Ke'o and 'Ele

the other animals that live here

yes, we do have quite a few animals that we take care of. We're currently have 3 boys, 2 lambs (castrated males), 8 hens (would like more), 3 cats, and many many fish. This Thursday I pick up 3 baby pygmy goats.

but we also have animals we don't intend to feed, but who are living off of us.

Like this wild chicken. She struts around out chicken coop, eating grain that has been pushed out.

she also struts around the pool

And the pigs!!! he's a picture of one lovey, who ran across the driveway while I was on my way home.
we have since seen at least 10 more. GB happened upon parents with 8! piglets!




and then while my parents were visiting we had a dog who was chasing a pig fall into our pool at 12:30am and almost drown.


life is certainly not boring

GARDEN!

I just realized how I never put up pictures of the completed raied beds! And here I am with garden news....

Luka planted flowers- zinnias, sunflowers, calendula and marigolds
Here are his sprouts coming up on March 9, 2009

He also planted the pretty swiss chardHere he is on April 17th standing next to the same sunflower pictured in the first photo above!

Here are some photos of the veggie garden taken March 16th. We planted mostly greens then- bok choi, pak choi, several lettuces, kaleNoam's planting some bell peppers and some cukes

Here it is April 17th. We've been eating salads and stir fried greens regularly!

New Sheep!

We decided to get some sheep to put in the lower pasture. It's farther away from the house, so not as easy to watch.... and goats are $$.

GB went today to pick them up while I stayed home and waited for the 7 tweens who slept over to be picked up.

He arrived home and I was surprised to find that he was so smitten with the sheep that he invited them into the cab of the truck!

(just kidding.... the roads were bad from his place and GB didn't want the poor things sliding and bouncing all over the back of the truck)

You can see the black one's (Blackie?) legs sticking out from the back seat.The guy we got them from had bound their legs with duct tape

.... so even after taking it off, Blackie here was still a little out of it.

Free at LAST!

Picking Up the Sheep

I went to Shane's to pick up our new sheep. Of course I brought the truck, thinking I'd put the sheep in the back, but the road was so bumpy I decided to give the sheep a more comfortable ride.
Not, completely comfortable, but at least they weren't sliding into each other!

Our homestead from the air

On my last flight in to Hilo I snapped a pretty good shot of our whole homestead. You can almost see where the top of our driveway touches the highway at the very top edge of the photo. You can see both our river gulches and if you look closely, you can even see our two goat sheds: one down by the river and the other halfway between our shed and the neighbor's  (Glen's) house  at the top of the page. Obviously you have to click on the picture to get the details.

Seems to be working

At least the yucky work is paying off.
We've caught 8 mongoose. Today the trap lays empty (so far!).

Luka and I went out to the chickens and there was a hen sitting on 4 eggs. It's been awhile since 4 eggs could sit there w/o being snatched. That, and the chickens look "happy" (yes, I am anthropomophizing them).

We've had no luck on finding the goats, but have found 3 who will come live with us at the end of April.

Realities

It's not all fun and paradise here.

Last week we were saddened to find our 3 goaties missing. We searched high and low but have found no trace of them- no trail of eaten plants, no trail of poop.....
We're not sure if they got out on their own and then someone scooped them up.... or if they were stolen straight from their pasture.... or if they're wandering the neighborhood.
It's been over a week now and we're so sad :(((

And then our chickens have been terrorized by mongoose. We're lucky that the mongoose don't seem to be interested in the chickens themselves (they have been known to kill them ruthlessly), but are taking eggs AND chicken feed.
Each time a mongoose crawls under the fence into the chicken run, the poor birds scream and run and get all agitated. Not only is it heartwrenching to see, but stressed chickens don't lay so well.

When I cleared some brush near the chicken run, I found food scraps, and a ton of eggshells.

If you live in HI you know what a pest these animals are. They were introduced here in 1883 to control rats. Too bad people people didn't realize then that mongoose are diurnal where rats are nocturnal. The damage they've done here in the endangered species capital of the world is huge.

So the bottom line is that we bought a trap, and have been extinguishing them. So far in 1.5 days we've caught 6 of them. We'll see how many we catch today. It's not fun, but it's real.

Goat shed complete(ish)!

Building the goat shed
Day 1

It's wet.... but we're "free". GB and I went shopping for materials and brought them down to the site. The goats are very very curious.

All we did this afternoon was place the footings. Of course that took time, and it did rain on and off.

This is the goats' new river view.... lucky!

And rain sucks, but rain often= rainbows. This is just above us- towards the oceanThe day was not lost.... we went up to the shed so GB could cut down some 4x4s and some roofing. Check out the sparks flying!

Day 2:
GB was planning on animating.... but the Biermans offered to take Luka and I felt we should take advantage of the nice weather and child free day.

Here we start

A short while later things are taking shape

Rocky, Diego and Weed are curious. What ARE these humans doing??

Apparently Karen makes faces when she uses power tools. We borrowed Jake's sawzall....

This face helps her cut wood more effectively

gutters up (to catch rainwater into a pond for them.... no hoses down here!)

Then Karen had to leave to chauffeur children around.... so GB finished up ALL of the cleaning and putting in the small pond (thanks!)

Day 3:
The shed needs some paint on it so it'll last longer. So Luka and I head down to prime the boards.

He's telling me important things here

Of course it's important to take a lot of breaks. The goats love these weed-y gunpowder trees, and Luka knows it.

Done for now! It's lunch time!

And on the way up for lunch we see Ra'am and Noam. They had a 2 hour mandatory pull miconia session today. Here's Noam looking for more

And you can barely see Ra'am up there (with nasty miconia in the foreground) pulling weeds. He's on the hillside.

Now all we need for the shed is a coat of real paint and we're done. Sun is shining.... better get out there before it starts raining again!

Need Goat shelter!

we moved to goats, but they didn't have a shelter yet in their new pasture. I felt like eating was more important..... but I did put the large dog crate that we brought them home in down there.

Yesterday we got started on their shelter and it began to rain, and I saw that indeed, they are using the crate. All 3 go in at the same time!

does this make us real farmers?

Today GB and I trimmed the goat's hooves. This was a job I was really really dreading, but one that is totally necessary. Unfortunately we had no photographer, to show us wrangling with 3 little goats. But, for the record.... GB held each goat lovingly in his arms (after an initial freak-out they mostly calmed down and ate the grain we had for them), while I trimmed. I won't say it wasn't scary, but I do have a wee bit of experience trimming kids' nails.

The goats love their new home. All is good in the world of Rocky, Diego, and Weed.

moving the goats

Well the goats have been with us for a little over 4 months and they have eaten everything they like in their pasture. So we set out to make them a new one.

Busy GB decided it was worth it for us to hire someone to do it.... so we did.

Yesterday they told me that the pasture was done. So today Luka, Silas and I got the goats ready for the great migration of February 2009.

Silas was a little nervous. He thought we should have them on leashes or something. He doesn't understand about goats and the power of food.

We lured them out with a bucket of sweet grain. He's Luka showing them the way..... not towards the house, THAT way!They clearly know how to play follow the leader.

IN! And happily eating!

what? no more food???

More property!

Well we bit the bullet and bought the adjacent property to ours. It's over 2 acres, and the best part about it is that the property includes 50% ownership in the driveway (the one we've fixed, but didn't own, just had access to).

Last week we got the survey map to and went to go explore exactly where it was.

On the way GB and I visited the goats... they were really happy to see us

The property was not exactly where we expected and was unexpectedly a lot cooler than we thought it would be!

Most of it is down in a gulch- no river runs through it, and it's flat and wide down there.

Here I am climbing down

It's obviously completely overgrown. After some earthworks we'll get a true idea of what's going on there, but this is what it looks like right now!

Hi GB!

This property abuts the highway so we thought it would be a perfect place to put GB's office. However, since our Hakalau house isn't selling (nothing is), we are thinking he'll move his office into there and build after we sell... when the market returns to more favorable times.
In the meanwhile there is a great spot for a pond, and we think the goats will love it there. :D

rock walls!

Our poor little neglected blog...... to think that NOTHING has happened on the farm/ house since November!?!?!


Actually the big project has been rock wall building. We had a garden site all mapped out, and knew we wanted to put in raised beds, but didn't know how we would construct them. We've done bamboo (fast and cheap, but biodegrades fairly quickly here) and wood (rots over time, but not too $$). In the end we decided to go with a more permanent solution.... one that our grandkids would see. So ROCK it was!

I can't even remember how many many bags of concrete and mortar we've used so far. We did buy a small concrete mixer, which has been a HUGE lifesaver. Everyone in the family has helped at least a little- but it's mostly been GB and I working on Fridays.

I don't even know if I have pictures from when we began! It's such messy work that it's hard to have the camera outside!
These are from last week.... almost done!

In this photo you can see the bottom of the wall is almost done. The left side is still short, but the right is complete. You can also kind of see that we were doing some steps up to where the chicken coop is... those got redone already

close up of the completed side

this part of the wall is in the lowest spot, and so it's taken the longest to finish. It's not done here in this photo. And the stairs are here on the left, before being redone.

Here's GB starting work on the upside of the bed. Since that part of the wall wasn't going to be really holding back any soil, we felt we could get away with doing it mortarless. We also had a new delivery of huge rocks and decided to use those--- they proved to be a LOT more work. Oh well!

More photos to come of the whole shebang, since we did complete it on Friday!