And so it starts

And so it starts was Originally Posted on October 13, 2010 by lavarock

Sometimes a phrase such as “and so it starts” has stuck in my mind for years. I don’t know where it came from and may never know. Another one that haunts me is “the sun has just risen”. Both may be the first line for a novel I may write, because they tend to forecast a flurry of activity or a multitude of outcomes (such as with the morning having just started.

Over the years I have written short stories and even started a novel, however, they are nothing worth publishing. Following this blob you see that I just write what comes to mind, rarely spend much time to proofread or spell-check and oftentimes multiple ideas intertwine for no reason.

Today, as I write this, it is almost dawn and I will be quite busy. My leaseholder of the property has decided that the end of October is the cut off for me to finally finish planting. I have to admit to not rushing to do that over the years because of the costs involved. I have ripped out old trees, cleared the land, installed water tanks, water lines, a pump, drip lines, moved a driveway, punched holes for coffee trees then punched more holes and lost the first ones to time. After planting 1600 new coffee trees I learned just how much work that many trees are.

To fully plant and not be overrun with lots of coffee, I decided to diversify and plant fruit trees. After reading and much decision I opted for 40 varieties of fruit trees, some of which are exotic and exciting. Because I live in the tropics, almost everything grows here and I found, so do the weeds. It is a constant battle to kill weeds without killing the trees and plants. Like kudzu in the south, Hawaii also has some weeds and things, which can cover an area quickly and devour whatever is there (think jungle or rainforest).

A few days ago I laid out the lower area and two days ago a crew came to punch 180 holes for new fruit trees. The backhoe has a big ram (finger) on it to poke into the rock. Then they use a scoop to remove the rocks and a man pulls out the last of the debris. They finished last night at a cost of $2,000. The rest of the project lined up with little time to spare though. The trees come from the other side of the island and it appears most of the truck will be my delivery. At wholesale prices these trees are costing $3500. That truck arrives at noon. I ordered a combination of dirt, macadamia nut shells and topsoil to fill the holes at a cost of $1200. That dirt gets here… about noon. The workers will be back to begin planting the trees… about noon.

You can see that beginning, oh about noon, there will be lots of activity here with deliveries and people milling about. I am the author of this work and with luck can get to the end with little rewriting. With my computer background, you can imagine the spreadsheets of tree layouts, the timelines of work processes and the IF-THEN-ELSE criteria I have come up with.

I have a timeline that includes pulling some trees out of the mix at the beginning because they go to a neighbor. Then I have directions for the planters and help coming for moving dirt from the top of the farm to the bottom. I made stickers for each tree with a row and column on them and have labeled the grid of holes so that we can match a particular type of tree to the spot it needs to be planted in. Some rows are 10 of one type tree and some rows have perhaps 2 fig trees and 4 cacao. I thought ahead and tried to keep trees with similar pruning and fertilizer needs near each other.

I reworked the layout a number of times and think I have the trees pretty well set; however, I know that I did not take into consideration the height of the trees and may have tall trees near short trees. I can only work on equations with 2 or 3 criteria or I never get the problem solved. I still have issues with the irrigation system and how it will work with the fruit trees compared to what would have been coffee. I am having to use the middle driveway and will have 15 or so drip lines running across it. Somehow I need to fix that and perhaps a few pipes and some cement will allow me to drive over easily crushable tubes. I’ll work that out next week.

Well, perhaps you have forgotten by now, but I have not…

For you see, the sun has just risen and I must go. I have lots to do before noon. And so it starts…