In one full day’s of work, Antonio stumped the block of trees that were designated to be stumped this year. All done with a hand saw. Antonio is a very hard worker. Over the next two days, two others dragged all the branches to the edge of the coffee road down the center of our property so that the branches can easily be chipped. Chipping usually takes about an hour, with several guys feeding in the branches.
The stumping makes it clear what weeding we now have to do, including getting rid of the ever-present autograph trees. Even though our weeding efforts are not perfect, because there’s regular attention paid, the weed tree situation is manageable. There are no longer years of weed trees taking root.
I think we’ll do like last year and methodically get rid of all visible autograph trees in the stumped block, so that we have a moment in time when there aren’t any visible. And after the coffee stumps leaf out, we’ll count the trees. It’s easier to get around and count them when they’re little and not branched and leafed out, and we can see where we are in the block. We have been estimating the number of trees, and by actually counting them, we’ll feel more satisfied with the better accuracy. It will take three years to get the count, though, since we’re doing it by stumped block and we only started last year.
Below are four photos of the same area, by the road (Mamalahoa Hwy.) Note the leaves of the dwarf banana plants in the upper left of each photo. I’m glad to have this area stumped, because the trees are densely planted, and they grew very tall. There wasn’t much circulation between them, and it was a hot spot for coffee leaf rust. It was also the area I was most plagued by mosquitoes. The terrain is very uneven, too. It was a difficult area to weed when it was grown in, as is now very visible. Maybe we should rebuild and reinforce the rock wall terraces while the coffee is stumped. I’ve tried to find photos from the 1970’s and 80’s of this area, but I haven’t been successful.
And a few more photos. In the last photo we can see our other non-coffee trees more easily now.
