How I Spent My Saturday

We took off early Saturday morning to deliver 2 dozen eggs to a friend's office right in Pahoa. Of course, one doesn't just drop off eggs, collect the money, and leave. No, no... you visit a bit, talk story and exchange each other's latest news. It was like that back in Bonners Ferry, too - just a small town, rural way of life. I love it!

Then we drove up the hill as far as Mountain View to go to the Hilo Coffee Mill farmer's market... what fun! I've been hearing good things about it, and although it's quite small, the vendors are all so friendly! Lots of free samples & tastes of goodies. We sat and talked with a furniture maker guy for about 1/2 hour, bought some candied ginger and Japanese pickled vegies from another booth, and walked around the beautiful grounds a bit before getting back in the car.

Next stop was at friend Carey's house, right in Kea'au, to drop off the box of picnic stuff left after Scuba Sunday last weekend. We also wanted to see all the progress on their place... She's done some stunning tilework: dolphins on the guest room floor, humpback whales in the shower... beautiful! Played with the rescue dog, Kiko, a bit and then away we went for lunch at the Kea'au Marketplace. There are many tiny lunch shops there and we thought we'd try something different. Ended up at Ma's Place - very friendly ladies running the place, and really fresh and tasty food: Mike had shrimp & chips and a small salad; I had Oriental Chicken salad with half chicken & half fish. Both were ono grinds!

Onwards to Hilo! If you have a museum membership you can get in free to other museums this month only. We have membership at the Lyman and had been wanting to take advantage of this wonderful offer, so today we went to the Tsunami Museum. We'd never been there before... it was awesome! Well organized, amazing exhibits, lots of information. The building used to be a bank; built very solid and sturdy. You watch a touching video inside the vault. I 'saved' Hawaii from a 'tsunami' generated in Alaska on their tsunami warning system simulator... made the right call and set off the sirens... how cool is that?! We spent a couple hours in there, then as we were walking back to our car, we ran into Leslie (for whom we had recently built a Hubbell Bubble chicken coop) so stopped to chat with her a bit.

About 5 minutes after we returned home, our very good friend Royall pulled up! He'd been doing something nearby and thought he'd just drop by... I love it! More "sit, talk story." We'll be going over to his place for dice & ice cream later this evening.

Whew!! Never a dull moment on the weekends, eh? And that's just Saturday!

Forward Ho!

Okay, here's the plan:

Mike has reinforced the chicken yard with welded wire field fencing and repaired the damaged side with roofing tin. He moved the nest box away from the fence - we now have to go inside the yard to collect the eggs, which is kind of a drag but oh well. We are using a baby monitor to listen in on the chickens. I doubt any dogs could get in there now, but if they try, we'll hear 'em right away. It's very reassuring when we awaken during the night, to only hear coquis, rain, and soft little chicken sounds (and we have been waking a lot these past nights, believe me.)

We're going to put up fencing around the back half of both lots, one big fence to encircle and protect the backyard farm. This will also serve to keep out the wild pigs that will no doubt be attracted to our sweet potato beds and fruit trees just before harvest time.

The piggery is still a go. Right now we're waiting on the architect to stamp the plans, then the County gets to have another go at them. Once the permit is finally issued, it should only take a couple days to build. Of course, it will have to be inspected before we can really use it.

Though we're still reeling from the loss to our flock, life goes on and so do we. The injured birds seem to have recovered, and the chickies are pretty much settled down. Egg production, however, has dropped considerably with the loss of three of our best layers, and the shock to them all.

You knew we couldn't really be stopped by mere dogs, didn't you? We just have to adapt to the current circumstances and move forward. Onwards!

DISASTER!!!

Our chickens were attacked by dogs in the wee hours this morning.

What a horrible sound to wake up to. Chickens squawking & screaming all around, feathers everywhere, and 2 young pitbulls tearing into them. Three hens were killed - well, two were and one was so badly injured that Mike had to put it out of its misery. Several others were so traumatized that we thought they were dead at first. Several are missing feathers and one other is limping. The poor birds didn't know what hit them since it was pitch dark and they were still roosting.

We didn't recognize the two dogs but we sure will if we see them again - which is quite likely since if they kill once, they'll be back. They both had tags (I could hear them jangling as they ran past me). Thank goodness they didn't attack us! We had run out in our jammies, yelling at them to get out of there. Thank goodness Mike was sleeping lightly at the time... we think it was the first excited yips of the dogs that woke him and he heard the first squawks of the hens.

All plans for the day have been canceled, but we're most worried about tonight... I think those dogs will come back for more. They had torn through the chicken wire underneath where the nest box butts up to the fence. There's a piece of tin there now. But chicken wire is really no match for a determined dog; we may have to add something stronger around the lower part of the chicken yard, like field fencing, hogwire, or chainlink.

We decided that we'll bury the victims of the massacre in the back of our new garden area. That's the most soil we have, but it will still be a shallow grave, so we will have to cover it with rocks. At least this way it's not a total waste... they will fertilize our crops. Circle of life.

I'm still shaking. And Mike's looking up traps & alarms & fencing & so on. And we're wondering about our ideas & plans of backyard farming here...

June & July Happenings

It has been a hot and busy couple of months! Here's a sampling of what we've been up to recently.

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

Happy Father's Day!

I want to acknowledge and send my deep appreciation to the dads in my life:

My own Dad who has always been there for me throughout my life...

Mike, the father of my children...

and my son Chris, who has become a wonderful daddy to his own kiddos...
Thanks for sticking it out, you lovely men, and for doing a great job for your families.
I love each of you so very much!
And I wish you a Happy Father's Day!!

PS: Son-in-law Dave will soon be joining these ranks! Happy Father-to-be...