A Few Races

A Few Races was Originally Posted on October 2, 2008 by

As I mentioned in my last blog, I lost an entry and I’m sorry for you. I really think it was Pulitzer material! This blog will touch on a few of those items but will not be anywhere near the same quality. Again, I’m sorry :-)

Yesterday we painted one of the walls in the office. It used to be a semi-gloss dark green and with numerous nail holes and chips in the concrete, it looked horrible. We have some managers coming in a few days and so we spruced it up a bit. It is now a nice light blue. The other well is a beige, so if I put my head on the desk in just the right place, it is like I’m sleeping on the beach and looking up at the sky. Not that I sleep in the office, certainly not while guests are there.

I dosed Koa last night with 1/2 a tablet of Comfortis, a new flea treatment. This time he did not get sick, but sure looked like it. I’ll give him the other 1/2 today. This is a monthly treatment costing about $10 a pill for large dogs but if your dog tolerates it, it is an easy and effective treatment. The most common side effect is upset stomach. However, the fleas start jumping off the dog in about 15 minutes to 1/2 an hour! I assume the cost will come down as other companies start making it. It seems to be related to a natural insecticide discovered in the Caribbean earth near a rum still. It certainly has great properties if it turns out to be really safe for animals. There are no insecticides to spray, things like fleas mustingest the product through the carrier, thus the chance of killing other insects or so on is eliminated. As I say though, there may be some side effects and it is also being used as an insecticide in organic farmming.

The Ironman race is nearing again and already we have seen an increase in people running and jogging along the road. The race may not be the traffic problem it has been in the past, as we have not opened part of the new roadway between the harbor and town.

Now for farm information. I am in a race against time to get plants in the ground this year. I have ordered the piping and water pump for the catchment tanks. I interviewed a guy who is sending me a quote on installation of the above. Part of the assembly can start soon as the long black pipes are in stock. However, the pump and driplines are probably 3 weeks away.

For those not yet coffee farm experts, here is the project…

The farm is about 1400 feet long by 230 feet wide. It slopes from the upper side to the lower where the house is, and the altitude drop is only about 100 feet in all. That makes for a very small slope, especially compared to some other farms where you get tired just looking up the mountain. Mine is an easy walk uphill.

The house is at the bottom of the property and the there is a driveway currently down the middle of the farm. I had a new driveway cut along the south side of the farm and have used it some. Soon I’ll have to use it all the time because there will be pipes blocking the current driveway.

The new coffee will be planted in rows spaced 10 feet apart. The trees will be almost in hedges with trees 5 foot apart form each other. To look at the farm from the air will be a row about 200 feet across and each sucessive row a bit higher up the land.

Each of the 5 acres I’m planting will be irrigated by itself in a zone, thus 5 zones. Running along each row of trees will be a drip line that slowly soaks the roots with no evaporation.

There is a 25 foot diameter, 6 foot high tank near the house that collects up to 20,000 gallons of rainwater from the roof of the house and garage. When that tank is full, it can be pumped up to fill the upper 3 tanks, for a total of 80,000 gallons of rain water. There will be filters to keep the water generally clean so it does not clog up the small holes in the drip lines.

Because the drop of 100 feet over the planting area is not enough to develop a lot of pressure up top where the tanks are, I need to get the help of Rube Goldberg to make it work. Hold on to your hat for this one…

The bottom tanks water will be pumped up to fill the top tanks. When full and if I need to water the upper 2 acres, I need pressure that the top tanks cannot develop in that short space. Thus I turn some valves and use the pump near the house to also pressurize the drip line for the upper 2 acres. Then I cut off the pump, go up top and swap lots of valves. Then the water in the upper tanks flows down the same pipe towards the house, except that it is diverted to the lower 3 acres of driplines. There is a flow valve to make sure the water does not re-enter the bottom tank. So to review, the bottom tank feeds the upper 3 tanks and water the upper 2 acres. The top 3 tanks water the bottom 3 acres.

While filling the upper tanks from the lower tank, I start the pump and wait. I have no automatic cut off, so I will have to somehow verify how much water is pumped up there. I could use binoculars from the house and watch for water coming out the overflow pipe. At gas stations, they stick the tank with a long wooden pole and look for where the wetness stops when they read the depth. It is a lot like an oil dipstick. I’ll probably come up with a sight tube and/or electronic sensor of some sort.

So when the tank pipes are all installed, the drip lines have to be laid. They will run across the property every 10 feet and will slowly drip water to each tree. I have the lower half of the farm already punched for trees but when the dripp pulls up the rock to make a hole, there is rock all over the ground. Because of that I need to hire someone to remove those rock fragments to make the land smoother between rows. That will make it easier for me to mow between rows. The tp half of the farm is mostly grassy now that I can mow it easily. There are no holes, thus no large rocks to move, Yet!

Currently the gutters on the house go the wrong direction and there are no gutters on the garage, so I have to fix all that. Then I’ll snow coat the roof to make sure that I fix any small leaks in the roof.

I have to get the gutters into the bottom tank and get them supported to hold the weight.

Then I have to get 220 volts run to where the pump will be located and get a concrete pad to put the pump on. I’ll cover all that with a roof of some sort to keep the water off the pump and wires.

Once all the pipes and wires are in I can order a truckload or two of dirt delivered and cover it until I can get people to move it around the farm. We will mix dirt with fertilizer and start planting. As sections of rows are planted, I can get the dripline run to irrigate them.

I am not sure if I will be planting trees or parchment. The trees are nicer to look at and grow faster, but they will cost $5,000 just for the first section I’m planting. It depends upon how much money I have left which option I choose.

As I said, the trees will be planted in rows. There is a pruning method that has us trim one row of trees each year for three years before we start over. Thus, if you letter the rown A, B C, A, B, C etc, you would prune row A’s the first year and Rows B the next. Because the trees grow at such a rate, this gives good yield with easy pruning. You just stump one row each year rather than spend lots of time doing little prunes on each tree. This new method requires you to stagger your planting. Thus where I have 1500 holes, I’ll only be planting 1000 trees the first year and 500 the next. It would be possible to plant row A the first year, B the second and C the third, but your initial yeild would be a bit less also becuse of the pruning method. The way I’ll plant is supposed to be a bit better yeild the first crop. In any event, the tree growth will soon even out.

I wanted to create a pulping and drying deck here to pulp cherry while waiting on my big crop. The problem is that when cherry is pulped, it must be dried right away and that requires someone to rake the beans often the first few days. Since I work up in town to pay the mortgage, that makes it impossible to do at this time. I guess I could hire someone to rake, but I guess I’ll wait. It will probably be put where the garage is. Since it does not need to have a real roof (just plastic sheeting to catch and direct rainwater), I may build it now and hook up the needed gutters.

One way to help would be if I fix up the downstairs of the house and rent or trade out the space to someone who would be willing to work in exchange for a place. Some farms here have WOOFERS, usually workers who do that on organic farms. I don’t think you have to be an organic farmer, but it would help. WOOFERS stay at your place and perhaps eat in town. You provide shelter and they provide an agreed-upon number of hours fixing, building, planting or picking things. The trouble is, I would beed a WOOFER to build the place that other WOOFERS would use. It is a vicous cycle :-)

As you can see, farming is not a simple task and often involves complex decision and complex funding options. By the time I get this place fully operational, I’ll be ready to retire. Again!