Catchup on some happenings with FaDubois

The formation of FaDubois as an entity has recently been completed. Fa Dubois
Ltd has now also purchased the property at Matakitaki valley road. We did
mainly for the forestry operations. It lets us write off expenses of
maintaining the forest as a going concern with the view of harvesting the
Radiata pine at some point in the future.

Truth be told, we think it would be a shame to clearcut as both Kristi and I
think that that is an abhorent practice. The pine forest, even though
non-native now has a healthy crop of lancewood and lemonwood as well as a
form of cabbage tree that grows in the wetter climates, in this area and the
west coast. We would hate to lose that. We imagine that it is more likely
that we will selective cut trees and begin to replace with natives - although
we would have to research this more since this area is/was primarily beech.

We also think that we would fare much better if we converted the wood to an
end product instead of selling for sawlogs or wood chips.

In the long term plans are our own solar kiln and a Peterson sawmill to mill
and dry our own timber.

We purchased some equipment to help us get set up and to manage the forest.
The requisite trailer (What Kiwi would be without one) and a 4wd, a Toyota
Hilux Surf. Neither of these are too fancy. The trailer is unique in that it
is entirely wooden (how fitting for Fa Dubois) except for the wheels and axle
of course. The trailer is vintage, having first been registered in 1967. The
toyota is just modestly more modern being a 1989 model.

We explored the use of the clay soil found on the property as a building
material. We've read some books on adobe brick making and cob. Cob is mainly
just a formed in place adobe brick. Adobe brick has the advantage of being
pre-dried and therefore pre-shrunk. Cob can be more freeform than adobe but
it seems that even with adobe, rounded surface can be built up by infilling
with more adobe mud.

We're read some and we will conduct some tests with the soil and make some
trial bricks. There is a adobe brick manufacturing business in Nelson and
they offer courses which we hope to also take at some point. The next course
is in September and unfortunately we won't be around as we are heading on a
month vacation overseas so we will have to scope out the next offering.

We conducted a rough flow test of one of the un-named creeks on the property.
(I think I would like to name this creak sirobin, after the South Island Robin
which always greets us at the entrance - see
http://www.backpack-newzealand.com/gallery/Nelson-Lakes/sirobin )

With a good winter flow, this small stream was flowing at the approximate
rate of 5l/s. We measured this using a simple method with a 10l pail and a
stopwatch at a location where we could place the bucket under the entire
stream at once - or more or less. The whol thing is rather inexact but we
just needed an approximation. We'll have to repeat the test several times at
different times of the year to assess the average flow. From our observations
so far, there is not a lot of variability in the flow rate. This is probably
because of the excellent property of the beech forest to absorb and slowly
release rain water.

Steve