Settling back into daily life on the farm

It’s been almost a month since returning to Fiji after two months in Canada. Every time that I’ve spend time away from Fiji I experience a bit of culture shock on my return. Generally it takes me 4 to 6 weeks to adjust back to life on the farm. This time it wasn’t too difficult. Arthur an I spent 2 days in Nadi at the Tokatoka Hotel during which I got caught up on sleep. Then we visited his sister Nelly and her family in Nadroqa (which is located high in the Sigatoka valley) for another couple of days. And then we spent a few days in Suva before taking the ferry over to Vanua Levu. Taking a week together allowed us talk about our experiences away from each other, update me on all that has happened on the farm and around our community while I was away, and review our farm priorities. It was a much easier and gentler re-entry.

So what’s happening on the farm? First of all, while we were in Nadi we stopped at the China-Fiji Juncao Technology center to ask about getting more oyster mushroom logs. We met with Mr. Lin and Tracy to share our success with our first 75 logs. They were impressed enough to give us an additional 200 logs. We were a bit surprised as we hadn’t expected to receive as many. Our little car rental was loaded full with my suitcases and the mushroom logs!!! As soon as we made it back to the farm we put them into the ground. Still no mushrooms but hopefully we’ll have some within the next couple of weeks. Based on how many we had from our first planting, we will need to find a market for them. Hopefully we’ll be able to supply them to restaurants in Savusavu and Labasa.

One of Arthur’s big projects while I was away was the clearing and planting of an area in the back of our property. I fondly call this area “the back forty” not just because it actually is the back 40 acres of the farm but because once Arthur has gone off to the back 40 we might not see him for hours. The intention is that this area will be planted with traditional root crops including taro, dalo ni tana, and yams. He and Charlie have already planted 1000 taro, about 50 dalo ni tana, and 100 yams. Over the next few months we’ll continue to plant taro at about 500 per month. This will give us a staggered harvest. In the meantime we’re also planting corn, peanut and cow pea. We were very fortunate to have support from the Agriculture dept to clear the land with a large digger. Now the hard work is done by hand with digging forks and hoes.

While I was away we also received 17 new beehives (still waiting for the last 3). Last week the whole family put on our beesuits and went out to inspect our hives. The young hives need lots of support for the first few months to ensure their success. We’ve lost one hive already and 4 others need to be requeened. We were able to add frames of uncapped and capped brood from our older hives along with frames of honey and pollen. We’ll know soon if the four hives will survive.

The chickens are doing well. We have about 150 layers laying about 70 eggs a day. Laying rate is abit low but some of the birds are getting old. By December we’ll have another 100 hens ready to lay so we can move the older birds out. Yesterday we brought home another 67 meat bird chicks from Labasa. We’re scaling up our meat bird production to get ready for the Christmas season.

The vegetable garden produced well while I was away with lots of bok choy, okra, and beans. The extra compost and millmud that Thomas and his friends from the Bamboo dug into the garden bed has sure helped. I’m also impressed with how well the plants I planted on our hillside are doing. The eggplants have just started bearing. We soon will have too many eggplants for our own use and will hopefully have enough for market.