It was a fun week. Junia’s permaculture teacher, Tom Kendall from Queensland, was visiting a site in Fiji and ended up coming here with the guys from there. Tom only spent one night here, but the local guys ended up spending three nights. It was great connecting with another group working the land with permaculture principles. In this photo we have Ilimo and Austin with two young roosters Aus was sending to breed with their hens in Silana Village. Ilimo’s wife has over 15 chickens, and our roosters will replace her small local ones to upgrade their flock.
And here is the whole gang with the pickup bed full of goodies from our farm. Front to back on the left: Ilimo, Alipate, “Joni” (Johnny), and Teddy – the driver – sticking his arm out. With Junia on the right side of the truck. We sent cuttings, coconut seedlings, etc. They went to the mushroom farm in Nadi and arranged that we all will get a mushroom workshop together – oh boy!
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Lots of odds and ends this week.
I went to the sink to wash my hands, and it smelled like poop. Really bad. What was it?
THIS nut! Pee-yew! It is a candlenut.
Austin tells me it is a rotten candlenut. They don’t stink when they are fresh.
Really? This nut did not LOOK rotten to me (ok, in the photo, I do see it is brown – but the meat seemed firm). Heaven-save-us …. hold your nose!
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Guess what this is.
Nicole saw it lying around and she guessed.
Macadamia nut cracker! (when used with hammer)
Ta da! (Those nuts are way too hard to crack with any normal implement.)
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Speaking of hammers:
Handmade by Austin’s grandfather, circa 1930. DIY
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DIY Public Works
Water pipe from pump to tank that serves seven households needed replacing, and men from all seven households showed up. Digging a trench with hand tools, circa Still-In-Progress.
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“It’s time you found a wife.”
The hatchery to-do list this week:
Austin and Nicole (and maybe Faith) put each single male goose into his own pen with single female goose. Forced marriages. As you can see from the list, there is one more gander to get a wife. There are plenty of single girl geese, so he could be singing “I’m getting married in the morning!”
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FIJIAN WORD OF THE WEEK
“Up” is cake (THA-kay)
“Down” is ra (rah).
I thought of cake (tha-kay) because honourable Barefoot Professor’s expectations of me have now gone up. And, uh-oh, I do not know if cake can be used in that symbolic sense. More to learn!
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Happy week, everybody.
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