Rachel's Blog: April 2011

Aloha friends!

First, before I forget, I added photos to the last entry, see here:
http://rachlwrites.blogspot.com/2011/03/feb-7th-from-olympia.html
You will see Sophie working our sugar cane press, and pictures of preparing coconut for milk, and Dan moving a small house with his excavator.

Returning to Hawaii from my unplanned visit to Olympia/Tacoma was very revealing. I had built up a strong curiosity about how I would feel given a chance to compare and reflect, so the timing was excellent to circuit back and forth. It also turned out to be a much-needed visit with Ariel, whom I hadn't seen for over four months. The visit had its share of drama, even a day or two when events were suggesting that the responsible thing to do might be to stay in the northwest. Which had a tone of reality... and sent me into a spin of panic. What was this crazy thing that I'd been doing, anyway? Real people have to work, and drive on I-5, and be cold in the winter, and defer having fun until vacations, and wait to live out their dreams until retirement. Of course this was a lark that had to end!

But, we sorted out options, and this was the best one, and I came back. Man, was I happy to come back! The splendor of this lifestyle hit me with new appreciation. Back to growing food as my daily drive, and helping craft an abundant and resilient community farm.

So here is an update.

Dan continues to focus majorly on infrastructure. Big news is that we now have a wonderful echo-chamber-like ferrocement catchment tank! Catchment means less town trips to buy water that we lug home in heavy glass carboys. Which is good for many reasons, including that gas is now approaching $4.50 in downtown Hilo. Ferrocement so it won't get destroyed in an earthquake - we had a little 4.0 shake-up call the night of the big one in Japan... also our own tsunami sirens for a long time... Right now the water is collecting from Bear's roof gutters, and a pipe strings across the valley from their house to the catchment. We are within spitting distance of actually getting water from the rain.

The large pipe on the side is the home-made first-flush mechanism, for dumping off the first wash of rain with its dust etc. You can also see the pipe strung across the valley from Bear and Joy's house to the catchment. (Hesitate to mention the little accident that happened just after this picture with the excavator... Joy thought it was another earthquake...)

'Course, this is ready just in time to not want to drink catchment because of radioactive particles in the rainwater, which are too small to be removed by the 5 micron carbon filter we will use. Although we seek out news and weather reports, it's hard to tell what our exposure really is or has been. Same boat we all are in - actually because of the way the jet stream moves, we're less at risk than many parts of the mainland. Not that we should really be a focus of attention compared to Japan. Still, while the Hawaiian islands don't get the jet stream as soon as the northwest, apparently we have received enough radioactivity to have detectable Cesium 134 and 137 and Iodine 131 in the local milk (see http://www.epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-sampling-data.html, scroll down to milk, Hilo). So, we eat seaweed salad to make sure we have at least a healthy amount of iodine.

As always, our best health insurance policy is to do what we love. Which, in Dan's case, is building things. He and several excellent helpers have put together a few temporary utility buildings - here's one that we turned into a house for Sophie's - the same one being transported in photo on last blog:

It really is adorable inside, we'll have to get some photos of how colorful and cozy it is.

And here's another small building, used as a job shack:

These were built by David, Dan, Bear and Jason... with painting by Michael, Rebecca, Sophie, me and David.

Oh and Dan has also been hammering out cesspools, literally, using the hammer attachment on the excavator. Several holes almost got down to the required 10 foot depth but then started to fill with water. This has been hard and expensive work. He was digging in a very dense and thick streak of blue rock - valuable as crushed rock* for a soil amendment, but really hard to hammer through. Kind of goes, hammer for 15 minutes, 1 day to fix broken hose. Ten minutes of hammering, 2 days to find replacement for broken clamp and fittings ($80 each for 4). Benefits and drawbacks of living in an old rock quarry, in case you are considering same. * We also just learned that this type of basalt rock holds radioactive particles so it doesn't get into plants that are grown on it. This comes from a study done around Chernobyl of the greens grown in basalt. Pretty amazing thing. So in case of further fallout... get a goat, feed it greens grown on basalt, drink her milk instead of water. Our emergency prep plan!

While Dan continues to focus on infrastructure, my big drive is gardening. I have done less cooking lately, with Sophie here she's quite wonderfully taken on a lot of the major cooking. I did try to make lau lau. We have the ti and Chinese taro, the kind with the purple stem and piko (the dot where the stem joins the leaf), which has the tastier leaf with less oxalic acid, and local pig in the freezer, so all we needed to purchase was butterfish and sweet potatoes and Hawaiian salt. Filling and wrapping lau lau is the kind of thing you need an auntie or two to guide you with the first few times, not to mention more fun to do with a group of women. I did okay but hadn't realized the butterfish, which is also called black cod or sablefish, was already salted, so we got our share of saltiness with that dinner.

Other discoveries: the little patterned moth-like insects hovering around my vegetables? Those are types of fruit flies, and are responsible for the rotten ends of cucumbers filled with little green crawlies. I'm going to have to put paper bags on soft veggies like that if I want to grow them - or pick them underripe.

And I discovered that this bird poop, which at first I took as a sign that birds are visiting our citrus trees to keep off the caterpillars...

Is the larvae of the very hungry caterpillar of the Common Lime or Lemon Butterfly, Papilio demoleus, eating the citrus!

Here's a partial view of the pretty butterfly that is the parent of the bird poop larva, selecting a lemon tree to torture.

I will end with a few pictures of our community garden and chicken-coop building. At one of our regular meetings to talk about farm projects, several people wanted to work together in the big upper garden that has been an on-again off-again effort. Since I have been working in that garden and planning for new beds, and was eager to get help, I became community garden organizer. Here's a picture of our first work party preparing new beds: