plant and woe

We've started some end of summer planting here. I love planting new stuff. Even though it's a lot of work, the potential for new food/ trees is awesome!

Today we planted this bamboo (blue bamboo?) that Stardove and River gave me for my last birthday.

Last week I planted these two figs here near the house. They're hard to see, but this gives me a record.
I also weeded the pineapples and mulched them heavily. I want to see how long the weeding/ mulching lasts
One of a few pineapples we got this year. I bet next year is a bonanza!
All was peachy keen. GB and I were working together, and we had the bamboo in the ground already. The backstory is that since we got the plants (these including some atroviolacea bamboo), we've been walking the property trying to figure out where to plant what. Since the atroviolcea and mango are large, it's important we make good decisions about where to put them!

So we chose a spot for the mango near the firepit. I thought that maybe the phone line went thru that spot, but GB assured me that the phone line was in with all of the other utilities and we'd be fine. Famous last words.

To make the digging "easier", GB got on the tractor. One swipe with the bucket and he was leaning over looking at something.... the severed phone/ DSL cable. shoots!

Luckily, Gerard, the electrician was a mere 5 minutes away and came and made a temporary fix. He's got to order the part to splice it permanently. No teenagers were home to scream about the lack of internet. Gerard saved the day.

And we got the fairchild mango planted--- Well above the shed and any utilities ;)

More grass!

The area behind the house, in between the house and garden bed has just been a total eyesore since we moved in. Because of the earthworks and rain and slope, there was just NO topsoil there, and all we had was a bunch of crappy clay. We've tried so many things to help grow some soil and grass there, but nothing worked..... until now!

The Biermans, once again, came thru as our trusty grass suppliers. Murphy and Harry spent the summer digging up their front yard, piling the grass for our taking.

Ra'am loaded severl truckloads full of grass and brought them over here for our extensive grass planting adventure!

GB took the tractor and scraped a good area for us to start.

Here's one of the many loads Ra'am brought

Despite the fact that the grass was already cut up, it was still a ton of hard work! Loading up, UNloading, and then planting was hard! Each clump of grass is a different thickness, so there was shoveling, raking, filling, and puzzle putting together skills used.

Here's a huge pile ready to be planted

Noam working hard! This picture shows the area almost done

We also planted in the cinders directly behind the house as well as down below the pool in a "problem" area. So far the grass is looking good (one month later) and I can't wait to see it all filled in!

Naughty Kids and What's new?

I was only kind of shocked to look at the blog and see that I haven't updated it since November! It's not that there's not been land work/ progress, but more that we've been in a maintenance mood rather than a new project mode.

Naughty Kids:

We moved the goats to the upper pasture a few weeks ago. It was an easy move with good goat compliance. The goats happily munched away up there.

I went up a few days later to worm them. And they were nowhere to be found...

Now I haven't written yet here that in November we lost another goat. Tamarind was killed by a dog (neighbor's :( ). The killing took place in the upper pasture and after he died, we quickly moved the remaining goats away... and they hadn't been back in there since.

So when I called and no one came running I thought the worst. But it was hard for me to believe that ALL 4 goats would get killed or drop dead since I had seen them the day before. I walked the whole fenced in area (not easy there!) calling. Nada.

I did see one spot in the fence that they could possibly have gotten under. It was tight, but it was worth checking out.

I walked back down to the house feeling dejected and like we had lost all 4 of our precious goaties. The most accessible car to go driving and look for them was our little Honda Civic-- our other 2 cars are big. but this one was there.

So I set out on the next driveway over to look for them . And lo and behold, there they were, standing on the road like nothing was amiss.

I called the house to get Ra'am to drive over with the truck. But I tried to capture them anyways. And I got all 4 goats into the car (by picking each one up-- thank goodness we have dwarfs!).

You can see in the above picture that Floyd had a little poop incident in the car (floor on paper).
Loki and Neo "enjoy" the ride. That's Gandhi's tail there and the way top of Floyd's head.

Needless to say, they have NOT been back in the upper pasture and the fence line needs some work!

Garden:

Ra'am and I cleared out the garden in the last couple of weeks. Today I planted eggplant starts (that sat too long here- we'll see how they do), okra starts from Heather, started bush and long beans, and planted some lettuce mixes in the pots.

Palms:

Planted 4 lanceolatas along the side of the driveway near the water tank this weekend. They are about 4-5' tall now.

Hopefully the next post will be full of garden veggie goodness!

New Kid on the Block

Meet Loki

He's a young (not sure his exact age) Nigerian Dwarf goat who looks like he fits right in with the rest of the gang. He's got horns and a sweet high pitched baa.

We got him 3 days ago and so far he's at the low end of the totem pole of goats here. But I suspect that the horns will give him an advantage in the future. in fact, Noam told me he saw Loki butt back one of the other goats yesterday.

Here's Gandhi, Neo and Floyd checking out the new guy

This maneuver was happening over and over from all goats. Maybe it means "hi, howzit?"

He fits right in with the gang

Cutie

And for my own record keeping.... started some seeds (straight in ground). Salad mix (in pots). Kales (in with chard), tomatoes, peppers, corn (why not?), sunflowers, and some papayas

Got Grass?

Continuing with our grass grabbing that we started at the Biermans, we decided to work on the same project today. We headed over to their house in the am (sans Ra'am), and were delighted to discover that Carly wanted to help!

It was hard work, for sure.

We stayed there for awhile, gathering grass, then headed back home, Carly in tow.

We set Ra'am to work on weed wacking the area to prep it.

Hokulani watched

Luka watched too

All 3 kids (Ra'am, Noam and Carly) moved a bunch of concrete hollow tile

Ra'am and Noam brought the heavy heavy grass from the truck

"small" sod= still very heavy

GB prepped the areas-- but here he's moving a big hairy clump of a different kind of grass that's softer-- to edge the Bierman grass

Finished area behind the concrete containers

Grass around the lime tree

Our lemon tree in the chicken run is LADEN with flowers. They smell sooooo good-- and this is just a small portion of them!
Ra'am has been working on giving these Malay Dwarf bamboo a big and much needed haircut. Looks great!
And those bad chickens!!! They've been giving very few eggs recently.... found out why. Down in their run, where I can't see, I found this large clutch of 14 eggs!!! I need to see if they're fresh. but 14?!?

all in all, a great family work day!

planting again!

Banana Delivery. I was in the house feeling sick and GB drove down in the tractor with 2 large bunches in the bucket. Yumm

Bromeliad flower

GB started working on planting the new bamboo we bought, guadua angustifolia

This is the bamboo we're planting between us and evil neighbor. I wasn't feeling well, so GB was on his own-- he went out there with the tractor and cleared some area/ knocked down a bunch of junk trees and then yesterday planted 3 of the 7 we bought!

Here's some of the cleared area (hard to tell!)

GB working hard!

Transforming the jungle (and for the record, there is not one native species in this photo- lest someone think we're doing the land a disservice)

cleared pathway to new planting area

Today, Sunday, he and Ra'am will finish the job! Go bamboo!

Around the farm

Updates seem to be few and far between here on our blog.

There's not been a lot of new planting this summer on the property. We've had an extremely dry summer. Living on catchment has been very interesting with the nearly arid conditions we've had. Up until the last couple of weeks, a HUGE percentage of our water was going into filling the pool-- which can lose sometimes a whole inch of surface water to evaporation on a bright and sunny day. I've rigged up an ugly, but effective solution, in the form of some thick, black, bendy, inexpensive corrugated pipe that goes from one of the downspouts on the house, right into the pool. So far it's making a huge difference in filling up the pool, and I think that we can mostly stop using the tank water on the pool.

So we haven't wanted to really plant a lot of new stuff, since that would require lots of watering. But like all summers, there's a lot of maintenance in the form of mowing, weedwacking and pulling weeds.

The rains (or at least a little bit of rain) seem to have started, so we're going today to a bamboo festival to look for some large and spiky bamboo.

We did manage to get the property line surveyed between us and the mean neighbor. GB and I went out yesterday and put T-posts into the ground to mark the points on line that the surveyors marked with little wooden sticks. Now we'll see about plants for there (see above reference to spiky bamboo).

Some photos from yesterday afternoon:

GB has been working hard on fixing up this formerly very very messy with lame grass area. That's a lime tree in the center.

The Biermans gave us some clumps of their good grass when they planted some trees last week. GB and Ra'am went over there yesterday and dug out a portion of their front lawn and brought it over to cover more area around the lime tree. Apparently it was hard work and the grass was heavy. I wouldn't know... I was sewing.

GB and I walked around and checked on a few bamboos he's planted. Here's a hirose on the upper property, near the highway.

Monet-like fields of while owrchids

Here's a malay dwarf bamboo on the upper property at the bottom end of the fenced in area

last breaths of one of Luka's prized zinnias

Beauty and the Beast

LeAna and I did a flower theme week for our 365 photo projects.

Same flower as above- just opened.

In other news, despite living on almost 15 acres, we've got major neighbor problems. An older man who lives behind us (thankfully well away from our home) is angry and icky. He's destroyed 2 of Barry's pig snares. One of them he cut up while we were on the mainland and then waited on the road every day for Barry to return so he could yell at him.
Old man neighbor yelled at me on father's day... and then I saw him again on July 6, with the 2nd cut snare in his hand. He refused to give it back to me, and I was so angry (for other reasons) that I called him an evil old man. Barry ended up calling the police on him. The DRAMA!
Now we're in the process of getting the line between our 2 properties surveyed. We're going to plant something large and thorny there.

Mangosteen

Right now we're mostly in maintenance mode here at the farm. During the summer, the grass (and weeds!) grow tons, and so between that and GB's busy movie schedule, we're keeping things under control rather than creating NEW stuff.

But I did plant this mangosteen one afternoon. It's been really dry, so hopefully it makes it well.


And look how strong I am.... broke this shovel!


(GB told me later it was already broken...... sure)