BUSY, BUSY , BUSY with planting, harvesting, cleaning and more and more 4th week of January 2024

This is Rajan and Sangita last Saturday evening just before Rajan flew off to Malaysia. After spending a day in Kuala Lumpur he went to the farm in Chempaka Kuning and it wasn't long before he was getting on with some farm work there.

Meanwhile back in Buddha Garden........we were completely full with volunteers which was just as well as there was a lot of work to do. We started with clearing this bed in the Suryan garden. At the end of last month we had planted lettuce on this bed. They didn't grow very well because of the unexpected rain earlier this month which flooded the bed. The plants were very small and obviously were not going to grow very much so most of them had to be abandoned.

After clearing the bed we planted the whole bed with brinjal (aubergine) seedlings. It took two days to finish it completely. During which time we realised that we have more or less used up all our compost and we MUST make some more as soon as we can. That will have to wait, however, until we can source a large amount of leaves. As usual we have some leaves in the farm, but not enough for all the compost we need to make. We missed getting our first tractor load of leaves for this season because of the unexpected rain.

This week we also harvested some very nice lettuce which was a beautiful and fresh green colour.

The day after doing this we cut the rest of the lettuce which we had to sort to take out the best leaves.

This was the last of the lettuce for the time being because of the lettuce lost during the rains. We've got to wait at least a week for the new lettuce to grow. Then we planted seedlings in the nursery to keep the lettuce coming.

Some volunteers volunteered to work extra hours. Which meant we could do jobs like clearing up this waste recycling area.

One of the volunteers made a storage place for the mango ginger roots that we will replant to grow mango ginger next year.

A group of volunteers gave the kitchen a much needed deep clean. The idea is that they continue to do this once a week on Wednesdays and if they do, it will be wonderful. With so many volunteers the domestic infrastructure is under quite a bit of strain.

The chickens got lots of new toys this week. This was the top of a papaya tree that came off while papaya's were being picked. Its not so unusual as papaya trees are not very strong.

Leaves were raked up and the chickens really loved scratching around in them.

There was also a tree in the chicken yard that was starting to poke through the net. A volunteer cut off the top of the tree (a palmyra) and pushed down the palm fronds so the chickens could jump up and down on them. None of them jumped up into the tree, I think because palm fronds are the wrong shape for chickens feet to grip. But they seemed to find plenty under the tree to scratch and peck at and although small, the tree does provide a bit of shade.

The chickens have had a very interesting week and now have a yard in which they have lots of things to play with.