We did another coop-building demo in June. This time it was a group of Hawaiians who invited us to erect a Hubbell Bubble on one of the Panaewa Farm Lots. Many hands made light work of it and the coop went from a pile of lumber, wire and plastic on our trailer...
... to the finished coop, all ready and waiting for chickens to move in. The whole thing took less than two hours!!
The next big thing was the clearing of our Lot Next Door (as we call it for lack of a better term for our lot next door). The first order of business was to move the rest of our cinder pile to an out-of-the-way location. Here's a before picture with Ashley on his tractor:
This one, taken from the same vantage point as above, shows the gray crushed rock in place for the future piggery. Notice also, our most amazing discovery... something more precious than gold in this land of lava rock and cinders: DIRT!! Whoo-hoo! It's the dark brown stuff to the left in this photo. We had Ashley pile it up to create a new garden area:
Two dump truck loads of red cinder to cover the disturbed area:
This created a lovely, smoother driveway that extends beyond the carport canopy and Mike's shop. You can see the piggery rock just peeking out behind the shop, and the slightly elevated new garden area beyond that: 
So far, we have planted taro, sweet potatoes and yams, 2 starfruit seedlings, 2 longan seedlings, a mamay sapote, pigeon peas, watermelons, and pineapple, as well as a few herbs and flowers. There's still room for papaya and banana, too. We think of it as our semi-permanent garden area for the food-forest type plantings. Meanwhile, Mike is still working on plans for the piggery.Let me put to rest the rumors that we do nothing but work hard! You should know better than that!
We hosted our International Dinner Group for a Pre-Independence Day party, with the emphasis on 'independence'.
We did tours of our backyard chickens in the original Hubbell Bubble...
... the edible landscaping... 
... the future piggery site, solar electric panels and solar water heater. There was a participatory reading of the Declaration of Independence...
... horse shoes and darts... 
... and of course, loads of good people and good food.
And then there was the wonderful beach bbq day we had just yesterday with some of our closest friends.
We just recently discovered this beautiful 'secret' spot on Hilo Bay - well, it was a secret from us since we'd always just driven right past it. Now it's our new favorite beach park!
I hope you all are having as much fun this summer as we are!Aloha,
Liz
