Spring is Coming

Spring flowers are coming up now, giving us hope that the rainy season has an end.



This is a view from our front door, where we will eventually build a porch to sit on.

The view corridor was tricky to carve out, but well worth it.

We love to watch the sunrise over the ocean and still be surrounded by mountains and rivers.

Hardwood Disks

We finally have the correct tools for the job...now we can begin getting this giant 12 ton tree out of our bathroom!



We are thinking of creative uses for the hundreds of disks we are making. Each one ways about 100 kgs or 220 pounds. This is seriously dense lumber!

Tree Adventures of the Past Three Years

We learned quickly which species of trees were prone to blowing over. The Acacia trees are subject to root rot and fall without warning. Not good for the chicken coop.

We had cut all but 2 small Acacias, when they blew over onto another larger Cryptomeria and Eucalyptus, causing a domino effect. Not good for the garden.

With strong winds fore casted, we decided to cut down a heavily leaning Eucalyptus behind our house. The steel cable we used to control the falling direction snapped and 5 tons of wood came crashing down on our bathroom slab. Not good for the bathroom.

Realizing we did not have the experience or tools to cut trees safely, we hired two men to help. Somehow in the translations, (one spoke German and Portuguese, the second German and a little English, and we spoke English and a little Portuguese) the idea to keep the trees out of the garden got mixed up and two Eucalyptus were dropped on top of our cold frames and garden.

So now, we have bought the equipment we need to do the job ourselves. We are reading books and articles to learn proper techniques, and have been practicing on trees away from our house. Hopefully this next year will be without disaster.

3 Year Anniversary of Our Arrival on Flores

When we arrived, we found that the jungle had overtaken the fruit farm, and that the house had fallen down!

Our original plan was to live aboard our sailboat, while we fixed the property. However, the shipwreck changed that plan and we began working on the house first. This way, we would have a place to live while we worked on the land during the following year.

Our next challenge was to get building materials to the site. The original builders had used Oxen to pull the stones along an old path. We had a modern idea...using gravity!

The nearest road is 150 metres, as the crow flies to our house. An inconvenience for us was the river and valley between the road and our house, making the trip by foot about 600 metres!

The send off...

Magnus´s mom and Steve spent their summer vacation helping to bag sand and send concrete blocks across the valley at dangerously high speed.

The recieving end.

Here the house is taking shape.

Now, the forest surrounding the house needed to be cleared.

Gardens and fruit orchards need as much sun as they can get, and this thick jungle was not helping.

We learned how to build free standing stone walls, allowing us to terrace our most protected property for food production.

Collecting stones from all over the mountainside, bringing them to site via foot and wheel burrow was a challenge. But now, we have an abundance of food.