On March 11, 2011, Cassy, Tia, Sai and I left Australia heading to Hanoi, Vietnam.  We left our comfortable life in sub-tropical Queensland to live in the forest near the Laos border south west of Hanoi.  We are here because I am working as a volunteer for an NGO based out of Hanoi – Social Policy Ecology Research Institute – SPERI.

SPERI have a 400+ hectare property of mostly protected forest about 15ks from the Lao border in the Ha Tinh province not far from the provincial city of Pho J.  This property is called the Human Ecology Practice Area (HEPA) and is home to a number of Farmer Field Schools (FFS).  These farms are home to a number of minority ethnic groups such as Hmong, White Thai, Khmer, and others.  The students learn to farm ecologically (eco-farming) using Permaculture principles.

The girls and I flew from Gold Coast to Kuala Lumpa where we spent the night and the Concorde hotel near the airport.  4:30am saw us rubbing our eyes as we headed back to the airport for the flight to Hanoi.  We landed in Hanoi and took a taxi to SPERIs office, arriving around 10:30am.  SPERI has organised a very cheap local hotel a few hundred meters from the office which is on one of a number of small lakes that are scattered around Hanoi. The hotel was pretty average, rock hard beds, dark rooms but clean and the girl who ran the place was very friendly but couldn’t speak a word of English!

You know you're in Vietnam when...

We spent a day exploring Hanoi and hit the crowded tourist part of town known as the Old Town, probably because it is the old part of town (do you think?).  Lots of people selling stuff, there’s a street for shoes, other streets for clothes and so forth.  There is a nice lake that this area surrounds called Hoan Kiem Lake which means “Lake of the Restored Sword”.  When we were there a huge crows had gathered around one end of the lake so we pushed out way in to see what all the ruckus was about.  They were all watching a ginormous turtle that had surfaced.  I found out later that the lakes name was in reference to a legendary fifteenth century Vietnamese hero, whose magical sword was swallowed by a golden tortoise. On a tiny island in the middle of the lake stands  “Tortoise Tower,” an ancient three-tiered pavilion in memory of the famed tortoise.  So I guess seeing the turtle (they are saying tortoise and I’m saying turtle because tortoise are land animals – but who am I to spoil a good story).

We found a nice vegetarian restaurant next to our hotel for dinner that night.  They did some pretty funky food presentation.  Check out the meal Sai ordered!

Yummy spring rolls

On Sunday we went looking for jackets for Tia and Sai as we were told it can get pretty cold at HEPA (an understatement, its freezing here as I write this!).  We decided to walk from our hotel back to the Old Town which took about 2 hours.  It’s only about 5ks, but of course the girls had to stop in every shop along the way.  Needless to say we caught a taxi back!

Our hotel

Monday morning we went to the SPERI office and had a meeting to get a better idea of how the organisation works and to meet the other volunteers.  There were 10 of us newbies in total, the four of us, four English teachers (Jasmine, Ryan, Jessica and Lawry),  Paula and her son Tyo.  We took lunch together after which the girls and I went back to the Old Town to see the water puppets.  This is supposed to be a ‘must see’ in Hanoi, so if you ever find yourself at the ticket counter buying tickets for this show, don’t.  It was pretty dissapointing.

One more night in the hotel and Pho (pronounced Fur in Viet) for breakfast before getting on the SPERI bus for a 9 hour ride to HEPA.

Pho for breakfast - Yum

We arrived at HEPA about 9pm in torrential rain.  Where HEPA starts the road turns to hell so the bus had to stop at the boundary and we had to hoof it in the pitch black and pouring rain to the hut we were to sleep in.  After a welcome meal and sorting out the beds we all collapsed for the night without having a clue of where were were.

Well I finally took the plunge and did my Permaculture Design certificate last month (October 2010).  I was taught by Bill Mollison (co-founder of the Permaculture movement) and Jeff Lawton (Director of the Permaculture Research Institute).

I held off on doing the course for a long time as I knew this course was coming up.  To be taught by ‘the man himself’ was an honor and delight.  Bill was 82 at the time of the course and like the grandfather I never knew.  He has so many funny stories, but each story also teaches a permaculture principle. If you get the chance to attend a PDC taught by Bill and Jeff I highly recommend it!

It has been quite a while since I posted here (I am so lazy!) and I bet you are all wondering what has been going on.  Well, hang on to your socks because this is going to be exciting… well maybe not, but we have been busy.

My daughter Bec, married her fiance Sam on our property last Sunday.  Leading up to this we were hoping to finish building a pavilion large enough to hold the 90 guests that were invited.  Of course, as with all elements on a permaculture property each element should have multiple functions, so this was also intended to be used for Kung Fu training, yoga, teaching permaculture (one day!), acting as a trellis for grapes, kiwi fruit, and so forth.  But we have had nothing but rain for the last 3-4 months putting everything on hold. So, alas, it was never finished, and costs have put it on hold indefinitely.

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Also considering the ‘multi-functional element’ we have created a new driveway using the lower dam wall.  This allows easy access for delivery of materials, particularly in dump trucks or tray backs as they always struggled with the main driveway as it is quite steep and hard to turn.  I’ve had some pissed of delivery drivers trying to negotiate the old driveway so this new one will make it much easier to receive a load of soil or mulch.  At this stage we still need to get some brought in as we are not advanced enough here that we are generating our own soil and mulch yet.

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Our fruit tree orchard is coming along nicely, and we have re-engineered the vegetable gardens to be raised beds using logs from a couple of old eucalyptus trees that were dead but still standing.  Chainsaw and tractor saw them turned into something useful.  The beds are built ‘on contour’ and paths have been created between then to act as mini-swales.  The old gardens were more like swamps with all the rain we have had so raising them some more by having the higher sides created by the new logs, and adding some more soil, compost and mulch should see them retain water without becoming boggy.  We will see how the next crop comes along once we get it in.

Just a quick post to say, Its Raining Again! And poor Kevin, my pig, is once again washed out.

I have him under the house again where he can at least stay dry. Here he is with not much room left to move with the rising water in the creek.

Kevins Dilema

Remember that talk your parents gave you when you just hit puberty?  No?

Me, neither.  It either didn’t happen, or I buried it deep down in my sub-conscious.  So, we’re going to have that talk now.  Except without the birds.  Be warned, his tale does involve swollen body parts, and a sticky ending.  Of course, I’m talking about extracting honey from my bee hives.

This being my first time I called on my friend Matt to come help as he has done this before.  Matt seems to be there the first time I do lots of things, I’m not sure what to make of that.  Anyway, honey extraction… This is the process:

Smokin'

1.  Make sure you are fully covered and wearing two layers of clothing because the bees can stink you through one layer…. yep, found that out about four times, including one on the neck.

2.  Wear gloves and make sure they are sealed at the top… lots of lessons for me today.

I am not an elephant, I am a human being!

3.  When bees do get into gloves, do not run away screaming like a little girl trying to rip gloves off… whoops

I have a bee book here with photo’s of beekeepers just wearing shorts and a shirt, with only a veil to protect their face, while they pull frames out of the hive.  I now no longer believe these photos, they must have been  photoshopped!

Phat Hand

I was also told wearing white stops the bees stinging, but they will attack dark clothing (something to do with bears being dark).

Well, here I am dressed whiter than a bride, and being stung. Eight times!  Something tells me the bees don’t like having their house broken into and their food stolen.

Anyway, lets move on as this hand is still swollen and itchy as hell, so I don’t know how much more I can type.

The first hive we opened was so full that the bees had started to build honeycomb onto the underside of the lid.  Once we get the frames out of the hives, the honeycomb needs to be decapped in order to extract the honey.  The normal method is to use a heated knife which will make removing the wax caps easier.  But we found that the wax was quite soft and just needed to be scraped off.  Another advantage of living in the sub-tropics.

Hive lid with honeycomb

The wax that is scraped off is dropped into a bucket of water, this is so the honey stuck to it will dissolve, and we can then salvage the wax to use later.  My girls are looking forward to making candles so we’ll see how that goes in another post.

Once the frames are decapped, they are put into the honey extractor.  This is a large stainless steel drum with wire frames inside fixed to a rotating shaft.  This is used to hold the hive frames, which are then spun to extract the honey using centripetal force.

Decapping with a knife

This is done with a hand crank, and you can see the frames spin and the honey being thrown out and oozing down the side of the tank.  The frames are double sided so once one side is done the frames are flipped over and the honey on the other side is also spun out.

Honey extractor

All of this is more manually intensive than it sounds, so, being the good dad than I am, I let the kids experience cranking the extractor handle for while.

Once the honey settles on the bottom of the extractor it needs to be drained off, or else it gets too high and impedes the spinning frames.  A plastic bin is placed under the extractor with a wire mesh to filter out any wax.  We used fly screen wire for this, which is probably a bit course because some fine pieces of wax did sneak through, but not enough that would ruin your honey on toast in the morning.  I am told pantyhose is probably a better option but I didn’t want to part with any, I mean, Cheryl didn’t want to part with any.

Honey being filtered

As the frames were emptied we put them back into the hives for the bees to start filling them again.  Getting them back was nowhere near as traumatic as pulling them out.  The bees were still mightily pissed off, but we had wizened up and taped up the top of the gloves so the little buggers couldn’t get in.

At the end of the day we ended up with a 25 litre bin full of honey.  Along with two swollen hands (Matt also was stung – reminds me of a Pink Floyd song… my hands felt like two balloons…), a swollen neck, lots of itchiness, and a mess to clean up.   I’m sure we will do much better next time.  Well, I say we, but the chances of getting anyone to help after this little episode is probably quite slim.  In fact, I shouldn’t really be posting all the bad bits on here should I?  Now I’ll never talk any of you into helping me.

Free honey anyone?

Namaste

Namaste!

Yes, it hurts!