Category: Ajishima Park

Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 4 - Pathway

4/9/2015

The five (give or take) stages of making path at Ajishima Park: 1) cut up the sod with my new favorite tool "the mattock!" 2) and then dig up the dirt and move it elsewhere, 3) then bring stone and sand from elsewhere to the path and compact it, 4) then cover it with cardboard, 5) then line it with logs and fill it with wood chips!

Things progressed quickly once I reached a spot where the old path was.

I could skip the back breaking steps 1-3 and go right to the fun stuff, 4-5...

Sod transplant in the foreground and also to the left of the outside curve of the path...

I had been planning this whole process for quite some time. I even thought of the best place to make the wood chips. The center of everything made sense for the chip pile as it would be the most centrally located spot for loading up wheelbarrel-fulls and delivering them to the path. Also, as the chips sit there in a heap, they will start to compost and that will make for an even livelier material to add to the path, as all the little bugs and such will continue to munch on the chips and poop out fertilizer for all the plants and trees to be put in around the path. From this pileof wood chips, nutrients will also leach into the ground below, which will be come the central point of the food forest / forest garden of the park. So the longer it takes me to finish the path, the more the chips decompose and the better the fertilizer they become for the path and the central forest bed. Talk about 'small and slow solutions!'

The cut up sod is great to cover up and fill in the old path (once the stone and sand are removed), and with little more effort than dropping it into place it will repopulate that barren area with lots of luscious green herbage. My new favorite word in Japanese is "shiba fu" (芝生) which means: lawn, turf, sod. It's fun to say even more fun to cut up with my mattock. Shiba-fu. Shiba-fu to you too!

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Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 2

3/23/2015

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This is our rented wood chipper in action. We have been gathering tree branches and bamboo since September of last year, and even some from around our rice fields cut down over a year and a half ago.

I think the Permaculture principle of "small and slow solutions" definitely applies here! It's taken quite a while to gather the resources (mostly what others consider waste and just throw away in the forest) and the chips themselves are quite small! The machine is large and guzzles gasoline, but I have been developing a plan for a couple years now on how to move forward...

But for now, we had a mountain of chip-able stuff to turn into a pile of chips, and only a couple days for chipping.

Most of our branches were gathered from friends and acquaintances around the island. They cut down entire trees and chop the trunks into firewood and leave the rest behind. We offered to clean up the "waste" as they see it, and in the end they get a tidy plot of land, and we get all the chip-able material we can get without having to cut trees down ourselves (mostly).

This reminds me of another principle, and I'm paraphrasing here: utilize the marginal. We are turning other people's discarded stuff into something useful and beneficial: wood into wood chips for our walking path (with stacked functions of tidying up, fertilizing the area around the path, water retention, microorganism haven, etc, etc), tires into a foundation wall for the compost toilet, fishing buoys washed up on shore turned into water tanks for hand washing and irrigation...the list goes on and on.

I am also reminded of my favorite song about there not really being anything such as waste, or something or other like that. This song is totally my mantra, and it runs through my head whenever I happen upon some junk. I sing the chorus once or twice, and voilà: I get an idea or two on how to repurpose it. To the creator of this song, I thank you, and Ajishima Park thanks you!!!

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Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 3

3/21/2015

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Bamboo stakes, found fisherman's rope for a 7 meter compass, and lots of sunshine...now that's how you layout a path...

removing sod and a layer of subsoil from new path

transferring crushed rock from old path to new path

transferring sod and soil to old path

lining with cardboard and anchoring with logs

topping with delicious wood chip sprinkles

adding even more wood chips

and my assistant takes the new path for a test spin

while I keep on laying sod from new path over old path

"There is no such thing as waste, just stuff in the wrong place," as the song from my last post insightfully points out. "Wrong" here implies a judgement call, and since I am in charge (did I mention that I appointed myself Ajishima Park Ranger!?) I decided that those rocks had to go from here to there and some of that dirt had to go from there to here and this here sod needed to be uprooted and transplanted over yonder.

The reason for this labor intensive labor of love is that the old path was dug out and the sod and dirt discarded by the original park builders. I would prefer to create the new path on top of the sod and ring it with logs, but then I would be left with a huge, unsightly dimond-shaped tripping hazard of a path where nothing but the scraggliest of weeds would grow. So, to excavate the new path a bit and transplant the materials is to recognize my favorite Permaculture adage that "the problem is the solution." The problems of the old path are remedied by the making of the new path, and the materials that inhibit growth from the old path can now become the base material for the new path.

I mentioned a plan in an earlier post to supplement our dwindling supply of wood chips. A couple years ago I did up a design, for our own backyard, rife with walking paths, covered in wood chips and ringed with logs to define and contain the path. I then planned to grow shiitake mushrooms in different, fresh logs, and once they stopped producing to use them to replace the logs ringing the path. The old existing logs would have rotted out by then, and all I would need to do to replenish the path's wood chips is kick apart the rotten logs; and then fill in the voids with the spent mushrooms logs. These would add beneficial fungi to the soil and facilitate other beasties in making their homes there. So back to present day: I just took a walk in the forest and noticed many downed trees rotting away. It occured to me that I could utilize those rotting logs, and bust them up and spread the material over the path and it will achieve the same effect as the machine-made wood chips. Another small and slow solution (but...I still want to get a wood chipper, diesel, and harvest inedible seeds from the machilus thunbergii tree, which is plentiful on the island, press them for oil and run the chipper on SVO, but that is another project entirely!!!).

Back at the park, I just have to do 36 more segments to complete the main path...a number I arbitrarily arrived at based on holding my rope compass, taking a step, driving in a stake, repeating and eventually running out of stakes. No science to it, just guessing and doing and hoping I don't mess it up, and at the very least praying I don't get a sliver or poke my eye out with one of those bamboo stakes. Either one would hurt, one probably more than the other. Actually, I got a few slivers, and they did hurt; drew blood actually. So there you go, two more ingredients for a great park: blood and sweat. I am not shedding any tears over the park...yet!!!

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Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 1

3/17/2015

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Welcome to Ajishima Park! This image above is from sometime last year. It shows the beginnings of the park, but there was sort of a misstep, so to speak, with the diamond-shaped walking path.

Even from outer space you can see the dark spots all along the path. Each one is a hole. This path was slapped together in a day a couple years ago, by a group of high school students and their teachers, all with good intentions but a lack of design sense. The holes were meant to be filled with dirt and flowers, but even then it would have been extremely inconvenient to navigate around dozens of flower-filled holes.

This is were we come in...I have wanted to improve on the park and actually attract people to use it, so I sat down with some islanders and visitors and children too, and asked them what they would want in a park. The above design (in the roughest of drafts) incorporates just about everything everyone wants. And, the best part it that almost everything we need to make the park how we want it is already hear on the island. The highlights will include a compost toilet, pizza oven, music stage, children's play area and a walking path that is safe and easy on the legs.

This is the park in its current state. I removed all the wooden planks that comprised the path, and stacked them in the far end of the park. I will put them to use in constructing the compost toilet building and for the stage as well. I then scooped up the sand that was used in the bed of the path. I am in the process of scooping up all the rocks that are under the sand now. I will soon layout a more natural shaped path (not exactly round like in the design image above, and definitely no straight lines nor sharp angles) and then cover the path with wood chips. This will serve several functions: it is easy to walk on, and over time the wood chips will break down and help fertilize the ground around it, were we will plant many fruit trees. Plus it is a great way to use up tree trimmings and branches and bamboo cleared from the park and elsewhere on the island.

In order to make wood chips, we rented a wood chipper today. Actually we rented this particular machine. I got a quick lesson on how to run it and off we went.

It was loaded on a truck and driven to the port in Ishinomaki, and then I drove it onto the ferry. Once we got to the island we managed about two hours of chipping. This is were today's update ends. Next time, I will have pictures of the process and hopefully of some more progress at the park...TO BE CONTINUED...

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Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 4 - Pathway

Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 2

Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 3

Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 1

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Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 4 - Pathway

Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 2

Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 3

Ajishima Park - 網地島公園 Pt. 1

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Dream Seed Farmers
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