Premeir 1 Electric Fencing

"D" asked me how could I confine the sheep to just the garden area? Wouldn't they go anywhere they liked? 

I accomplished that feat by using a portable electric fence. I'm using Premier 1 fencing designed for sheep. I splurged this past Christmas and bought the farm a present. I purchased 5 rolls of mesh fencing plus a charger to use with it. 

I've seen this fencing being used at Kapapala Ranch, so it wasn't totally foreign to me. But I had never actually used it myself. So this was a new adventure. 

The fencing arrived on schedule, neatly packaged, complete with everything needed. I followed the instructions for opening the rolls up and setting the fencing in place. It turned out to be easier than I anticipated. I really had myself braced for a difficult time, but it didn't happen. Rolling up, moving, and re-setting the fencing has proven to be fairly easy too as long as I paid attention to what I was doing. Paying attention is the main point. I had memories of untangling strings of Christmas lights as a child, but the tangles never occurred with this fencing...thank heaven. 

The fencing I choose has fiberglass posts every 6 feet. That proved to be a good choice. The 12 foot spacing would not have worked so well for how I intend to use it. I'm moving the fencing frequently and the 12 spacing would have been very difficult to handle alone by myself. 

I took the time to train the sheep to the fence. Having had experience training dogs to the Invisible Fence, I was aware how important it was to correctly introduce the animal to the new fencing. So the first 3 days were short sessions where I kept an eye on the sheep. I didn't have the electric charger attached, therefore the sheep could investigate the fencing, learn how to get their heads out from the holes, and slowly untangle themselves if they happened to put a foot through the fence. I didn't pressure them so that they wouldn't panic. Plus since sheep don't like to move in reverse, they needed to learn how to do that automatically on their own if they got a body part in the fence. On day 4 I left them corralled for the day. All went well. It's now been 2 weeks and they are comfortable with the fencing. Nobody gets tangled in it anymore (only one apparently learning disabled ewe kept getting caught up in it.) They understand it now. And guess what......I haven't hooked up the charger yet. Of course, they haven't run out of grazing either, so they don't see a need to bust out. But they are not challenging the fencing so far. I do plan to introduce them to the charger next week in order to train them to respect the fence, but I am impressed how they are taking to it so far. 

Noooowwwwww, the goats are another story!!!!

What can I say...goats are baaaaaad! It didn't take them long to investigate this new contraption. They tried chewing it, climbing over it, pulling it with their horns, pulling the fiberglass posts up, sticking their heads and legs through it. They also managed to get tangled up in it. Mean mommy (me) let them get tangled ultra good, stuck there laying on their sides well bound up in the fencing. I walked around them, talking to them but ignoring their struggles. After 10 minutes I began to untangle them....after binding their legs with duct tape so that they wouldn't cause more harm while I freed them. Freeing them was almost as tedious as unraveling those strings of Christmas lights! Once free of fencing and duct tape, I let them loose. Being smart goats, they are now leaving the fencing alone. Good thing! ....... It's also a good thing that the charger wasn't hooked up. They have learned their lesson the easy way. 

Getting the Main Garden Going Again

Been busy all this week getting the main garden area reclaimed. The grass was about 18" to 24" tall in most places, a real overgrown mess. First thing I did was turn the sheep loose and corral them in the garden area. After a week they had eaten the top half foot of tender grass, leaving the tougher lower stems. I could have left them grazing, but it would have taken a good month for them to eat it down to lawn depth. So off went the sheep and in came to 'instruments of destruction". 

After one morning of running the weedwacker and raking up the worst of the grass, it occurred to me to take a photo. So I plopped down an old kitty litter bucket to show you how tall the grass was after the sheep and before the weedwacker attack. It took three mornings to get the whole area down to mow-able height, about 4"-6" and the majority of the lose grass harvested. I used that grass to feed to the donkey, sheep, and goats. 

With the grass now mowable, I mowed at the highest setting (#6), collecting the clippings. Those clippings went to mulch the orchard and banana trees. I then mowed at the next lower setting, #5. Again I collected the clippings, using them to mulch taro patches. Each morning I mowed even lower.....setting #4,#3,#2. Lots of clippings for mulching everything, even the multitude of pineapple plants. 

Now I'm down to the last mowing. Monday, if the weather is dry, I'll scalp the area using the mower's lowest setting -- #1. Then I'll pray for a few sunny, windy days. Because what I plan to do next is to run the rototiller lightly over the surface, cutting off the vegetation at the soil surface. The sun and wind should dry it out and kill it. I'm planning on running the tiller over the surface for 4-5 days in a row, not going deeply, but just scuffing the surface. If 5 days isn't enough, then I'll do 7....or whatever it takes. This method won't kill the burmuda grass, but it should be death for just about everything else except the few clumps of guinea grass, which I will hand chop out. 

If all goes as planned, I should be able to start tilling in the compost in one week from now. I have about 12 cubic yards of compost ready to go. That's not enough but it will start a good number garden beds going. Rather than trying to get all the beds going at once, I'll do one at a time. I'm eager to get something planted as soon as possible. 

Emergency Food

"T" asked me today via email about what sorts of foods I have stockpiled for winter use and emergencies. It seems that he lives where they just had a deep snowstorm and weren't prepared with back up foods in the house. So thoughts of a well stocked pantry are high on his list.

Winter use: In Hawaii, that's not a concern. I am able to garden year around. That's one of the reasons I opted to move to Hawaii. So rather than talk about storing find for winter, I mention storing excess seasonal foods. 

While I can grow many things year around, there are some crops that are strictly seasonal, while others tend to produce better some times of the year and poorly the rest of the time. Just like in most areas of the mainland, cool season crops do better during the winter months here, things like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower. So yes, there are foods I tend to store, but not in excess. We are more apt to simply eat seasonally. 

Some crops are strictly seasonal. They're mostly fruits. Seasonal foods that I preserve: 

... Pineapples. I save this by either drying or freezing.

... Lilikoi. I juice them, then freeze the juice. 

... Avocado. I'll mash a few and mix the mash with lime juice, then store in the freezer. Once thawed, it's good for making guacamole, which hubby enjoys. I'll also use it as an addition to soups or as a "gravy" in stir fries. 

... Mango. I scoop the flesh into nuggets then freeze it. 

... Turmeric. Dehydrate then freeze for long term storage. I could just freeze it, but it works better for my uses to dehydrate it first. 

... Citrus except lime. I'll juice the fruits and save a few containers of each kind of juice. Limes produce year around, so no need to store extra. 

... Jaboticaba. I'll make this into a syrup and freeze it. 

... Coffee. I'll process the beans to the parchment stage then store them in my barn until roasting time. 

Excess also can be preserved but I don't fill my freezer with too much excess. 

... Bananas. I'll freeze a few dozen to carry me over until the next bunch is ready. Bananas seems to one of those crops where you either have none, or so many that you give them away. 

... Assorted veggies. I'll normally pop a few broccoli heads, cut up cauliflower, carrots, and peas into the freezer. Not much. Just enough to add easy variety to our meals. 

... Bulb onions. I have green onions year around, but I also grow plenty of bulb onions because we use a lot of them. Bulb onions all mature in the summer, so I end up with a seasonal excess. I usually just coarsely chop them up and pop them into the freezer for adding to soups later on. 

Of these excesses, I prefer to use most of them for trading or selling. 

Let's talk about emergency foods for a moment. I do keep a bit of food stored for an emergency. Emergencies I can think of would include a major hurricane, volcanic eruption, or a shipping disruption (strike, war, port damage, etc). Regardless of the emergency, we'd need food. We do have plenty of food growing about the farm, but it wouldn't take long to become insanely bored eating bananas, pipinolas, sweet potato greens, and eggs for every meal. So I keep an assortment of things growing around the farm, and I keep an assortment of veggies and fruits in the freezer. Not a freezer full, but enough for a couple weeks. I also have dry beans, lentils, rice, and peas stored in sealed mason jars for soup making. And a few pounds of spaghetti and jars of homemade spaghetti sauce stored as well, just for quick & easy meals.  We have livestock living right on the farm, so if push came to shove, they could be added to the dinner plate. Unlike people living in urban areas, we live amid a trove of food. It's one of the benefits of having one's own homestead farm. 

Hawaiian Ti

Seems like I'm perpetually looking for edible shade tolerant plants. By accident I discovered that ti meets that requirement. 

Ti is a tropical plant. Until I moved here, I only saw it in floral shops. And didn't have the foggiest idea what it really was. Now I have ti growing on my farm, much of it in my shady locations. 

Above, a ti plant with berries. 

Above, a close up look at ti berries. Each contains several seeds. 

What eats ti? My sheep adore it. The donkey and goats also eat it, but the sheep think it's manna from heaven. I have it growing in a couple places where the sheep are allowed to graze for short periods of time. That way they don't eat the tops completely off. Although the sheep eat all the leaves, the plant recovers. 

A nice thing about ti, besides it being apparently tasty, is that it is easy to propagate. There are a number of ways to propagate ti.......by seed, air layering, stem cuttings. Stem cuttings root fastest if the younger stem sections are used, but the older woodier stems will also put out roots. 

Stem cuttings can be pre-rooted in water prior to planting in soil. I've done this in the past with both tip cuttings and woody stem cuttings. I'll put them into a vase or jar with water and change the water frequently, at least twice a week. This helps prevent rotting. Once the roots start to form, in a couple weeks, I'll then plant the cutting outdoors. 

Above, ti cuttings 

My go-to method nowadays is to Just cut off the top of the stalk, deleaf it, and stick it into the ground. Then if kept moist by watering every few days, it readily roots. I could chop the stalk into smaller pieces are root each one, but I find that takes longer to grow. The smaller the piece, the slower it grows into an edible plant. So I use a piece of stalk 12"-15" long, stick it into the ground. Within one grazing cycle it two, I'll have a plant that can sacrifice a few leaves to the sheep. 

Above, ti cuttings trimmed and ready for planting. 

Ti comes in a variety of colors and styles, but they are edible to the sheep. So I can have a bit of fun planting colorful arrangements of ti plants. The green plants grow the fastest, but the other colors are more attractive to look at. So I'm growing both. 

I'm constantly begging cuttings or scavenging trimmings from friends and strangers. This coming year I plan to grow a lot more ti in my shady spots

Diary - After the Holidays

Ok, it's back to work. Vacation days are over. Boy, do I have a lot of catching up to do! There's no way I'm going to get everything fine in just a couple of days. 

This morning started out with harvesting more turmeric and cleaning it up for market. I pack it into ziplock bags, 6-8 ounces to the bag. A bag sells for $3. I could get more if I wanted to get stuck with unsold bags, but at this price, I can sell the whole batch. I only sell the best looking roots....fat, unblemished. The rejects I keep for myself or for gifting. Since I'm just going to grind mine up and dry it, it doesn't matter if the roots are small, misshapened, lighter in color. Anyway, I got my bags down to market just about 8 o'clock. I've really got to try to get down there a bit earlier in order to catch the early shoppers. Did some trading this morning, bringing home broccoli, oranges, and fresh fish. 

After getting the standard farm chores out of the way, I jumped into the unenviable task of doing laundry. 12 days of doing zero wash = piles of dirty clothes. Good thing we have lots of clothing, or we'd be running around naked by now! Got 5 loads washed and hung out. Ran out of wash line space for today. 

Next, between other small jobs, transferred the laundry water to the hugelpit beds. I try to utilize the wash water to hydrate the hugelpits that are being built. A lot of material goes into creating one hugelpit. All that material needs to be moistened so that it begins to decompose and the hugelpit can function as it should. Even though I get plenty of rain, more water is needed during the filling process than rain alone can provide. Thus it's a perfect place to use that laundry greywater. Today I pumped and transferred 6 large trashcanfuls of water, to which I added manure tea and fermented urine as nutrient sources. 

Lunch break. Time to peruse the farmers market for myself, have lunch with hubby, then off to pick up cardboard from the local businesses. As I load the cardboard into the truck, I sort out the part that I can use in the hugelpits from the pieces that will go into the recycle bins at the dump. I avoid using cardboard with plastic on it or colored inks. 

Back on the farm, it's time to replenish the livestock feed fermenting buckets. With trusty sawsall in hand, 5 banana trees give up their lives to feed the pigs for the coming couple weeks. Hack, hack, hack. 5 trees into small pieces, into the buckets, fill with water, seal the tops shut, set aside to ferment some. 

While in town today, an acquaintance gave me a bunch of ti cuttings. Retrieving them from the truck, I trim the up for planting. I'm glad to add more ti plants for sheep feed. 

Dragging out the lawnmower, I have time to clean up the area around my driveway gate and up along part of the driveway. Two trashcanfuls of clippings go to the sheep. One goes to the chickens. The fourth goes as mulch around the new banana trees. 

Wish I had had more hours in the day. So much to do, so little time. 

2018 / 2019

In that hubby and I survived 2018 and are still basically functional, I'd say that we had a decent year. We've survived ok, even surviving an incoming ballistic missile alert. Yes, we discovered what we would do if we learned we only had 12 minutes to live --- we'd finish enjoying our hot breakfast before it got cold. For real. That's exactly what we did. No cursing. Not screaming. No running around. Simply enjoy our last good meal before disaster struck and made life very, very different. 

But how did the homestead farm do? 

... Number 1 miss -- we didn't get the house completed. The bathroom still isn't finished. We got sidetracked by finishing up trim work, adding a hot tub deck, doing maintenance work, and a multitude of small projects. So we still need to tackle that bathroom tiling, create the new shower, remove the old shower and install storage shelves. Then next, tile the rest of the little porches that are at the various entranceways to the house. The final task will be putting on a new roof, which hopefully will last the rest of the time that we are living on this farm. But we're going to need dry weather to do that. 

... Some new livestock arrived this year, others left by various means. Lambs, kids, and chicks were born. Piglets were brought in. At the end of 2018 we have 22 sheep, 4 goats, 1 donkey, 2 pigs, about 60 chickens, numerous farm cats & dogs. Too many sheep. That will need to be addressed in 2019. 

... We learned how to cope with an erupting volcano as it affected the farm. Acid rain. SO2 vog. Ash fall. Impaired sunlight. 

... We got hit by a new pest, the sweet potato whitefly. And we saw early blight visit our cherry tomatoes and potatoes. 

... The frequent rains and constant wet kept us from growing much in the way of food other than perennials. Harvested some onions, beans, peas, and tomatoes. In place of growing veggies, I spent my time focusing upon expanding the growing spaces, adding cross fencing to the pastures, improving the pastures, expanding my plantings of perennials, making compost, filling in hugelpits.

... Got a lot more rock wall built along the driveway. 

... Explored and expanded my options for livestock feed, focusing on feed that the farm produces for itself.

... Planted a lot of perennials -- bananas, pineapples, taro, chaya, cholesterol spinach, sweet potatoes

... Planted a lot of turmeric and harvested it. Had plenty of extra for trading, selling, and gifting.

... The previous year, Noodles arrived, but 2018 saw him growing up. He has proved to be a winner! Now I wonder, could he be trained to help handle the sheep? He's a retriever by instinct, so could he be conditioned to "retrieve" sheep? Should be an interesting future project. 

... My addition of a wwoofer hasn't proven to be as beneficial as I thought it might become. But then, that wasn't my original intention. Not that I'm unhappy with Adam living on the farm. Not at all. It's just that it would be nicer if he had better self-preservation instincts. And nicer if he was actually interested in farming. Adam is what and who he is. And for now I accept that. 

Now that the weather pattern is suppose to change, I'm eagerly looking forward to the 2019 growing season. I feel like spring has just arrived and I want to be out there tilling and planting. I have a feeling that the coming year will be very productive, foodwise. 

What am I hoping to tackle this coming year? 

... Finishing the house, for sure. 

... Whipping the annual gardens back into production. 

... Getting the greenhouses back into action. 

... Getting more of the pastures improved so that I won't have to buy haycubes ever again. Well, at least not until the next year-long drought comes around. 

... Adding more banana trees. They are becoming an important livestock feed staple. 

... Propagating sugar cane to expand my production, again for livestock feed primarily. 

... Building a couple of chicken pens so that I can move my chickens into new digs, freeing up the old pen so that it can be rebuilt. 

... Creating a one acre paddock for the pigs, complete with shelter, feeders, a wallow. 

... Continue improving the back pastures. 

Rain Data for the Year

Here's the rain data I collected for the farm this year. And I'm posting some of the previous years' data for comparison purposes. 

Total rain accumulation:

2018 -- 64.35"

2017 -- 40.20"

2016 -- 52.96" 

Number of days where there was over an inch of rain :

2018 -- 11 days

2017 --  6 days

2016 -- 8 days 

The greatest amount of rain in a 24 hour period (I measure from 7 am to 7 am) :

2018 -- 3.87"

2017 -- 2.10" 

2016 -- 3.81" 

Number of days with no rain:

2018 -- 72

2017 -- 134

2016 -- 124

The longest number of days in a row of no rain :

2018 -- 10 days

2017 -- 10 days 

2016 -- 16 days

Overall, 2018 proved to be a wet year. Only 72 days recorded zero rainfall, and many of those days were overcast, thus no productive sun. The ground never dried out the entire year, though in December we saw the surface dry out one week in December.