Howdy everyone!!! Sorry about the delay in my blog! I think it was last November i wrote the last one and then time has just slipped away as usual. Happy New Year!!! and welcome to the start of our 2018 season at Kitesurf Tonga. Summer break has nearly come and gone! When i say summer break…i dont actually mean we go on holidays for the entire summer…hahahahahaha we actually work quite hard during Summer Break 🙂 There is a slideshow of pictures at the end of this post of all the randomn stuff we have been doing 🙂 Enjoy!
Maintenance during Summer Break
Well what can i say …we went on holidays for Xmas and had a fantastic relaxing time away. A big shout out to our amazing housesitters Nix and Paul. The most amazing couple and we felt so safe with our home in their hands. BIG THANKYOU to you both xx Jenga Tinks Tiggy and Fatty miss you loads and cant wait to see you again! Glen had his shoulder surgery back in November 2017 and has almost fully rehabilitated and is ready for a kite! He almost went out the other day in 35 knots north west….ummm but thought better of it at the last minute hehehehe He will wait for some nice light wind for his first session back to see how it all feels. In the last two months we have been working around the place doing some general maintenance as its been almost 4 years now since we built Fanifo Lofa and the fales and resort needed some TLC.
Compost
We have started to use Bokashi for composting! Bokashi’ is a generic Japanese term , meaning ‘fermented organic matter’. It is working so well for us and we recommend it to everyone to use http://www.zingbokashi.co.nz/zingbokashi-compost-zing-the-easiest-way-to-recycle-your-organic-waste/
It is so easy to use and environmentally friendly and allows for many advantages over other ways of organic recycling, worm farms etc
Advantages include:
- Decreased composting time – about 50% faster than traditional composting
- Less odour as the food decays, because of the Bokashi fermenting, instead of decomposing
- Increased growing power resulting in healthier and more productive plants
- Easy to use!
- No unsightly, messy compost heap.
Composting Toilets
We developed our own version of composting toilets in our fales so that we could have flushing toilets, no smell, and no unsightly views for the users. The toilets have been working so well as they are really only used 6 months of the year and the remaining 6 months of the year they do their thing and turn your waste into compost. 3 years on and we thought we better dig up our systems and check them out…Well what we found was absolutely amazing. The waste after three years was minimal as it had all reduced in quantity whilst it was composting. We couldnt believe how well our system has worked. We thought we would be working on this for weeks but it took 2 days…can you believe it?! we were so excited to know that our design was pretty darn good!
Boats
Glen has been off in the little red dinghy – our new plastic fantastic with an egg beater on the back hahahaha 3.5 horsepower ..its tiny..its slow but hey we made it work for us. Both boats needed some body work and a new antifoul coat. A week later and Glen had already completed it all. We will wait till our first guests to pop one of the boats back in the water just in case a sneaky cyclone rears up last minute in the season. It has been Northerly winds and rain for about a week now….can see the trades coming up in the forecast though YEOW!
Gardening
During the summer i mowed our lawn every 8 days…now the lawn takes 3 full days to mow so basically it felt like i was just mowing the lawn the entire time! The lawnmower and whipper snipper have certainly seen better days. We thought the new lawnmower, which didnt even make it two weeks without something breaking! Poor Glen in the horrid man cave trying to fix the stupid thing…grrr hiss spit…its almost 40 degrees and all you want to do is get going early in the morning before you literally melt and the silly machine will not start. So we bit the bullet or took the bull by the horns and bought an industrial lawnmower..and before you ask NO it is not a ride on…we have too many trees and roots in the way to have one of those but for the price i hope it makes me a nice cold cocktail each time i mow hahahahaha….The whipper snipper is also a ferral creature…something snapped inside the thing and it stopped cutting…it still spun but it stopped cutting…glen pulled it apart and welded it back together…its held fast so far but we still bought a new one. Now i am hoping not to mention broken gardening tools again for at least 3 years…thats how long i think these machines should last. Cross your fingers and your toes people!
The oddest thing has happened to our grass in the last two weeks…its all dying…a small little green weed is taking over..very very bizarre. Does this mean that i dont need to mow the lawn anymore???
We have also cleared our vege patch…which is actually just a fruit tree patch…with lime trees, banana trees, very small avocado & mango trees and pumpkin. We are putting in a little greenhouse…for the hydroponics we are just about to set up too. Glen has finally rebuilt the outside fence around the vege patch because of the pigs….
Boars are us…
We have been plagued by big huge boars in the last four months. They have been keeping us awake most nights for so long. They are not scared of us at all or the dogs for that matter. We clap our hands, bang pots and pans and they just look at us. The dogs bark and bark and bark and bark….worse than roosters in my opinion! We have been asking anyone if they can help us with this problem but no one would come over to Uoleva. HOWEVER after months of frustration i am pleased to report that big Brutus is now in our freezer. George and Mildred are still on the loose but they rarely come in at night anymore. Its so AMAZING to get a full nights sleep not waking up to the dogs barking and giant animals skulking around the house. We had a tongan worker come over and he trapped big brutus one night and then the rest is history. WOOHOOOOOOO!
Staff Fale area
We have put a new roof on the staff fale which will keep the coconuts out hahahahaha… we also cut down the offending coconut trees so there will not be a repeat episode of that..sorry Jezza hahahaha. We have also cleared behind the staff area to reveal the beautiful sago palms….so pretty! I am in the process of transplanting all the baby sago palms from that area around the resort. Unfortunately the first few we moved arent coping very well because we had northerly winds which sprayed them with salt…i put them a fair way back from the beach but anything within 60m of our beachfront got hammered. So fingers crossed we manage to get a few transplanted successfully 🙂
Electrics
We thought it was about time we put some 240v powerpoints in the fales to replace the charging station in the common fale. We will have these powered up from 8am – 8pm daily for our guests which should make everyone rather happy 🙂 We also rewired most of the lights in the fales as they seem to have failed which was highly annoying. But its done now and we shouldnt have to revisit that in a long time.
TC GITA
We escaped this puppy well and truly…she was nasty and really hit Nukualofa badly. They are well on the way to recovering though and i love their can do attitude. A house falls down…they get up and they rebuild. Me…i would cry and feel sorry for myself for quite some time.
Other stuff
I have been getting my bake on the last few weeks…making brioche! hahaahaha who wouldve thought! back into the sour dough starters…should be a good baking year! hear hear! We have also dessicated enough coconut to feed a small army lol
YOu will never believe what we have started……the PATHWAYS! hahahahaha we have been talking about clearing pathways to the point and over to the other side of the island for 4 long years. We have finally started. We started on the path to the point so if its high tide or really wet our guests can use this pathway to get up and back! We will hopefully have the one across to the other side started soon too. Yay TEAM!
So i guess Summer Break is over now and onwards to the Kitesurfing Season 2018 here at Kitesurf Tonga. We still have some spaces left for the season so come on over and join us! For those of you have already booked in please follow this link for any questions you may have https://kitesurftonga.com/faq
