life feeding on life

I have been here at Uluwehi for a full week now and I'm finally settling into the basic rhythm here.
There is a lot that needs to be done on a daily basis, with such an extensive plant nursery, continual plantings, and loads of animals to care for.

Many of the animals here are largely foragers: the geese graze on grasses, the muscovy ducks forage for all kinds of food (they are especially fond of coconuts) and the black sumatra chickens seem to subsist entirely on free ranging forage. There are also 6 or 7 baby ducks that are in a separate pen with three females adults and one male (for selective breeding). These little cuties receive daily feed rations. Also, there's a fenced area with a whole bunch of ducks and chickens, complete with nesting boxes for egg gathering. The free ranging muscovies and geese make themselves nests that we have to find if we want to eat their eggs. A mama muscovy sits on a nest of 8 quite-possibly fertilized eggs, and a mama swan has a nest she tends to as well, with the help of her quick to hiss at you companions. And then there are 2 pregnant goats that are fed big piles of braches full of foliage fresh cut from trees, esp. laucanea, gliricidia and pigeon pea. A lot of consideration has gone into designing this whole system, and with something like 15 acres of land in cultivation or getting there, there's are thousands of niches to fill.

I spent several days this last week planting trees, particularly pigeon pea (cajanus cajan), a nitrogen fixing leguminous tree that yields tasty peas, fresh or dried (grown extensively in india, e. africa and central america ; and moringa (moringa oleifera), a multi-purpose, fast-growing tree originally from india, of which the leaves, seeds, pods, flowers and roots can all be used for food or medicine. also the seeds can be used for biofuels. the soil here has pretty good drainage and goes down several feet (as evidenced by viewing a cross section of the layers of earth from the ocean cliffs), so with not a lot of rain (even during the rainy season, which is now), and occasional strong winds, lots of mulch seems crucial.

also I planted some bananas (which are propigated by stalk cuttings (called keiki- hawaiian for baby, child, or offspring)) and coconuts (the nut itself shoots up a sprout and you bury it in the soil)... bananas are really incredible plants: grasses whose shoots can become thicker than your legs and towering several times your height. they seem to be a great source of green manure. also we used a bunch of the stalks and leaves the other night to cook a pig and some ducks in a pit (underground cooking oven) called an Imu. I got to experience this process of something similar to traditional hawaiian cooking when Dash from the vegeatable farm at Niulii (where I stayed a week and a half ago) shot a wild pig that had gotten into the garden. No one at their site had any experience processing an animal, and since one of the interns here had experience deer hunting, 4 of us we hopped into a truck and drove over there to help out. I got a close up anatomy / gutting lesson in the pouring rain, the primary source of light being two headlamps directed at the animal.
It is hard for me to descibe this experience. We reflected on the intricacy of organs and body systems making up this animal, allowing it to breathe, metabolize, pump blood. I felt all of these inside of me., all functioning in cooperation to allow me to be alive. and here was this beautiful creature, so recently pulsing with life, now still and dead, and being selectively taken apart into pieces to be fed upon. the intestines and chest organs went into the bushes to be consumed by birds, bugs, bacteria, rats, mongeese, and the choice muscles and fats remained attached to the bone, to be rinsed off and cooked to support our sustanence.

the process of cooking in the Imu consisted of: making a fire in a broad fire pit (probably 7 feet in diameter, heating up porous lava rocks until they are glowing and the fire burns all the way down; covering the hot rocks with a thick layer of split and peeled apart banana stalks and green banana leaves; adding the food , in this case the pig (pretty small, maybe 30 -40 pounds), stuffed with salt and citrus fruits and a sweet potato, and 2 ducks, that Tom decided we should add to the fire when he saw that the pig wasn't as big as we'd anticipated; to the food was added some Ti leaves and some kind of ginger leaves (very fragrant almost like lemon candy); then we covered it all in a bunch more banana stalks and leaves, then with huge palm fronds and whatever materials we could find. Ideally the final stage would be to cover it all with burlap or cardboard to keep all of the smoke and moisture in. On this occasion we didn't have anything appropriate on hand and so the meat got a bit dried out and burnt by the morning (but was still very delicious).
This impromptu process began at about 8 pm and it was quarter to 3 in the morning by the time the fire had burned down enough to add all the layers on top the stones. ...

today I gathered up the down and some of the smaller feathers of the ducks that we cooked on the fire. I am saving them to make a pillow. they are so, so soft.

The social community here has been good for me. and I'm working on making time and space for my developing meditation /movement practice. There are hundreds of interesting books ; I'm reading Introduction to Permaculture cover to cover as an aide for integrating what is being implemented here, to help me understand on different levels, to support the generation of ideas to try in the rainy, temperate climate that I call home (and love and miss).

o, precious life, vulnerable and miraculous. I give thanks for being here, being held and nourished by the earth and the atmosphere.