Sunday 11th/Monday 12th July

Sunday 11th July

I’m still cleaning up after my pet rat. 2 of my really good towels have been chewed out to make nests, one of my shirts is more tatters than shirt, and one of my cardboard shipping boxes has had the bottom and inside used for more nest material. But the good part is that there hasn’t been any more evidence of more of the bloody things in the house. I’ve lent one of the traps to one of the other houses here, and kept one still loaded just in case.

We’re back to hot weather again, after being cold for the past week, I’m back to the light sheet at night and fans going. I was hoping for rain today, but all it did was build up some really impressive thunder heads, and then stay sultry and humid for the afternoon and evening.

The new compost heap is off to a good start, in the nursery area, 2 truckloads of sawdust on Friday, and we will be collecting the kitchen waste from Heritage Hotel daily from now on to go into it. I’m still hopeful of getting into SolBrew for the spent mash to go into the heap, and as usual, as much chicken manure as we can find. Fish scraps would be good, but from what I’ve seen here, there isn’t enough left of a fish to go anywhere. And seaweed is nonexistent around Honiara. I’ve increased the size of the area for composting, there is more than enough space to do it, in the hope that we can generate it quickly enough to sell, and still have enough for the nursery. I’ll have to try compressing some in one of BJS’s can crushing presses to see if it compresses into a stable 20/25kg block. Then we could sell it to the farmers out of Honiara, easier to transport than a loose bag.

We’re selling it at $20 a bag now, about 10kg, which isn’t actually covering the cost of having someone bag and turn it, but we’ll work it out once we get operating properly. I’m putting up the side walls for the area this week, so we can separate the mature from the working compost, and also the potting mix from the unprocessed. Then we can start building the propagating cover, get some crushed coral down for the layout beds, and it will start to look like a nursery almost. Still waiting on the irrigation to arrive, but we can get everything in place before then.

We need a Kubota B2500 with a bucket I’ve decided to help with everything, that will have to go onto the next wish list for when we get established finally again.

Monday 12th July

Spent a frustrating morning with Andrew at #9 trying to get the insurance form signed by his doctor there. It’s been 4 months and we still haven’t managed to get it filled out to take to the insurance company. The best we could do today was to get an appointment for Thursday and to bring $100 to pay for it. I’ll have to cover it, Andrew hasn’t any money after 4 months off work, but I know he’ll pay it back when he does get the insurance.

Other than that bit of mindless tedium, everything continues on as usual. We’re getting the timber for the compost bins, 4 x 10 metre walls about 1.8 metres high, in about a 10m x 20m rectangle so we can have different stages of compost happening. It may get larger in area, I keep finding new sources of material to go into the compost, all good as it cuts down on the waste going into the ocean and the rubbish tip. I’ve been thinking of seeing if there is room at the Ranadi Tip for a recycling and composting area, it would tie in with what EHID want to do as well. The first load of crushed coral arrived today as well to start levelling off the site, a few larger rocks in it, but we can deal with those, and get some smaller gravel for the depressions and hollows in the main area.

By the end of the week we should have made some progress finally.

Everyone keeps checking the seed trays for signs of life, there isn’t a lot of seed raising done here, it is more cut a stick off and push it in the ground propagating, so it is good to see things becoming more interesting. We have Tamarillos, Cordyline, Canterbury Bells, Sophora, and Lupins in trays, with all the trays showing signs of sprouting already after 4 days. The 30*C temp and humidity obviously help, I hope we have some potting mix ready in time for bagging them.

Still no word on the new truck, but it should be this week, all the paperwork has been cleared, it’s just a wait and see thing now.