I needed to water the trees before they are planted. I powered the pump up and headed up the property. Neighbors later came en-mass to the my place to tell me that I had a geyser. Turns out the pressure relief valve tested itself. Now I need to see if it is broken or not installed correctly. If only it would rain....

The woman at the sprinkler company said she doesn't think my system was designed to run more than one zone at a time. OOPS! I was hoping I could to save lots of wires and complexity on the control system. Now I may need all 7 wires in the bundle I am running. Speaking of running wires, I am about 150 feet too short and have to get more wire tomorrow.

This morning I created a TODO list of about 14 things to be done before I can plant. They include application of fertilizer and lime, putting down weed mat, filling in the trenbch, finishing the feeder PVC and addition of drip lines, finding someone to bless the land and so on.

It is possible to start planting in a week, but each day it looks a week off.

In an unrelated iteam, twice in two weeks I was able to shout and stop someone from backing up into a guy on a mopen and one car just missed the other by 1 inch.

My good deads did nothing to add points to my account. As I exited Safeway the other day I found someone scraped the ide on my truck and drove off. It is not a big gouge, but it is very obvious, none the less, at least to me.

After suggestions from others and thought on my part, I opted to not spray and cut the grass where the plants will go. I will use landscape mat (weed mat) along the rows where the trees will go. I looked all over and even tried the Hilo side of the island. Without having it shipped in (and waiting months), I went with Lowes and lucky for me, they had it in stock. I wish I could have gotten the mat at wholesale prices, still, I did pretty good. I now own 8400 feet of mat!

It will be unrolled over the existing holes, and any rocks will be moved out of the way. Then where the holes are, an X will be cut in the mat and the mat puilled back. Then trees will be pushed in with a bit of fertilizer.

I unloaded the mat and moved all the small trees to where I can water them while unplanted.

I also hooked up a hose to the 2" pipe and watered all thew big trees. We have not had much if any rain since I took custody of the trees. That involved kicking on the pump and using rain water from the bottom tank.

I still have to get the fertilizer and may have to rent a truck. There is so much fertilizer and lime, I may have to make 3 or 4 trips.

I still have the PVC to finsh installing so I can complete the installation of the control wires.

Until I buy more sand and have the trenchg filled in and the connectors added, I can't plant....

Will I have plants in the ground this weeK, doen't look like it; however it still looks possible it could be by the end of the month.

It is a lot of work for one person and I wish I could multi-task more.

I set the alarm for 5:30 am so I could do a few tasks before Stu got here. Stu was bringing the 1060 mature trees. As I went outside I notic a big problem. My 10' by 10' canopy had bee ndestroyed by the wind. This is a popup canopy I bought to use at the farmers Market and cost about $80 a couple years ago. I had set it up to cover the valves and parts that were being put in the trench. It was tristed and the fabric ripped, and totally unusable anymore.

Then Stu and his wife brought the 1060 mature trees and my friend and I helped unload and stage them. This is a photo of the 1060 trees delivered today.

Most of the PVC is connected and now has the control wires in it. This will allow me to control the water valves on each zone. A side effect was that I got way too much sun and kept waiting on an afternoon sprinkle which never materialized.

In celebration of the tree delivery, it was lunch at manago Hotel. Those who have visited the island may know of the place. I had a wonderful terri beef plate with the world-famous potato salad on the side, rice and beans.

I'm off to Kona tomorrow for my part-time job. I hope I am not as sore tomorrow as tonight!

Then tonight at about 9pm the wind picked up considerable wind. The wind knocked most of them over, but they appear none the worse for wear. I ran out and loaded them back into the truck, in the dark. As I finished, the wind stopped. I am poised to drive somewhere else on the farm if the wind comes back.

Tomorrow I will take delivery of 1060 more mature trees.

Stay tuned...

In the top zones I am planting so I can prune in the Beaumont-Fukunaga style. This has the rows of coffee trees closer together almost like a hedge. Then you prune 1 row out of every 3 each year. To get started with this process it helps to have the rows planted in order (a year apart) so that they are all different heights when it comes to that first pruning a few years from now. A better alternative is to plant a short row and perhaps 2 taller rows. This seems to increase the yeild a bit and still allows you to start pruning without having too many trees too tall before getting into the rotation. Think of it like children. You have them slowly so that when one outgrows his clothes, the younger one can wear them. :-)

To get started, I have ordered over 530 smaller trees which I'll pick up today. Then I have 1,060 taller mature trees which get delivered Friday. I'll let the trees acclimate here for a few days, as they were grown a bit higher up the mountain. I have to schedule workers to plant them, but first I had to work out a dilema.

Up where I am planting, there is lots of soil and lots of grass. When the trees get planted they will already be a few feet tall above ground. There will be grass right next to the trunk and that is a problem. I would either have to have workers use string trimmers or Roundup very close to the trunks. An alternative is to use a weed mat, lay it out on each row, punch a hole in it where the tree holes are, and plant the trees through the hole. The weed mat allows water to seep down t othe roots, but not let weeds grow up. I had to weigh the cost of the mat and installation against hundreds of dollars of Roundup each year and the cost for someone to weed and spray.

So you can see that I am still spending money and have no return from the new trees yet. The 500 trees are $3.50 each, the 1,000 taller ones are $5.00 each and the mat about $1,500. That is about $8,600 worth of checks to write this week. However, then I have 1590 trees setting roots and drinking up rain. To get catchment water caught is the deal I'm waiting the carpenter to tell me about. I have temporary electric to the pump but need to get that permanently run. At least if I can get the carpentry done, I can make do until a bit more money comes in.

No one will tell you that farming is a winning proposition, but we do it anyway. It is satisfying when a project such as this finally comes together and certainly when it all works in the end. That day is rapidly aproaching and I still expect to have plants in the ground by the end of the month!

I still have work to do, and am juggling that with my second job up in town but soon I hope to be able to sit back and relax a bit. That is when I can get things like the kitchen remodeled and the brakes on the truck replaced. Little things like that :-)

Water, water, every where,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

My day went a lot like that. When last we visited I had my water tanks installed and already half fuull of water. The farm is dotted with thousands and thousands of holes for new coffee trees. I have a trench dug for water pipes and two people calling me, poised and ready to sell me thousands of new coffee trees to fill said holes.

A few days ago the irrigation guy came by and started unrolling my Driscoll pipe. This is a very thick and durable black plastic water pipe, 2 inches in diameter and perhaps almost 1/4 inch thick. Although many people run this above ground, mine must be buried as I have to drive a tractor across where it will run. Others can use giant hose clamps to hold it where I had to have mine fused (melted together) so I can bury it and not worry about leaks.

The trench is 1000 feet long from the bottom of the farm top the top. In that trench are twp Driscoll lines parallel to each other. The main line branches 5 times and there are valves at each branch. That second Driscoll has all saddles attached every place there will be a row of coffee trees. Right now there is a riser (vertical tube with a cap) at each row. That allows me to fill the trench without getting dirt in the riser. After the trench is filled, the riser will be trimmed and a right angle PVC attached and then a special adapter. To the adapter will be a long line of drip tubing stretching down a row of coffee trees.

I opted to build a concrete base with bolts to hold the pump steady. A friend HIGHLY SUGGESTED that I place a piece of PVC through the concrete to run the electric wire through it. I did that and was very happy with the construction. well, until the pump was finally lowered into place. The bolts were a bit too short afterall and the pipe is in exactly the wrong place tfor where the power needs to be (I had the pump mounted backwards because the arrow on the pump seems to show shaft rotation, not water flow direction. Still, not a big deal.

To power the pump I needed 220 volts in an area of the farm where there is no power. I temporarily run romex (plastic coated outdoor wire) from the house to the pump and to keep it off the ground and out of the way, suspended it by propping it up with PVC poles. At the pump I temporarily attached a relay which is controlled by 25 volt AC power. This is the same power used for outdoor yard sprinkler systems. The 25 volt low power wires supply the current to pull in a big relay that switches 220 volts to the pump. The other end of that high voltage wire had to be connected to a current supply. Rather than open the circuit breaker box, I opted to cheaply rig a different solution for the test. I purchased a dryer cord and connected the wire to it and plugged it in place of the dryer. It did the job for my test.

Today we completed the attachment of risers and caps, placement of the water pump and finally the pressure testing of the water lines! Only 3 riser leaked and they were quickly fixed.This is another major milestone! I now can supply water under pressure from the bottom tank to any of the 5 zones of coffee trees. With a bit more PVC pipes I can also fill the top 3 water tanks from the bottom tank. Once those few pipes are in place I will also be able to irrigate specific zones from the top 3 tanks too.

Weather permitting on Tuesday I will put the PVC pipe in the tank besides the 2 Driscoll lines. At each zone is a valve mentioned a minute ago and the wire in that PVC will allow me to remotely control each valve.

A co-worker from the condos was supposed to come by last Tuesday and give me a quote on extending my roof and attaching the needed gutters to direct rainwater into the bottom tank. ight now the tanks are all filled slowly with whatever water falls on top of each tank and seeps throught the shade cloth on top. Soon all of the water hitting my house and garage will run into a gutter, then a pipe and into the bottom water tank, From there it is pumped up the property.

As you can see, this pressure testing is a major part of the project.

So to recap:

I have to get the roof extended and gutters and pipes run. This may take the carpenter a day or two.

I have to glue PVC and some connectors for the control wires and expect this to be done Tuesda and perhaps in the trench that same day.

With the PVC in the trench and covered with sufficient sand (which I need to order), I can begin filling the trench (that may be Thursday). Although I have a tractor and front end loader, I will need people with shovels to move the sand and dirt with shovels. Still, Thursday looks good for that.

With people here those days, I might as well run the tractor around the property and have them load it with rocks kicked up from the new holes. I can also have them start unrolling the drip lines down the rows of the top 2 or 3 zones. At the end of each row will be a small bleeder valve.

I doubt they can do it the same day but perhaps Friday (oh gosh Friday?) they might be able to start planting coffee trees! That means I may have to have the trees delivered Thursday. That may be rushing things, but it is about then I need to have them here. About $8,000 will get those trees here and will about cut off the flow of money into the farm. Hopefully a year or two from now, the new trees will start the flow of money back into my accounts. Hopefully :-)

I need to schedule a blessing of the land.

To rework an old quote, "The light at the end of the tunnel is NOT the headlight of an oncoming train!"

On Monday or Tuesday they will come back and attach the saddle connectors. Tha\ey attach to the 5 shorter pipes and transition from the 2" header to the drip lines.

I talked with a co-worker, a carpenter, to extend my roof for the catchment part of the project and I'll soon decide how to get the water from the roof to the bottom tank.

I have already bought the concrete and decided how the pump will be positioned on the ground and held down.

I have 2 people ready to sell me trees and as soon as I can get the water system up and running, it will be time to plant!

In the meantime, I stopped by my friends house and talked about her Labradors. She has one puppy to sell from the current litter.

I have to head to me temporary job in town. I have a bunch of reports to finish before my boss's boss and her boss appear this week from Corporate.

My story...

Back in the 1980's, I and a friend who worked for Penril (a modem company) decided to play with the mainframe computer my boss had. The HP3000 cost well over $150,000 even back then and came with serial/parallel ports (25 pin connectors) which went to printers and modems. It was possible to write programs which would toggle one of those pins to have or not have voltage.

Jeff created a small computer which would look at the pin and supply 120 volts to an electrical outlet. This is when people actually took computer parts and made things with them, rather than buy things off the shelf.

We created a program which would look at a table of times and toggle that pin on the connector. The night before we would load water in the coffee pot and coffee in the filter and leave the office. At say 6am in the morning, the coffee pot would start up and the coffee would brew. The boss would appear minutes later and start his day. The unit was dubbed CPC-1 (Coffee Pot Controller - version 1).

We never marketed it, but years later home automation became quite common. A process called X-10 came along and commoners (people without mainframes) could start coffee pots. You may see X-10 products in Lowes and Home Depot, where you use the electrical wires in your house to control lamps far away. Although X-10 has some problems, it is not uncommon to use it to light your house, open and close curtains in the AV room, etc.

I used to have an iron I would forget to turn off before leaving fro work. Well, I THINK I forgot to turn off... anyway, I plugged it into the X-10 controller in the bathroom and the main box was in the computer room. It used house wiring for its signal delivery. Each 1/2 hour it forced the outlet to turn off, just in case I forgot to do it manually; thus the iron, if left on, would never run for more than an hour. I even had a module which answered the phone and I could remotely turn on or off appliances and lights from a cell phone.

Another company finally created software which listens to your voice. You set up a few microphones around the house and add a few control phrases to the system. Thus you can speak commands and they happen.

"Computer...",
"YES MASTER",
"Turn coffee pot on",
TURNING COFFEE POT ON"

It really worked that way!

So yes, there are ways to start your coffee pot, but some are more complex and novel than others.

The true coffee lovers here will suggest that you not leave ground coffee out all night and water in the pot to perhaps lose some of its oxygen, etc, and that you may sacrifice some taste for convenience.

The alternative to that is to hire a butler...

"Jeeves...",
"YES MASTER",
"Turn coffee pot on",
TURNING COFFEE POT ON"