Prose and Cons and Aloha, Cheers and G`Day Mate

Prose and Cons and Aloha, Cheers and G`Day Mate was Originally Posted on December 5, 2013 by lavarock

Lately I have not been blogging like I have been. One reason is because of work, and the other is because of play.

I had an “inspection” of my farm by the lessor. They sent me a notice that they would be by during the month of November. I received the postcard 2 days before the guy showed up. Normally that would not have been a problem but this is the first year I really had a coffee crop and had to hire and manage pickers. I also had the guys do weed whacking and cleanup. We did not finish the farm and I left a portion about an acre by the house to do later. Some weeds were 6 feet tall (we get tall grass) and because of some fence panels lying on the ground, I could not get the tractor in there easily. When I did, I ended up hitting two of the panels and destroyed them. These are those 6 by 6 steel frames with chain link fence on them that form a square kennel.

Also, our county instigated can and bottle recycling with some detailed recycle criteria. 1,2 and 5 plastics in one container, certain cans in another, plastic bottles into small and large sizes in other, etc. We have specific times of year we can take car batteries, regular batteries, paint and so on. All of this because although some items are buried here in Hawaii, others get shipped to foreign countries for processing. We do not process cardboard here goes overseas as does cans and bottles, etc.

Because of the various conditions of sorting and my lack of time, I let recycled cans and bottles build up. The lessor was not very pleased with that. In reality, at 5 cents a can/bottle, I only had $64 dollars of items here, so it was not THAT much, right? It would not have been so bad if the cans and bottles had stayed in the trash bags I had them in. I put them in those black bags because they are cheap and can hold the items in the back of the truck on my way into town. recycles get a 20 mile trip to the recycling company. Those trash bags will shred in the sun pretty quickly and the cans fall out.

Also, I had an old canopy frame that was dumped in a pile that they asked me to get rid of, and so on. I have no issues with their complaints and am working to get everything cleaned up. I have to say that the majority of the property (the coffee and orchard) was mowed and weeded and looking fine, just not the area at the far end where the house is.

Another issue is the old garage. It has plastic corrugated roofing that is denigrating after perhaps 20 years. The wood in the garage is rotting and the whole thing will need to come down. I want to build a plywood deck and lower roof to make a real drying deck, and expect that to happen in 2014 before the crop comes in late in the year. By then I’ll have the money and manpower to have it built.

While just cleaning up cans and bottles and weed whacking would normally only take a few hours, the project is now running a week and hardly finished. One drawback to living here is vog (volcanic smog) and the past week it has been absolutely horrible in my area. Depending upon where you live on this island or on other islands, you may never see or smell vog. However if you have seen the air quality in places like Los Angeles, you can imagine what my air has been like in South Kona the past week. I could walk the dogs for 5 minutes and my chest and lungs felt like I was having a heart attack. I would slowly male my way to the house and sit in a chair and sip seltzer water and in 10 to 20 minutes feel better. It *IS* possible I have a lung infection or something, but because this started suddenly and stops reasonably quickly, I am sure it is the vog. With our online forum here in town, I was able to verify with residents elsewhere in my area that they too were having breathing problems, so I am not as worried as I would normally be that I was the only sick one. I will still have myself checked at the HMO, but am pacing myself to avoid the problem at the moment.

Today the air is pretty clear and I can easily see the mountains and ocean, so I know the vog has gone for now. It is nice to have that visual gauge rather than have to rely upon someone to take measurements. I should mention that in the 12 years or so I have lived here and the 7 years prior that I visited here, I never had a problem until this week. It is also possible that I am getting a bit sensitive to vog. Time will tell.

We had a nice picnic on Tuesday at the old airport. A photo is on the Picnic/Party page available from the link at the bottom of KonaWeb.Com. Two couples came after I took the group photo so Bob (the website guy) photo shopped the two other photos in. The thing at the bottom of the photo is a round wooden stool I used for a tripod and rested the cellphone camera case on a piece of coral. Bob’s tripod was not working at the time. For the picnic I made one last batch of cranberry/walnut relish and a bag of tangerines.

On a side note I mentioned a tear ago that on my Roku (a video streaming box) I used to watch 2 programs from Australia, “First Tuesday Book Club” and “Gardening Australia”. The book club is interesting because there are very different opinions of the group who read the same book. The gardening show is quite good (similar to the PBS shows we have had here) and Australia has many of the same climate zones we do in Hawaii. They offer some great tips and although some of the plants cannot be imported here, it is nice to see other things I might grow here and how to do it economically.

Well, those programs dropped out of Roku and the Australian Broadcasting Company (ABC) will not let you watch them if you are not down under. However the shows are available as podcasts which I can download. You kinda wonder why there is a copyright restriction on who can watch the shows when there are no commercials. Perhaps out there they DO have commercials, but I never saw them on the Roku feed. Still, I am happy that I can watch the shows again and am switching from my temporary Irish accent of previous months watching to an Aussie one! Soon it will switch to British/English as I get back into Downton Abby.

So Aloha, Cheers and G`Day Mate till next time.