Another brick in the wall..

We finally have the beginnings of walls! The builders got started on Friday (just in time to take the weekend off) and this week they seem to be pushing on with walls and columns. They are easily distracted and decided to dedicate a fair bit of time to redesigning our chicken coop but at least there´s progress on the walls too.

We visited our friends who have a farm last weekend and they gave us heaps of things to plant like plantains, herbs, helaconias and some cactus type things. We planted them all in the garden without guidance and it turns out we´ve done it all wrong. I´m being stubborn about it though and am going to leave them how they are to see what happens.

We also bought two chickens off the workers at the farm, black laying hens that are six months old and already lay eggs. They are lovely and glossy with red dangly bits on the head and chin. We have named them Lesley and Jane after my aunts. Unfortunately, they haven´t taken after their namesakes in character. They are ferocious and are really mean to the red ones, they bite them and wont let them into the coop through the day.

As soon as the sun goes down though they all put aside their differences and hop in to sleep side by side, very fickle. We had to decorate the nests with plastic bottle caps to stop the hens roosting on the nests but it didnt work, they keep cramming on in and pooing all over the nests. We´ll figure something out.

This week we started our full on ´hostel goes green´ project. We are now using only vinegar, bicarb of soda, and citronella to clean the hostel, we have a whole bunch of recycling bins and we´re trying to encourage the guests to be energy and water aware. They seem to like it and it´s amazing to see how many things you normally just throw out - for example we collect a laundry basket full of plastic bottles every single day. Hopefully they will become a greenhouse for us to grow pineapples! Because of the self-catering kitchen and our veggie munching guests, we have LOADS of compost.

Unfortunately the insects love it. First it was too dry and got infected with ants and then I chucked a heap of water in and now it´s writhing with maggots. I´m not sure how to combat that. Maybe it´s time for some atomic chilli mix.

We´re now at the stage of designing our rainwater harvesting system. We are clashing heads a bit with the builder because he has some different ideas about how we should do things and doesn´t like our ideas. He thinks that chlorine is the best way to treat water whereas we want a biosand filter system with holding tanks so that we can limit the use of chemicals. We´ve been reading a LOT about it and we´re pretty convinced that´s what we want - Rodrigo says no. I dont know exactly how we´re going to get around that but further discussion is clearly needed.

Anyway, a much more productive week this week and hopefully by the next post we´ll pretty much have the structure of the house sorted!