06: Halfway Through!

Welcome back! I’m ready for another week of NPCS! The time went by so fast!! I hope we get to learn about different plants and their care this week. Todays the second day at the Mala, today we got to meet all of the supervisors today. We met Brandon and Bret on Friday, but today we meet the boss Anthony, and Erika. Anthony is the boss of of Hakipu'u. This includes the mala, lo'i, oysters, shrimp, flowers, and orchards. First we fertilized the field we covered i n weedmat Friday, Erika showed us how to spread it evenly. We each took a couple of rows and threw the fertilizer evenly. Fertilizer has all of the necessary nutrients like potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus. It was important to shake it over the full mound to cover everything. To finish up that field we raked over the mounds too make sure it was flat and even. While everyone was raking the field, Taiyo, Mrs. Peeler, and I cleaned out the aquaponics tank. It was full of algae due to the rice plants that were previously growing in it. We removed the black cinder covered with weeds, and hopefully in the next couple of days, the sun will dry out the algae. Our Task for the rest of the day was clearing out these huge fields of weeds, in plot one. That took forever and was hard but also satisfying, see the end result. I wish we would have taken before and after pictures.

I can’t believe we are already halfway though NPCS!! Time fly's by so fast, although I am having a lot of fun and learning a lot about gardening, farming, and taking care of livestock. I have no idea what we are doing tomorrow but I am excited!! I just hope no more weeding. My hands and back hurt from weeding for hours, I don’t know how farmers do this everyday for years!? Anyways, I hope we get to work with the shrimps or oysters as well. Whatever we do I’m sure it will be fun!!

Pictures from the Mala: (All from Mrs. Peeler)

Weeding

More Weeding!

Distributing the fertilizer!

The Aquaponics Tank