March 28th, 2020
Times, they are a'changing!
Bunnies on lock down!
As the rest of the world is aware, there's now a virus out there, Covid-19, which is changing our world. It's really amazing that something so incredibly tiny could cause so much anguish, anxiety, chaos and destruction. For us here on Hawaii Island, things were pretty normal up until about ten days ago and there's so much difference in the past ten days that it seems an entirely different world. Times, they are a'changing!
Since Hawaii is an island state, it's pretty easy to quarantine the entire state. As of two days ago, everyone entering the state has a mandatory two week quarantine. If they are a tourist, they must stay in their hotel room and order room service. Not a lot of the folks arriving on the planes have been tourists, most of them have been returning Hawaii residents. But, they still get to quarantine for two weeks, too. They at least get to do it at home, which one would think would be better than in a hotel room.
As if three days ago, the Governor of Hawaii, David Ige, put everyone on a mandatory Stay At Home order unless they are an essential worker somewhere. All non-essential places are closed, the beaches are closed (although we can walk across them to get to the ocean to swim or surf), the parks are closed, etc., etc. This is to stay in effect until April 30th and we haven't even gotten to April yet.
Yesterday, hmm, or it may have been the day before, we had five cases of Covid-19 on our island, Hawaii Island. As of today, we've had a 100% increase so now there's ten cases. Which, considering how bad it is in many other places, isn't a lot, but it's still horrible for those ten folks. There's not been a lot of testing, so there's probably a lot of undocumented cases out there that we don't know about yet.
The bunnies are staying home, not that they get out much anyway. The feed store is an 'essential service' so the bunnies won't starve. Not that they would anyway, they're perfectly capable of subsisting on lawn trimmings and they prefer ti leaves to bunny pellets.
Buttercup's & Rosie's Babies
getting bigger!
The first picture is of Buttercup & Aster's two babies. They're getting to be about a month old now. I think the tortoiseshell (brown) one may be a female and the albino (white) one hiding in the background but you can at least see his ear may be a male. It's still a little early to be certain, though.
It's hard to get good pictures of baby bunnies because they keep wiggling around. Rosie & Caesar's babies were distracted with some celery leaves so we were able to get some pictures. There's a cute video of them eating the celery leaves, although I dunno how to put that in this webpage without putting it on You Tube first. Not that I couldn't do that, but one step at a time.
This is some of the quarantine food for the rest of us
Yumm!
There were two pizzas, but they didn't last long. Now there's a big pot of beef stew to put on rice. We seem to be doing a lot of 'comfort food' what with this quarantine and all.
I'm sure there will be tons of diets starting once this quarantine ends. More than likely, there will be lots of Christmas babies this year, too.
Fencing for Sheep!
aka "War on Guinea Grass"
This is Hawaii. Things grow. ALL THE TIME. It's not like we get to take winters off from yard work. Here is our wintertime:
Snow on the mountain
See that white stuff on the mountain top in the background? That's Mauna Kea and on the summit there's snow. It's around 14,000 feet in elevation so in winter, when we get snow, it stays up there. However, in the foreground of the picture, all that green stuff you notice? That's all the grass between here and there. Way more grass than snow. That's just a small part of the grass that never stops growing around here. We'd get swamped in grass if we don't do something. The reason the grass in the picture is so short is because it's part of Parker Ranch and they run a lot of cattle over it.
Here in Hawaii, especially Hawaii Island, the folks with cattle imported this type of insanely huge grass called 'Guinea grass' which grows really densely together and can get up to about ten to twelve feet tall. It also has tiny little hairs on it which are really stickery. Ick! There's also cane grass which grows even taller than Guinea grass and then falls over and resprouts from where the top fell. That kinda leap frogs it by the length of the grass stems. Cane grass doesn't grow as densely together as Guinea grass and doesn't have the little stickers, but it does the leap frogging and gets even bigger than Guinea grass so I don't like that one, either. There's also elephant grass, Reznor grass and probably a few more seriously huge grasses that I don't know the name of. AND THEY NEVER STOP GROWING! AAAARGH
Which is why The Sheep Project and Fencing for Sheep, which is basically what has kept us busy since our last 'News' post earlier this month.
This is the back fence line. As you can see, a large part of the fencing project is to clear away the grass to make a place to install the fence. It takes some serious bullwork to get that wretched tall grasses out of the way so the fence post and wire can be installed. Fortunately, we've had lots of friends helping or it would never get done. One of them, Harriet, is an especially good worker and it's really hard to keep up with her! Jill & Joshe helped, too, although they haven't had as much time to annoy the Guinea grass as Harriet has put in. I suspect the Guinea grasses cringe when they see her coming with the loppers. Maybe it's just working off quarantine stress? Hmm, nope, I'm thinking she works that hard all the time.
That blue thing in the pictues is a small hot tub. It had been put back there after the back yard had been cleared with an excavator several years ago. It was cleared down to bare dirt and then we went on vacation for six weeks and when we got back, it was too tall to mow and we haven't had it under control since then. So far we've found the hot tub, a VW Taureg SUV, a long aluminum pipe (maybe a street light post?), a picnic table and a pile of enough curved corrugated metal to make a big catchment tank.
This is the front fence line down by the house. This is also why we are called "Hillside Farm Hawaii". It's on a hillside. This area just in back of the house is especially steep and almost impossible to mow with a mower. Since we didn't want the little sheep to get stuck between the hillside and the fence, the fence has been installed at the top of the steep bit of hill.
That does make a problem of how to get that wretched grass outa there and how to keep it out. We also have the steep hillside to control as well as the tall grasses in the area behind the house. Terraced gardens is what we are going to try. Doesn't this look like the perfect spot for a couple of gardens?
Obviously, things grow really well right here, so we may as well clear away all that wretched tall grasses and put in some raised bed gardens that will also terrace the hillside.
That's the plan, anyway, and it's sorta part of The Sheep Project since if we don't get the gardens installed now, the tall grass which was cut down for the fencing project will just come right back again.
It has taken several days to get the grasses out of the new garden area. There has been some rainy days, that doesn't help but most of it is from the density of the grass and the tenacity of their roots.
There are some areas of cane grass roots that need to be taken out with a pick axe. For Guinea grass roots, sometimes it requires an actual axe. This grass is very close to bamboo.
Finally starting to build the garden
or 'how to hold a hillside back'
This garden is being built with tin roofing for the long front and back sides and concrete blocks for the short sides. This is the first time this construction method has been tried, I suspect the all concrete block versions will be preferred from now on, but we will see.
We did find a bunch of handy cut off portions of fence posts at our local transfer station. It's really nice to find what we need right when we need it and by us using it to build a garden wall, that keeps it out of the local landfill. We're using the bits of cut off fence posts to stake the concrete blocks together. I'd prefer to interlace them, but we don't have any half bricks. Hmm, I suppose we could have cut a hole in the tin and had half a block stick through the hole but let's not get too crazy with this garden construction.
There will be another tin roof wall for the front side of the raised bed garden. There will be weed mat lining the whole thing too, to try to keep that wretched tall grass out.
Pineapple getting a bit bigger
The pineapple has gotten a little larger since our last post. Pineapples are a two year crop so they don't get ripe quickly. To plant one, twist the top off of the next pineapple you get, pull off a few of the leaves near the bottom so the little root nubs can be seen. Poke it an inch or so into the ground. That's about it! At least, around here. Don't let it freeze, I'd expect.
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