The bamboo bike building workshop has been happening this week, so every day people have been working down in the quonset, grinding, sanding, drilling, and applying resin. It’s been nothing but rain, rain, and more rain too, and the generator had to be restarted more than once due to the plethora of power tools. The solar panels don’t provide so much energy on a week’s worth of overcast weather. We are completely off the grid here in Kipahulu, which is one of the many things I love about this place, its independence from mainstream society, but it can also be challenging to manage your own infrastructure.
On Monday, for example, I went with Ryan up to the dream pools to fix the water line. We crossed a very slippery river over a very rocky waterfall, which was not made easier by the recent onset of rain. Then, barefoot, we continued climbing a narrow trail above the river, which at times included climbing rock faces. When we reached the spot, Ryan proceeded to climb banyan roots on a rock face thirty plus feet above the water. As much as I wanted to be like Tarzan, I decided to stay put. The pools were beautiful, a forty foot waterfall and a rope swing and rocky cliffs on the other side like mosaic faces. My job was to apply pressure to the pipe so Ryan would be able to attach the new part. After bleeding the line in a couple of other places to make sure it wasn’t clogged, we crossed the river again and flew around the property in the four wheeler to make sure water was flowing to all of the tanks. To live outside the norm you must be relentless.
Tuesday I spent the day preparing bamboo poles to be made into tool handles. I selected the poles, which had to be solid enough to withstand pressure from shoveling and thin enough to comfortably fit your hand around, and then matched poles to tool heads. There were twelve tools in total: shovels, pitchforks, digging forks, rakes, and a hoe. Then I cut the poles using the chop saw to the right length, a little over four feet. Then I used a grinder to take off the silica skin and any extra material on the nodes, and then used a small saw blade to roughen up that area so the apoxy resin will adhere (it’s all about maximizing the surface area). It was a time-consuming and tiring process, particularly using the grinder for long periods of time, but a lot of fun and a great skill to learn.
On Wednesday I spent the morning planting papaya seeds and righting all of the plants that had been knocked over from the wind. Afterward I worked on the tools for the rest of the day, finished grinding and cutting the remaining four tools I had left and then worked on preparing the inside of the poles. Some of the tool heads were hollow so the poles could fit inside of them, but others were filled with gunk or screws or were solid so I found poles that were wide and thick enough for the tool heads to fit inside of them (ideally with a taper towards the other end so you could still hold and use them comfortably). For those, I used a drill bit to roughen up the inside so the apoxy resin will adhere there as well. The next step will be preparing the tool heads themselves by scoring the metal with a grinder. Then we will be glueing the pieces together with the apoxy resin, then sanding that down, sanding the whole handle down, and finally applying clear resin to finish. It’s an involved process, but absolutely worth it to be able to make your own tools out of material you grew yourself.
Thursday I harvested and processed turmeric all day. There was an order for forty pounds and then another for ten, but we ended up harvesting seventy pounds in total. To process the turmeric you soak it in water, wash it, cut all the roots off and break it into fingers (this turmeric is going to bemade into juice, so it doesn’t matter if it’s not whole, and it’s easier to wash without having to go in between all of the crevices). By the end it is very waterlogged, so you cannot get an accurate reading on weight until after it’s processed and dried.
I worked two extra days this week, Friday and Saturday, up at Ryan’s garden. I weeded and mulched a grove of papaya trees, edged, weeded, and mulched several smaller banana, avocado, and guava trees, edged and weeded the garden’s border, planted comfrey, and cut the grass back from the pumpkins and vetiver.