1. Digging a well
2. Building a chicken coop
3. Planting a hedge
4. Making wooden benches and a signboard
Each task is discussed in detail below.
Our plant in February 2015.
Photo was taken by our friend Shinozaki-san with a very big and very good camera.
1. Digging a well
Without water, you can't grow plants or keep animals.
We have two options:
A. to dig a shallow (several meters deep) well ourselves
B. to have a deep (50+ meters) well dug by a professional
Digging a well ourselves would be much cheaper and we would get a hands-on experience of digging a well and installing a pump. The demerit is that the water would be of bad quality, given the pesticides used every year on the rice fields around. It would be okay for watering the plants but not for drinking.
Having a deep well dug would be much more expensive and we would get zero practical experience, but we would have clean drinking water.
Access to drinking water might be the single decisive factor - we're now leaning towards having a deep well dug.
This is now in progress. It'll take a few more weeks given our not-so-excellent carpenter skills and the fact that we can work mostly on weekends only.
Nobu and me smiling to Shinozaki-san's camera.
Thank you, Shinozaki-san, for taking great pictures!
3. Planting a hedge
This is in progress too. The first step is obviously to dig holes around the entire plot. I'm proud to say that hole digging has become my second nature. I've dug many holes of finest quality. If you need to dug a hole or two, ask me. I'm good at it.
The other day I planted ume - plum tree (blooming season is right now) and a sakura tree (to bloom in a few weeks). Sakura and ume are not hedge plants but will definitely add some beauty to the place.
This is plum (All photos below were taken by my iPhone. The difference from the photos above is obvious.):
This is plum with a cool I-don't-care-what-you-do-I'm-not-even-watching-you cat in the background:
This is the same plum in detail:
This is the same plum in detail:
This is sakura tree:
Don't tell me you can't see it. It's right there. It's going to be a grand sakura tree in about half a century.
4. Building wooden benches and a signboard
Benches - we received a complaint from a visitor that there's no place to sit and rest. Very accurate observation indeed. We've added benches to our to do list.
A signboard - people walking around look bewildered, not knowing what's going on in here. Clearly, a signboard with minimum information about our solar sharing project is necessary. Ideally it will be made of wood and it will include our public Project Name (to be made up) and some curly ornaments in the corner.
I'll inform you about our progress in each area.