June 26, 2006, More Trash Duty and a 1st look at "the cottage"

062606, And we continue to clean truck loads of junk -- where in the world was it hidden?!

Eventually this cottage will be leveled, put on a good foundation, and painted..

June 23, 2006, We try a big DR Trimmer on our weeds!

062306, Our DR Trimmer arrives...



062306, We put the trimmer into service fairly fast, but unfortunately it does not like lava rocks!

June 21, 2006, Solar Hot Water System Gets Replaced

062106, When we checked into repairing the old solar hot water it became more practical to replace it. We put in an oversized system but you have to remember we are up at the rain forest and we have naturally cloudy afternoons and often it rains.

We did good: we can go for two days without sun and still have hot water unless everyone washes clothes!


Surprise! When the hot water system is finished and we go to turn on the water, the main valve fails -- no water for us this night!

June 19th 2006, Invasive Species Investigation crew surveys our organic farmland in South Kona

061906, Are these invaders from outer space?

No, just a crew surveying for Miconia, they did find one or two!

June 16th 2006, At the farmhouse, we actually get to start putting some things in place

061606, The farm living room in progress

June 2006, Painting inside the farmhouse continues and some new solar water is in the works as well

June 2006_Painting is in progress...Ken Sheppard starts doing some work...New Solar Hot Water...Washer and Dryer being moved to garage...

060706, This is one of the first days Ken Sheppard was around the farm, here I think he is building a base for the solar water heater to sit on;
Ken is the same who lectured at the Small Equipment Seminar back in October of 2005. He continued to help outside where he would build the coffee mill and with that get us started in the right direction.

May 24 2006, The farm house is getting an interior refresh at our sustainable kona farm

052406, In the meantime, the painters start work and COLOR comes to the upstairs of the house!

All the windows are out so the glass can be cleaned.
We used to bring the dogs sometimes (you can see Alex trotting about below) and we would come late and clean up after the painters and try to work ahead of them doing things like taking all the glass out and cleaning the wood frames before they would need to touch with a brush. We learned that it gets COLD up on the mountain late at night and that windows are very important to have so you can CLOSE them to keep the cold air out (shiver)...

May 18, 2006, The Truck Blows Up that had come with our organic coffee farm

051806, We don’t even get to really use the truck one time until it throws a bunch of oil -- just what we need, it is late in the day and it has already been a long day we did not need this. What can you do? We take the load from the pickup truck and move it again by putting that load into the Honda Element and a Honda CRV.

We try to put more oil in but it just gushes out. So we have to call a tow truck rather than leave the pickup sitting -- it sure won’t budge on its own.

May 11, 2006, Time to Work on the farm truck that came with the organic farm in Hawaii

051106_We take the farm truck from the farm to the other house. It takes a couple of days to clean it up, replace turn signals, make some rail holders for the back end, change the spark plugs and wires. We really liked the idea of a small pickup that we thought would come in handy for hauling coffee bags and stuff like fertilizer -- and it could help us with the move of course.


The oil came out like sludge..

May 9, 2006, Work is in progress at the coffee farm house where we will live in South Kona

050906, The farm house interior before was all one color of -- well, white!