Eggs and Mangoose

We have mangoose problem raiding eggs from chicken.
It must be real easy for them to just hear the chicken's loud opera of egg laying song and just steal the fresh eggs.

I caught 3 mangooses (or mangeese? doesn't this sound silly) with a rabbit trap so far.
They are pests.
I can't think of anything good they do.
Perhaps controlling our egg consumption so that we don't get too much choresterol.

After I caught those mangooses and Kimberly drowned them (lately she is lazy and doesn't do her job) then I take the dead mangoose to fertilize plants.
It works beautifully. Nothing gets wasted.
Hair, blood, flesh, all high in nitrogen combined with bone meal.
I buried next to my eggplant tree. Hope it's not too close.

After catching 3 mangooses, there is apparent effect on # of eggs we get.
5 today, 4 yesterday, 4 the day before, etc
compared to 1 or 2 or nothing / day until then.
Hmmmm,... will more of them come back?
at least I still see 2 mangooses still in the hood.

King Kamehameha Birthday Parade

6/10 was King Kamehameha's Birthday.
There was a parade in Kapaau near Hawi. Northern part of Big Island in Kohala.

It is very small town, and was a small parade, but very cozy little parade.
First, when we arrived before parade, Lei donated from some organizations were being hung on King Kamehameha Statue.
In the end, the statue looked almost completely covered in Lei.

It was sunny and warm, but never too hot. there was always nice breeze blowing.

Parade was nice too. It followed the Lei hanging.
I expected a little bit longer since the town closed the main and only road, blocking the traffic so I felt like we had to stay for the day, but it only lasted only about an hour or so.

I wasn't quite listening who these people were, but it seems like some special people. Perhaps related to King's family.
Princess? Looking gorgeous in their colorful dress.

Kimberly-san in front of King Kamehameha Statue covered in Lei after the parade.

One Year since China trip

It's been a year already since Kimberly and I went to China last year.
I haven't studied much Chinese although I learned a lot of Chinese pop songs, or C-POP, that I can sing along without looking at anything.

Just reflecting back on what I have accomplished.
Hmmm, I don't have anything that I feel accomplished,
but we moved to Hawaii, started our own farm, learned much about tea,
and now we are looking to buy a horse.
This is much bigger than what I imagined.
Especially, getting a horse. I've never thought about being able to have a horse.
This is the farm lifestyle....
Wife is excited. She even says to ride the horse to work.
Well, it's a neighborhood farm work after all, so there is no worry about parking a horse or feeding grass, or taking care of manure.

For me, it is manure that matters. Horse makes an excellent source of manure.
Compared to chicken, horse has low Phosphorus and good for green plants like tea.

---------------------------------------

It's also been a few years since we got married first in Japan.
We went climbing Mt. Hakusan just for us.
June 3?

I'm not sure.
Probably Kimberly remembers.
She is good at that.

Cockroach in Bedroom

She says, "It is usual to find roaches in bathroom and kitchen, but bedroom shouldn't have any roaches!"
That's right. Kimberly found cockroach shuffling on the bedroom carpet.
First thing, you cannot let it go! They are fast. If you let that thing go behind wall between a small gap, they ain't coming back. You gotta catch it right then.

She yells, "Bring me a paper!"
I wonder why paper.
Anyway, I got a kitchen paper, thinking to myself, "should I get tissue paper?" for a moment.
Her occasional yelp raises the tension in the house.

Then I walk into the bedroom, finding her crouching on the floor.
....................
She caught a cockroach with her hand. She covered her hand over the cockroach on the floor so that it cannot escape.
Every time it walks on her hand, she yelps as if she practices to scream. Every time it only gets better.
She looks at me with puzzled eyes, "I don't need a kitchen paper, I needed a normal paper."
Of course, she needed to cover her hand. What she need is not a paper, she need exterminator or something.

If I were in her position, I would passed out. In my mind, people and cockroaches DO NOT touch each other.

Since it is not me holding a roach, I say "Hold on, let me grab my camera."
She is serious, "hey, come help me...", well, that means my photography is "veto".
I then thought about feeding it to chickens. They love eating little critters.
Centipedes, worms, grasshoppers, things that we would normally avoid, they get turned on...

I went to kitchen to retrieve a tupperware so that we can store the thing until tomorrow morning. Too bad chickens are not nocturnal.
well, she replaced her hand with tupperware. It was smooth. After that, not very smart move. She started to cover the tupperware with paper, hoping that it perfectly seals.
Truth is it does not.
Roach finds a little escape hole and crawl right out onto her hand.
"Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!"
Perhaps it shook the whole house. it is past 10pm, but can't help it!
I can't help laughing.

Well, I take her tupperware and lid, calmly cover it in the container and close the lid.
sometimes I wonder why she exaggerate so much more for this simple matter.

compost tea for tea

It's been a while since the last blog.

Spring is here. things are getting a little bit too busy.
Tea plants started growing much more vigorously as the days are getting warmer.

Today I collected 1 gallon bucket full of chicken manure from the coop and field.
This is really interesting process.
I took an old spoon that was lying outside and a 1-gallon bucket.
Just walking around in the front lawn and driveway, walking path, carport, I collected about 3cups of chicken manure. Each time just scoop the chicken droppings. I am sure that the chickens don't care about dirtying the area. It's just us people.

I started making compost tea by adding water to the bucket, but I left it like that too long and manure started to desolve. It became like a paste.

I looked for any filter material, but I could not find at that moment so I decided to splatter in banana patch, mountain apple (which does not look like growing at all) and some experimental tea plants. we'll see what happens.

Chicken Eggs

10 Chickens (9 hens + 1 rooster).
They are about 1/2 year old. We are getting about 5-6 eggs a day.
Pretty good.

Occasionally I find soft shell eggs. Are they still good to eat?
Looks like those chickens just need more calcium, but it could be more than that.
Kim got crushed oyster shell, but they don't like it much.

Our neighbor: Peacock Jake

We have a beautiful neighbor living in a giant Eucalyptus tree across the street.
His name is Jake.

He comes to our yard to spend time with our chickens.
Bachelor Jake has no Peacock friends.
Lonely peacock.

Ocassionaly, we see Jake opens up his feather like a fan.
He does not have any female peacock friends to show the beauty of his feather
...so he does it to chickens.

Our chickens don't really have much appreciation for it.
After all they are chickens!

First Egg from our Chickens

Finally, Our chicken laid a first egg.
The chicken is still small so the egg was tiny too, but it was fresh.
It was a brown egg.
It had a beautiful sun color yolk.

It started in late morning. Brown chicken started to make a funny noise.
Kimberly sensed something.
"I bet the chicken is ready to lay an egg!"
She brought a cardboard box for the chicken to sit in it, but the chicken is not happy so she went back to the coupe.
By the way, I forgot to mention, but we made another coupe and this is much better.
it's raised 3-4ft off the ground, and has skylight.
we dont even get that.

Anyway the chicken went back there and when I got down there to feed other chickens for lunch, the chicken was sitting unusually. Not moving.
I fet the other chickens, but the one chicken was not moving.
I walked up and offered some scratch, she walked up and started eating, but I saw some brown ball.
EGG!

Well, I thought first that Kimberly put the egg there. She read a book, saying when chickens are ready to lay eggs, you are supposed to put some fake eggs so chickens come and lay more eggs there.
Kimberly, on the other hand, placed real egg when she thought Nikki was ready to lay eggs.
Nikki was Nicky, HE does not lay eggs, but started crowing one morning.
But the point is Kim took an egg out of refrigerator and take it to the coup.


Anyway, we were very happy to see the first egg and made a fried egg and Kim and I shared the little fried egg.

Feeling really healthy and grounded.
Chickens are running free in the field today too.