First Animals

    In the past two weeks we have put our first animals into our grazed orchard.
    Two weekends ago we purchased two heifers from my friend Brad Lau in Waimea.  They have somewhat unknown origins and Brad says the lady who he got them from were calling them Beefalos with some Angus in them.  I bought them because whatever they are they are certainly miniature by cattle standards.  They are both under 36" at the shoulder at 1+ year old and weigh less than 400 pounds each.  They look like miniature Angus cows and I have a feeling they have some Lowline in them which would be great.  Lowline cows are miniature cattle derived from the Angus breed and were developed in Australia.  They produce the most meat per acre of any breed, can finish with great marbling off pasture alone, and are only about 60% the size of regular Angus cows but produce more rib area of meat(prime cuts) in proportion to their body size.  Their smaller size will do less damage to our fences and our fruit tree roots.
    My dad and I were also able to put up a 20x16 hale/catchment for our animals.  A gutter feeds into our 80 gal trough that will overflow into a small pond(once we make it).  I also went around and "buttoned" up our fence putting extra post or skirt in about 40 spots to make our orchard pig/dog proof.
    This past weekend we put our first sheep in our orchard.  We are very lucky to have 5 sheep(4 female 1 male) from Jake's flock in Pepeekeo.  They are bred from a 7/8 Dorper ram and mixed hair ewes(Katahdin, St. croix, Barbados).  Hopefully the sheep do alright in the orchard, as it will be hard to monitor them.  In Pepeekeo Jake has had a hard time with flystrike and lost 2 ewes to it.  We hope we can breed resistance to it.  Muscovy ducks may also help to clean flies off our sheep, and we plan to get some as soon as we have a pond.  Our Dorper ram has a nice shedding coat and seems to have good feet and resistance to internal parasites.  He has not had any flystrike issues yet.  He is not as big as Dorpers that I have seen in pictures, but I hope that he will breed some good hardy animals and get our ewe line established.  The ram lamb we chose to put in the orchard has exceptionally short hair and looks like he will have a nice muscular frame.  In the future we will look to find a big Dorper ram to beef up our herd.  We will also replace ewes prone to health problems.
    I hope that our animals start to take down the Guinea grass so that we can start planting many more trees this year.  We will need to cull animals aggressively these first few years to breed out weaknesses, but with a little luck our herd will grow large enough to keep our orchard in a state that is favorable for our growing trees.
  

Finally some fence

  Well it's 2012, a full year since we started managing this beautiful property in Hakalau.  We were finally able to save up for some fence and construct a 6.5 acre paddock.  The grasses are growing huge in our fertile soil, and hopefully we can now use grazing animals to help control them.
  Big mahalos to our crew who helped put up our fence, Keahi, Jake, Dad, Uncle Timmy and Mom, Uncle kahela and aunty Terry, Ian and Lahela.  Sorry if I was a slave driver, but I was excited.  It couldn't have happened without everyone's help.
  This area will be our first section of grazed orchard.  I's kind of hard to visualize when your looking at 8ft. guinea grass, but with the correct species and management we'll get it done.  The map below shows the fence in red which is about a quarter of the property.

It's been a while since our last update.  The weeds have been growing robustly and I was not able to access a machine to mow as often as I wanted to.  As a result we lost a large percentage of our Koaia.  We have two rows clean and maintained, and hope to clear and maintain at least the other two main contour rows(about 400 trees total).  These four main rows will establish root systems that will hold the soil in natural terraces until we are able to create swales(kind of hard to explain, come check um out!).
I originally bit of more than I could chew, planning to take care of 2000 trees on about 9 acres.  I was relying on resources that weren't always available(tractor mower).
I beleive that 4 rows will be manageable and still do a lot for soil/water conservation.  Our tallest trees are about 8 feet but spindly.  Not bad for one year of growth.  Trees that have died will have new ones in their place.
This year we will try to work with and around the pioneer(weed) species on our property and use their kino to support other forms of life that are beneficial to us.
"Weeds" serve a purpose and hold and build soil, So before we jump into using herbicide and diesel tractors to control them lets make sure we're not making work for work's sake.
It's all a learning process and a labor of love.  May we continue to ulu this year and remember to put the 'aina first.