppress weeds from growing. We got all the trees watered in, but only mulched out half of them by the time the lunch bell rang. On Monday we will finish mulching with chips.
Peach palm
Koa'ia
A'ali'i
Ohi'a
Today the crew went up the mountain again to clear guava and some Christmas Berry (Schinus terebinthifolius). We were stoked to find some older Ohi’a trees which were on the edge of the cliff. According to the Living Wilderness website, …[in the] Hawaiian legend, the tree (Ohi’a Lehua) is actually a young warrior. Pele, the goddess of fire, wanted to marry the warrior. When he refused, she turned him into a tree. The other gods weren’t able to turn him back, so they turned his true love into the lehua blossom so they could be reunited. It’s said that if you pick one of the blossoms, it will rain – the tears of lovers. The crew powered through the scrub trees today with the help from our cook, Jade, who wanted a day in the field to learn and steward the ‘aina (land). In other news, Whispering WInds Bamboo received a grant to purchase a pressure treatment vessel. This is such good news for us. We will be able to offer treated bamboo poles after it is installed, hopefully by late summer.
