Mountains of Liquica

The warm humid month of January is over and all is well here in Timor-Leste. Easter must be a romantic time of year because we have 3 birthdays to celebrate in this month – Serenity, sweet 16, Israel, the big double digits and Xakira, a cute 3 year old. Kaiyil is a happy little chap now at 4 months and just learning push ups. Cynthia is bravely holding the fort together with the invaluable assistance of Emmy and Amy who has come from Australia to assist in home schooling.

We went on a trip to Bazartete in the mountains of Liquica this week. The mountains are very beautiful in the wet season.

a cool waterfall on the way from Bazartete to Liquica

Along the way, we stopped at a school with an awesome veggie garden and I just had to go and ask how they did it. The secret ingredient I think was a very humble nun from Japan. Then they also had some other key features like seed, water, fence and security.

The school in Bazartete

awesome vegetables are hard to grow

having a good fence to keep out cows is an essential ingredient

We happened to have a large water filter set with us so I gave it to the school so they would not need to keep boiling water.

Then we came down into Liquica and met with Adina and Ajina operating a small local mission in their part of town. We were able to provide them with a roll of chicken wire for use in making either a fence for a vegetable garden or a chicken pen. Thank you very much to a kind church in Grafton who has provided funds for 5 rolls of chicken wire to go to local pastors to assist them in their livelihoods.

The training centre is moving along and we have been able to pour the rest of the slab on the second floor. I look forward to working with 3 great men from Darwin this week to help us raise the walls on the training centre.

building the walls around the front of the centre

Preparing for the slab to be poured

Timor Corn Husker

What these? a new fishing hook? No! Corn huskers ofcourse.

Have you ever needed to husk corn by hand? In the good old days, when farmers were heroes, they moved down the rows of corn, opened up the sheath (those leaves around the cob) and picked out the cob and threw it into a cart pulled along by a horse. There were a number of different tools to help farmers open the sheath and some of them were strapped to the wrist. The typical husker is made of a leather strap and tough sheet metal. We don't have that sort of raw material and skills here so I've fashioned a simple hook made of 5mm reo bar which is very common here. 

The trick is in the bending to get it to fit right. 

Then we made a simple cloth strap with velcro at the end (because we could, you could just tie it, buckle or whatever).

After a couple of turns the hook is placed on the wrist, the strap is wrapped around 3-4 times after this to hold it on well.

 

The fine women at Bele Kria cutting and sewing up 150 straps for corn huskers.

 Thanks to Seeds of Life, they bought 150 of these and yesterday we handed them out to lead farmers of commercial seed producing associations. We are hoping they can test them on farm and give us feedback if they work on not.
The idea for the hook came from testing last year with Lino, the corn farmer. He said that when they looked at my prototype last year (it didn't work) they decided they'd take the concept but just take a nail into the field. Then we tried bending a long nail but switched to reo for length and ease of bending. In fact coming up with new ideas takes about 3 years - 1st year to identify the problem, 2nd year testing prototypes, 3rd year delivering the final concept. Now I realise it probably takes another 3 years to scale up and get into the market place.

O, and farmers are still my heroes, its a tough game out there in the paddock especially during El Nino on the western side of the Pacific. Next time you eat, thank God for the farmers who grew your food.

Welcome 2016!

We’re back in Timor-Leste after a small Christmas break in Australia. We’ve had a few days off at home here in TL to think about what is in store for 2016.

  The tribe of 6

I would like to be more disciplined this year. I’d like to spend more time each morning praying and reading the Bible. I’m even getting into Google Calendar and trying to set up a schedule. Let’s see how long that lasts. I’m a believer in setting new year’s resolutions. I think they should be challenging but achievable. In 2015 one resolution I had was to read through the New Testament in the year and I got to the last chapter on December 31. Resolutions add a bit of sparkle to your life.

I’d also like to encourage others more so I’ve taken the concept of mentoring more seriously. That is, to consciously get alongside people and encourage them in their life or be there for them if they need someone to listen to. This year I’ll set out to mentor 4 men – 2 Timorese and 2 Australians. I don’t specifically tell them so you can try to figure out if it’s you.

Lastly, something else for this year is actively supporting local pastors here in Timor-Leste with financial support. I don’t really know where this is going but I think it is something that rich Christians from developed countries should do.

That’s some things in my personal life. Out there in the world I’ve got a whole mayhem of activity that slides along more or less in and out of control. The agriculture project, Seeds of Life, will come to an end so I hope to have passed on some ag research skills as well as a functional weather station network. Hopefully the training centre will be built and up and running. I hope to make some real progress on getting the Salvation Army to come to Timor-Leste. And, we will be shifting back to Australia sometime around August to live there.

2016 will be a big year for us, so I’d better leave this blog and get stuck into it!

Curves

I like curves. Domes, arches, waves - I don't think we were made to live in square boxes. Somehow, though, we think its cheaper and more efficient to make straight lines. We think that a bed wont fit well into a circular room. So we put a square bed into a square room and then hop into bed with our curvey body. Strange.
So I hope from now on I can put a curve at least somewhere into every building I build. We are experimenting with a curved roof in the training centre for the main training room. My Timorese mate, Anen, somehow continues to take my crazy ideas in his stride and together we weld up a curved set of 'rafters' or roof members.

I was asked how I knew it would be strong enough. I replied that once it was built we would get up on top and jump around a bit and see if it wobbles. Its a non-technical approach but it might work.
My curved trusses are 200mm wide using 1" (25mm) gal steel water pipe. This was flexible enough to bend around in a curve by itself. 4 lengths are curved and welded to some zig-zag 10mm reo-bar steel. Then for the purlins that hold the roof sheeting, 2 C-channel 100mm steel lengths are welded together and slid in and attached to the 'trusses'.  East Timor Roofing, in Baucau, kindly agreed to curve their zincalume sheeting to a 12m metre radius. The whole thing is a bit of a pig to put together but it is a bit fun.

The main training room getting a curved roof

I have been known to do dumber things in the past. We once built a dome sort of home out of straw bales. One of my many mistakes in that particular venture was that I sourced local straw bales from a soy bean farm. 

Building our first home with curves - its basically a dome. On the left is a sleeping arch.

The fatal flaw was that there were small soy beans mixed within the bales. The mice thought these were very yummy and proceeded to eat our house. Drat.

It had a skylight using helicopter grade perspex. It was coated with local clay mixed with hydrated lime and Clarence river sand. Part of the house had a grass roof. We had solar panels and carried water from the river. Israel is about 2, and Serenity 8.

Weather stations

In one of my worlds I help the Ministry of Agriculture with weather stations and climate research.
I'm testing a new mapping technique which I thought I would put up here.



This shows all the weather stations MAF/SoL operate (well at least plan to operate).
The little map makes it all so easy but when I view it my mind starts thinking back to history, adventures and future possibilities. Here's some picks of the crew and I out at Loes Agriculture research station upgrading sensors to the weather station.

A weather station installed on a Government Agriculture Research station.

Measuring down to install the soil moisture metre.

Sensors - wind speed, solar radiation, rain, wind direction, temperature,humidity, soil temps and soil moisture. These are all sampled every minute and the data logged into the box (with wires) every 15 minutes.

The team - some local friends from the Timorese Govt as well as a couple from German and Portuguese organisations.

Testing the filter

The whole family has now gone back to Oz as Samuel attended the TropAg Conference in Brisbane.
We used this opportunity to bring two water filters to Australia. I've been hoping for more than 12 months to get the ceramic filter tested for its ability to stop bacteria getting through. After a number of attempts, I decided the best way was just to do it myself. Surprisingly, there do not seem to be many laboratories set up for this sort of thing.

Setting up the water filter in the lab

Richmond Water Laboratories in Lismore were willing to have a go and they were very helpful and friendly. I had to go down town, buy a plastic container and carve a hole in it to set up the filter. They will put in some highly contaminated water (like from a sewerage system) and run it through the filter. This is referred to as testing "total coliform" - or all the bugs in the water. Then they will take a sample after it has passed through the filter and incubate on petrie dishes to see if any colonies grow. I hope it works or else I'm back to the drawing board on water filtration for Timor.

Israel found his dream car in Yamba - a Morris Minor. Its shorter than him!

Lino and the Ambassador

My good friend Lino, the humble corn farmer, has been on a long journey. He lives in a small village in Lautem, the eastern most  district of Timor-Leste. He’s what we call “salt of the earth” with “a heart of gold.” He’s ready to have a go at most things I throw at him even though he is really not sure how its going to turn out. But it seems that God continues to bless him. Recently, the Australian Embassy contacted Seeds of Life (SoL) and said the Australian Ambassador is going out to Los Palos and wants to see a farmers group. Lino’s group, Buras Hamutuk (Grow Well Together), have now become the third largest corn seed producers in the country and so SoL suggested he goes and visits Lino! So they borrowed the neighbour’s biggest tarp, and a few special tables and table cloths and plates. They went and dug up extra sweet potato, cassava and peanuts to make a special morning tea. The one hour visit from the Ambassador was going to be a big do.

The Ambassador and other important people meet with Lino’s group under the tarp.

Sharing morning tea with the Ambassador.

Lino now has some cool tech to show off: 2000L silos, seed packing equipment, drums for seed storage, shelling machines, planting tools, grinder, seed screen, flour sifter, rust proof fencing and a husking tool. Some of these were new to SoL as we generally experiment ourselves before taking to the big organisation.

A couple of Timorese checkout the table (behind) displaying tecnhology and produce from Buras Hamutuk.

It was a very successful visit and I think the Ambassador was very impressed with the work that they were doing.

The Ambassador has worked hard to learn how to speak Tetun reasonably well. 

But there is also another side to Lino and his wife Atina that perhaps none of the fancy folks there found out about. If you take the time to listen to their hearts without any fanfare or expectations you find a couple that long to serve God.

In fact Atina would like to become a pastor but Lino worries about how to handle the work load of the farm and making sure there’s enough food on the table. They end up trying to balance both – the farmer’s group and the ministry.

Lino in the morning, managing construction of the group’s seed warehouse.

In the afternoon they are off to the villages to teach children Bible stories.

Its a tough load and they have their hard times and are currently worried about a second miscarriage this year. Atina has just come to Dili to do some more training. But things have taken a toll and she found herself last night in the National Hospital. We went and picked her up today and brought her to our home here to try to feed her up, and most importantly, get her to drink enough clean water. We pray for Lino and Atina, that God would give them good health and show them what He would have them do.