Week 4 -- 02/25-03/03

Week 4

Most of this week I concentrated on researching the tree species we planted in the Beehive Swale last week. Its weird doing "school work" again. Noting basic characteristics, and then trying to determine which animal species frequent which trees and what other species of plants either support or interfere with the trees growth. Also the effect the trees will have on that area in the future for soil rehabilitation and moisture increase. As well as the swale construction and how that increases the productivity of the area, and also encouraging volunteer trees to grow and thus attracting more animals and more diversity as a result.

Oh we also got word from Geoff and Nadia from Cuba. Apparently the documentary I mentioned before was very misleading. There are in fact not many gardens in people's yards and all the organic food they produce is exported to other countries. They then import lower quality food for themselves. No one is allowed internet in there homes only email. But almost everyone has a job, salary and the ability to go to school. Its a weird one for sure. And when Castro stepped down the international news made it out to be a huge ordeal with chaos and excitement. That was not the case as most Cubans didn't really care and din't see that there would be much change with Castro's brother in power. Amazing how distorted the news is.

With Geoff away things became very disorganized on the farm and stress and aggravation started building with some of the staff. Without a proper workload distribution the work was less efficient and thus harder and so it tired everyone out more. As a result The people Geoff left to help the interns while he was gone were not able to do this and it became frustrating for us as we felt we were not getting what we came for. This all exploded on saturday when Nadia came back. Two of the staff members ended up leaving, so now there are only 2. And Ryan, one of the interns decided to leave and go stay at another farm down the street. I think he just needed a different experience. And Yuta the intern from japan leaves in a few days so it will be a skeleton crew. on top of all this the PDC (Permaculture Design Certificate) course started on sunday. Its the same class I took last june in northern california. Its a two week course. So there is about 12 students to teach and cater for. So needless to say it will be an interesting week. On another note with the other two interns gone I will be able to focus more on learning which will be good. I need to decide on a project to do and then i can just focus on that for the remaining two months.

On a brighter note we did kill two ducks on thurday for dinner. We have two ducks both sitting on a clutch of eggs so in the next week or so we should have about 14 little ducklings running around. Needless to say it was time to thin out the flock. Geoff and his wife are muslim so all meat eaten on the farm needs to be either Halal or Kosher. They are pretty much the same thing, Halal is the muslim way of killing animals respectfully and Kosher is the Jewish way.

This is video of Tom killing the duck in the halal way.



Tom picked up his new homer..er bus. A fully functioning bus for $1000. not to bad.

And on Friday we went into Lismore, the nearest little city, for some roller skatin. for real.
It was pretty much all little kids, and the us the farm people. Roller skates are really weird. good for dancing and having fun but are no match for rollerblades for speed and agility.

In a game of tag rollerskates suck



Oh and on the way home we got pulled over because stupid ryan parked on the wrong side of the road then didn't use his turn signal. and because I was in the back of the van with no seat we both got a $240 dollar ticket. Australian cops suck. He got one cause he was driving and I got one for being in the back. I thought american cops were assholes. but considering I only had a california drivers license on me for ID I'm not too concerned about having to pay it. How stupid. oh and they made me get out and we had to call someone at the farm to come pick us up.


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