Land is cleared

The bulldozer is done!  I went down to hakalau on Saturday morning 1/22 to see how things had turned out on the property.  I am thankful that we had a dry week so that the bulldozer could operate effectively.  I also thought that the upper(koai'a) section was pushed very nicely and had more dirt left behind than I thought there would be.  Danny opened up 2 water diversion channels instead of 1, and he opened a driveway on the upper Hilo side of the property as we had discussed.  On the negative side the bottom(orchard) section was only quickly smashed and looks messy.  With the decaying plants it will make it hard to drive and we might not be able to mow it.  The plants that were cleared from the top section were pushed into a 20-30 foot wide pile that runs about 500 feet from the top of the property.  As the picture shows this is a massive pile.  We will need to manage this pile so that we can somehow make use of this valuable dirt and organic matter.
Overall I am very pleased with how has been prepared for us.  Enrique could have saved himself money and just smashed all of the plants, but he showed that he truly cared about leaving the land as good or better than it was when he first leased it.  The upper section is clear and will make planting and mowing very easy, I just gotta plant some seeds to hold the dirt.  The bottom section though messy is manageable. I am currently trying to figure out the logistics and the proper way to use portable electric fencing and cattle to keep the grass and weeds down until we have all of our orchard trees, our permanent fencing and our grazers.  Even the draceana pile can be utilized.  We need to find the right crop that could grow in such loose soil(forestry trees, sugar cane, neem, ho'io).  On Saturday I planted about 50 slips of the Mokuau purple sweet potato variety in the pile just to see how they turn out.
I also finished surveying the land on Saturday.  I borrowed Conrad's laser level again and flagged out the proper contours for each set of koai'a rows.  It was easy enough, but showed me that the rows do not keep consistent spacing across the property and the rows will need to be tweaked a little to work.  It is also evident now that the open area at the top of the koai'a section will be much larger and the open area at the bottom of the koai'a section will be much smaller than expected.  We may need to remove rows from some areas and place them in others.
This week while camping at Kioloka'a I was able to collect and sow many seeds including
~500 'uki(dianella) seeds
~50 cuttings of Mokuau purple sweet potato with red skin originally from Moloka'i
1000+ mamaki seeds from a very nice tree selected for large leaves and dark red veins
100+ halapepe(p. hawaiiensis)
50+ maile seeds from dryland varieties in Manuka
~200 hoawa(p. terminaliodes) seeds from Lama unit(Manuka)
Germination rates and times for natives are hard to guess, so we'll just have to wait and see what pops up.
Kekua Is going to help us to plant kalo along with our koai'a.  This will help us to complete our goal of having a food forest, and will help us tremendously in finding out what it really takes to grow kalo organically and sustainably in our new type of system.  I hope that it will be fruitful and worth the work he will put in.
So Ben calls me on Tuesday night and asks me if I want 500 lehua hulis!!!  At first I was scared to take on this kuleana because I had not seen the land cleared or surveyed the taro areas yet.  But after talking to Kekua I accepted Ben's gift, and we agreed that over the next few week's Ben will give us more hulis totaling about 2000 which will be greatly appreciated.
This coming week I will be picking up and cutting more weed mat and purchasing more wire for pins.
Hopefully we can have planting sites prepared in 2-3 weeks for our remaining 800+ koai'a.
I will also meet with a coworker of mine on Friday out at Hakalau to see if grazing of cattle is a feasible option.
Mahalo ke akua for all the blessings.  Even in a "slow" week for our Uluhou project a lot of good things were accomplished and I am enjoying riding this wave of momentum.  When people see something positive happening it amazing to see the generousity that they show towards it.
1/22 - 4 work hours