Running a farm comes with many challenges. Top of the list would be securing consistent and reliable farm labour. No matter how great a vision or plan one has to kick start a sustainable farm, it all boils down to having workers and the financial resources, both of which are zilch to me at the moment. Doesn’t matter what permaculture principles to apply, composting strategies and lineup of green manures to plant; they all can’t be realised without workers.
Not being able to station myself here permanently due to commitments back at KL doesn’t make things easy. As I do not have a permanent farm worker onboard and getting a reliable part time local worker remains a disappointment, I would have to do most of the manual work myself.
One of the main daily to-do things would be to water the more than 80 plants newly planted. Since I am still working on the water source to setup a drip irrigation system later, I’m currently doing manual watering of all the plants. Yes manual! Plain old fashion bottles of water lugged to site. It’s back-breaking but necessary.
Manual watering means lots of walking up and down the steep terrain. That calls for having accessible walkways. To save time, I just carve out the bare minimum space with a brush cutter to move about comfortably. I can’t waste time cutting the grass for the entire farm and would only do the bare necessary for me to achieve a particular objective.
The walkways opened would be through the path of least resistance. The next thing to do would be to chisel out steps from the slopes. That itself is a whole load of work.
