guests
June 30th, 2006
lauren just got back from spending 5 days showing her dad the island and our farm. now we have scott’s father, step mother and two (11yr old) nephews for two weeks. it is fascinating to watch the varied reactions to our farm. to some it is an oasis to others we are living substandard conditions. lauren’s dad looked like he came to the substandard conditions conclusion.
all the animals are doing well on the farm. we even have 13 baby chicks who recently joined us (5 fell out of our giant mango tree from more than 20 feet up, the second time a hen has roosted so high, they roos in the birds nest ferns!), 5 hatched in a 10 gallon gardening pot and 3 hatched in the roosting boxes.
we have had the best luck with attracting great interns since we started to post on the organic farmers web site. we have a woman from california and her half brother is about to join her. she showed up the first day of “work” already having spent the early morning learning the trees in our area. it is so fun to have people who are excited and interested and open-minded.
my most interesting current project is designing a permanent main living structure with scott. we are considering a ferro cement vaulted ceiling (barrel) with cement columns. cement is mined on the island (so the a bulk of the materials would be local) and we want to try the pattern language idea of weaving a basket of a roof and then laying a layer of concrete over that stiffened structure.
termites are a problem in the tropics. many houses here need tenting every 5 years and we don’t want that. i’m not sure that a building that looks like it came from greece makes sense here. after all how do you create a 5-6′ eaves with a vaulted ceiling without making it huge?
i am also excited watching the dvd’s we are getting in preparation for lauren’s high school years. some our library has. they are produced by The Teaching Company, which are basically hand picked (the student’s favorite) college professors giving lectures on dvd. we are really enjoying the one on physiology (by a medical doctor), the one on physics (which covers the k-12 science standards!) and the one called the joy of thinking (about qualitative math). they are 30-45 minutes each lecture and they are addictive like a soap opera. our family likes that kind of stuff.
lauren and scott are out at the tide pools snorkeling with our guests.
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