via Kuching Holiday 2010 Slideshow.

Beginners Bee Keeping Course – This course which will be held onsite is a step by step approach of how to start the first hive. In this course candidates learn about bees, honey, flora and pollination through this practical hands on course. The tutor has 30 years experience in bee-keeping. Scheduled for June 2011.

We are looking to see if this crop of Tomato’s will turn out to be as pretty as we hope them to be instead of the usual attacks of bugs! It would be nice to once in a while get some pretty ‘clean’ looking ones. The Marigold seem to be helping out but still too soon to tell. Now I wonder if we shall have extra and use some and make some tomato sauce this time around?

We too have noticed that the number of bees seem to lessen with each passing year.

We started on the converting of the largest goat house into the first of planned longhouse style accommodation some weeks back after building a new goat area for the goats evicted. So far we have had made good progress in putting up the walls with some help from wwoof’er Ian. The room interior’s is still hardly completed and still a long way to go. As of now only 3 room interior have been partially completed but these will need to be  reworked as we are not happy with the ‘look’ and the ‘feel’ we are aiming for.

The hardest work we thought was the scraping of the goat droppings of which we have a mountain of to use for the organic garden and the reinforcement of the structure and floor. Then the harder bit was the carrying of the timber to the longhouse which is about a 300 meter walk which also was completed thanks in a small part also to wwoof’er power.

It looks like we will be making slower progress with us going back to work on the gardens which have been neglected in part but life is getting to be a bit easier with the arrival of a groundsman Raul and livestock man Jhong. Now we prepare for the coming monsoon season but try and spend whatever spare time there may be working on the longhouse.

Take a last look at what the longhouse looked like almost 8 weeks ago. It looks way different now and with every nail we are slowly reaching the finish line. It is going to look awesome.

Now we have to decide if we are going to release it far far away off risking it coming back or save the fuel and conjure up a recipe for water monitor lizard.

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This photo from one of our wwoof’ers Claire. Would be great if we actually knew what kind of bird it was happily pecking away at our starfruits.

We had the good folks at Journey Malaysia who paid a visit for a couple of nights. They were forced kindly volunteered to do some hard labour which included also some planting. Could not help but smile when one of the pup’s Zara tagged along and did some digging of her own. Hey? Every little bit helps.

Another Reticulated Python. But this time no casualties in the hen house.

Flowering plants require insects for pollination. The most effective is the honeybee, which pollinates 90% of commercial crops worldwide. As well as most fruits and vegetables they pollinate nuts, sunflowers and oil-seed rape. Coffee, soya beans, clovers – like alfafa, which is used for cattle feed – and even cotton are all dependent on bee pollination to increase yields. This is why this reportis very disturbing for us at least.