A New Project

OK, we're on to something different now. Rachel and I have been in Hawaii over a month now, and we've done lots of good stuff. we spent a few weeks with a bunch of family here (luke's brother paul's girlfriend's family from texas and belgium!), had a lovely christmas and new year with all of them, and really got to see the sights of the island. now, we are on to why we are really here...For the last two or three weeks, we have been working on a live-in pole barn with brother Paul. paul and maxine live in an old plantation house in hilo, but paul takes care of an orchard 25 minutes' drive up the coast, so it's a lot of driving. they want to be at the orchard to be able to better care for it, not to mention getting out of town and into the country.

The barn structure is a timber-frame style design, built with green eucalyptus posts, recycled scaffolding from a local bridge repair, and other salvaged materials. As you can see from these drawings, there will be two floors, arranged in split-level fashion. Ground level will be storage, 1st floor kitchen, and loft bedroom.

To minimize material usage and impact on the land, we dug shallow footers and poured eight custom pier blocks to raise the posts off the ground and provide a solid foundation. i always thought a foundation was a standard thing in any house, but apparently, that isn't the case. luke said that because the ground never freezes here, there is no need for a sunken slab. the shallow footers and pier blocks are actually pretty fancy--some folks just build their houses right on the lava rock.

The formwork for the pier blocks was improvised from cheap plastic flower pots. The white block in the picture is only to hold the anchor straps while the concrete sets, it will be removed before the frame goes up. we poured the footers and the pier blocks on two separate days. the first day, i was just the gopher--hauling bags of concrete when needed, pouring water into the mix, just whatever i could do to make luke and paul's job easier. but the second day, paul had other work to do, so luke and i did the pier blocks ourselves. it was the first time i had ever worked with concrete (boy, does it make your skin dry!), and i really enjoyed it. it was a process to get everything level. we used a cool thing i had never heard of before called a water level to make sure each pair of footers was exactly even. i think they are quite pretty.

Paul and I selected 4 trees from the eucalyptus plantation 1 mile up the road. We felled, cut to length and dragged 10 posts from forest, then loaded them in his truck and coasted down the hill to the building site. i was pretty impressed with the boys' forestry skills. not to mention the truck. what a gnarly load. as they say here, "that truck is mean."

For the past few days, Paul, Maxine, Rachel and I have been like elves in Santa's workshop... marking, sawing, and chiseling mortises into the posts. No power tools except the occasional chain saw use, no generator... ocean views and sea breezes... This is the way to do it!

as you can imagine, this whole building thing is totally new to me. but it is really interesting, and i like that we are doing most everything by hand because it makes me feel like i can do it. i don't know where to start with all those intimidating power tools, but i can grab a chisel or a hand drill and get started. my chiseling skills are improving, slowly but surely.

mighty fine chisel work, if i do say so myself! okay, okay, luke had to come in at the end and clean in up a bit, but i am still pretty proud of it!

this is one set of posts, ready for the next step. you can see the opposing joints that will face each other when they are set on the peer blocks. these are the lower corner posts. we are almost finished with the upper corner posts. then the four inner posts. by the end of the week, we'll be ready to start putting the pieces together!

Doubtful Sound

I was beginning to doubt we would ever get around to posting the last couple entries to our New Zealand excursion. But here we go... yes, sorry for the excessively long delay. we got to hawaii and it was go, go, go right away. we have settled into a bit more of a routine here now, so we have time to get you all up to date...

While we were in Fiordland National Park (on the southwest end of the south island), Rachel and I decided to splurge and go for a two day kayaking adventure in "Doubtful Sound," which is one of the more remote fiords in the park (a fiord is a glacial valley extending in from the ocean). Fiordland is charactaristically cloudy and rainy, and when we crossed over the pass and first set eyes on Doubtful Sound, it appeared just so. there are several "sounds" in fiordland, but they were mistakenly named by the first white explorers. a sound is a large inlet of the sea, often carved by the sea itself. a fiord is a long narrow inlet created by glacial activity. it is amazing to think of this amazing landscape being formed simply by the movement of ice.

Here we go, dressed like ducks, into the wilderness... rubber ducky, you're the one. you make kayaking lots of fun...
The clouds soon blew away, leaving us with a day and a half of blue skies and smooth sailing. it rains in fiordland almost every day of the year, so we were extremely lucky to get so much sun and blue sky. our guide said he had never had a trip with such nice weather. i have done a little bit of kayaking, but never done this sail thing. it was really neat. we "rafted up," then the back people tied the sail to their paddles and raised them in the air while the front people held the rope a little lower, and away we went!

The walls of the fiord are very steep, and the forest grows on a very thin layer of topsoil. Landslides are quite common. We came upon this one, which appeared only hours old. I could smell the fresh earth still lingering in the air. Note the kayak in the foreground to give it some scale. all along the way, there were signs of landslides. once you knew what to look for, you could tell the various stages of development of the slopes. this is a common cycle--landslide, lichen growth on the rock, small plants form in the shallow pockets of leftover soil, trees grow, a whole forest develops, the forest gets too heavy and slides into the ocean. rinse, repeat. this one was the freshest we saw, for sure. it is near where we stopped for lunch, and some of the group heard some muffled noises that sounded like trees falling down. i didn't hear it, but luke did. anyway, we came upon this, the smell of soil still in the air, and wonder...

this is as we docked for the evening. the whole group decided to take a dip once camp was set up. the water was freezing! maybe even literally! but boy, a dip in that icy water sure was refreshing.

We made camp that evening and watched the shadows move across the valley as the sun set.

The next morning, we were up at dawn to get a full day's paddle in before heading back to town. It was another unusually sunny day, and absolutely stunning. And not another human for miles. According to our guide, we experienced a Fiordland that few people had.

We met some really cool people, learned a lot of interesting stuff, and had a great time. I don't know about Rachel, but it was the highlight of my time in New Zealand. mine too, for sure. our guide was really a great guy, very knowledgeable and a good storyteller. the other folks on our trip--two aussies brothers and a german woman--were lovely and we ended up meeting for dinner that evening (at a delicious restaurant that was apparently a favorite of the "lord of the rings" cast). all in all, it was an amazing trip that i won't soon forget.

As we left Te Anau the next morning, the moon and the mountains bid us farewell... it was a fitting end to a magical four days in fiordland. i hope we are able to get back there someday.