Vernal Equinox 2018 Farm Update

Spring is upon us once again.  Time to shake off the cold and the cobwebs and get back to work.

The Guinea Fowl that were bred last year all survived the winter and are healthy and noisy as ever.  Watch the clip below for an earful of their amazing alarm system. 

Our first woofer for the new year arrived, Sofie.

We taught her how to catch trout in the front yard of our farm, along with many other skills.

We butchered our Sheep from the previous summer.  Very tasty mutton.

Our second woofer joined Sofie to help clear some jungle and plant new gardens.  Sofia and Sofie, what are the odds?  :)

As usual, Odin observes the work and offers helpful observations.

The strawberry patch overwintered well in the newly cleared jungle and is ready to explode with growth now.

Sofia and Mitra plant Kale in a sunny location that was jungle a few weeks earlier.  The large trees are left to decompose on the ground and provide fun walkways.

Sweet Potato slips are planted in the freshly dug soil.

We are STILL harvesting Sweet Potato from last years plantings.  We have steadily been feeding 4 adults and 2 children with last years crop since October.  Below is one of the areas that we have not harvested Sweet Potato from yet and their foliage is still lush and now is sprouting many new slips.

We grew 5 varieties last year, and this year we will try to grow 6 varieties.  Below is an assortment.

Sofie helps to harvest some ripe Bananas.

Citrus Season is upon us also.  We have more oranges, lemons, and limes than we can eat.  The orange trees are also great fun for climbing.

The Sugar Cane is sprouting new growth and soon will be able to spread into a huge Sugar Cane Patch.

One of the perks of jungle clearing is getting to make Bonfires from all the tree branches!

Bamboo

Sweet Potato Harvest

This year we managed to clear the largest flat area on our farm and plant it with Sweet Potatoes.
I planted five varieties and all did very well.

Above the brush fire is still smoldering as we turn the twigs into ash for fertilizer.  

In the photo above you can see the massive Eucalyptus trees that still need to be cut down. For now 'ring-barking' them makes the leaves fall off, allowing the sun to enter the gardens.  

A freshly harvested row shows the fantastic forest soil we begin with, now just to keep the natural balance intact and the gardens will keep giving forever.

Sabrina helps to unearth more rows of yummy food.  The leaves are also excellent to cook with.

Mitra is a huge help at gathering all the sweet potatoes as they are unearthed and gently placing them in a bucket for transport.

We dry them in the sun for a day or three, until going into storage.

At the present we have to store them inside our house, which is rather full of food this time of year.
Our future project is to build a storage house in the backyard that will be cool and dark year round.
Above is about 10% of our total harvest.  We have enough to feed 4 adults and 2 children daily for 6 months now, and still more left over for a pig in the future.
Next year we have a new variety to try and then we will have 6 different varieties growing at once!

Sanding the Beams for Children's Bedroom

We got enough rain to turn up the hydro turbine and use the electric sander for a few weeks.

Our wwoofer, Luka, did a great job sanding the beams that will be installed in the children's new bedroom that is under construction.

Very dusty work, but great fresh air and sunshine with an amazing view to keep morale high.

Upgrading Drainage to Control Storm Damage

After another heavy rain, we nearly had another disaster like the 2015 disaster.

We had already built a spillway to accommodate the thunderstorms that seem to be increasingly frequent in the last 3 years.

However, this was not enough to keep the rising flood waters away from our gardens and home.

With the help of Fiona and Elisa, our two young wwoofers from France, we increased the drainage systems downhill from the spillway.

After the soil is piled downhill of the new trenches, we planted the new berms with Taro for both erosion control and edible functionality.

SuperBowl Garden is in Full Swing

Sylvia brought her awesome organizational skills to our farm and helped to plant and weed the gardens.

Transporting Building Supplies

We were lucky to have a strapping young lad stay with us for a few weeks.  We put him to good work helping to fill bags with sand and gravel and then send them down the zip-line to the concrete mixer.

Odin and Mitra had a great time wheeling the line back after the load was removed at the other end.

Frank was a huge help in bringing the concrete blocks (CMU) from their drop off location to the building site.

Thank you very much FRANK!!

Returning to Zone 0 aka Ground Zero

After expanding the farm for the last five years, I am finally satisfied that Zones 2 and 3 are producing well enough to feed us through the winter!  This summer I turning my gaze again to Zone 0.

The first step was to install a new zip-line to get materials to Zone 0 from our Zone 4 drop-off point.  The limitations of our summer-only dirt road dictate that heavy construction be done in the dry summer months only.  I asked my good friend Augusto to build me a new and improved post with a return wheel to bring the empty wheel and hook back after sending down a batch of building materials.  He used a recycled trike wheel as the base of his design that includes a brake to control the speed of the descent down the mountain.  Odin and Mitra love to help operate the brake!

The first job is to build my boys their own private bedroom.  The original stone house had two dividing walls inside to create two bedrooms and a kitchen.  Those walls were built of wood and decomposed into the forest many years ago.  I prefer concrete construction for a host of reasons.  Before building the concrete block wall, I built an iron reinforced concrete base to be sure that the wall does not settle and crack in the future.  Above, the form wood has been removed and the base is ready to built on.

Next, the blocks are built up layer by layer to create the partition wall with a door and window.  I am no mason, but I can keep the wall fairly straight and true.

After the first block work is done, I made a second iron-reinforced  concrete beam that tied into the exterior walls.  Breaking out the original stones was tedious, but by allowing the iron to enter into the huge stone walls creates a very stable interior wall.  The beam will act as the lintels over the window and door also.

After the concrete is poured and the form wood is removed, the new beam can be seen clearly.

The second Zone 0 upgrade is the installing of a bathtub.  At the moment we have a great outdoor shower, but it can be a bit drafty in the winter months. 

The first step was to build a reinforced concrete slab to take the full weight of a water filled bathtub and its occupant(s).

 I made a wooden form to allow for the drainage system to be mounted below the tub and then filled in the remaining space with concrete.

After the slab set, I built a concrete block wall to house the tub and help support the weight along the rim.

The next step is to tile the bathtub and the bathroom floor.  

Volunteering on Flores, Azores - Travel for free/WWOOF

Sweet Potatoes

Last year I had a good Sweet Potato harvest, but not nearly enough to keep my family fed through the winter.  This year I have cleared more land and planted about 500 slips of 5 different varieties.

Above the forest trees are cut down and then the exposed roots are cut to kill the tree.  As it dies and rots it will feed the soil for me.

Above is an experimental patch using recycled cardboard as a pathway mulch and fresh cut grass to mulch the Sweet Potatoes.  

Another forest patch above.

Above is the Super Bowl garden with Figs and Banana on the hillside and Sweet Potatoes on the drier level areas before the land drops into a boggy Taro garden.

A row of a new experimental variety is above.

The tools of my trade.  I am an OG (original gardener) .  A mattock and a hoe are all I need to take virgin forest land and transform it into fertile beds, just like my ancestors before me.

A steeper garden cut into the mountainside is above.  In theory the steepness will allow me to leave the crop in the ground until I am ready to harvest.  The rain should runoff and not rot the Sweet Potatoes.  One of the problems I have is storing all the food I produce, my house is not large enough.

Above is one final shot of the newly cleared forest and some of the gardens that are visible now.  Still much work to do and some great Winter Solstice burn piles to ignite!