The World Traveling Puppets

My cousin has sent three adventurous puppets called Eliza, Hermit and Bob jr. around the world in envelopes. I was sent Bob jr., and we had a great time:

He/she arrived on a horrible rainy day

Played dress up

Helped us harvest spinach (well, got lost in it anyway)

And made some new friends

It was very hard to say Goodbye! :( You can follow the puppets' adventures in the FaceBook group: The Amazing Adventures Of Eliza, Hermit and Bob jr.

Seasons Of Growth Poem

Spring Blossoms
Summer Grows
Autumn Fruits
Winter Snows

Day By Day
The Years Go By
I Stop To Wonder
How Time Can Fly

Japan

Did you know that Japan is an archipelago (archipelago means made up of lots of little islands)? It is made up of 6,852 islands! Four of the islands (Honshú, Hokkaidó, Kyúshú and Shikoku) make up 97% of Japans land mass. That means that the other 6,848 islands make up the leftover 3%! The full land mass of Japan is 377,727 square kilometers, so Japan is about 4 1/2 times bigger than Ireland and 26 times smaller than Canada!

 

This is Japan's flag

In most areas of Japan, there are over 100 people per square   kilometers.    In 2001, Tokyo (Japan's Capital) was the most populated city in the world, it had a population of 26,500,000 people.


The weather in japan is mostly subtropical climate (wet mild winters and hot summers) but further north it has a more continental climate (rainy cold winters and mild or warm summers).

Tsunami in Japan 2011

Because there is a lot of tectonic activity, Japan has a lot of earthquakes. In 2011, an earthquake caused a tsunami!!! Did you also know that Japan has 108 active volcanoes!!!!!!

Update On My Lettuce Plants

I thinned my lettuce plants today. They still weren't getting enough sunlight beside the door, so they have been moved upstairs to the window sill in the landing. To give them even more light, I put up a piece of cardboard with tinfoil on it to reflect more light down onto the plants. They are doing really well! I can hardly wait to be able to harvest from them!

More Lettuce Plants

I planted more lettuce today. Lets hope they live! In case you aren't able to read the label in the picture, I have put a caption under each photo that tells you  what the label in the photo says. I planted 4 different types of lettuce, two pots of each, in each pot there are 4 seeds (of the same variety) so that it doesn't matter if some don't sprout, and if there is more than one, then I will just pull the smaller/weaker/half eaten by a slug/snail one. I have put these pots beside the front door where they will get plenty of sunlight and hopefully won't be forgotten about. When they are big enough, I am going to transplant them into our front garden.

May Queen Butter Head

Saladin Crisp Leaf

Lollo Rossa Loose Leaf

Suzan Butter Head

I'll keep you updated (well, I'll try anyway)

(Very Late) Update On My Lettuce Plants

They all died I am sorry to say. They were up on the third floor, where they would get the most sunshine, and I kinda kept forgetting about them, as I don't go up there very often. They went all wilted and close to death, and I watered them and stopped forgetting about them (for a few days), and then they sort of died again, and I stopped them dying, and then they sort of died again, and that was just to many times to sort of die, and so they actually died, and I couldn't save them that time. So they no longer exist. well, they are in the compost, so they can now help any other plants that I grow.

Blipfoto

My Dad and I started doing this thing called Blipfoto (I'm: http://www.blipfoto.com/StarGirl and my dad is: http://www.blipfoto.com/bkd). Blipfoto is a photographic jornal that anyone can use for free - that is if you don't want/need full membership. Membership gives you the advantage of using different tools to modify your photos and allows non Blipfoto-ers to comment on your photos etc. On Blipfoto, you can only put up one photo a day, no more, but it doesn't matter too much if you miss a day. You don't have to put up the photo on the day you take it. You can put it up three days later and it will still come up as though you put it up on the day you took it, because most cameras date the photo.
I started "blipping" as photography practice, as my photos are often blurry and out of focus, and it also makes me keep an eye open for interesting things to photograph. If you look at the homepage there are some amazing photos. There are some people who have been on blipfoto for several years and they have never missed a day. (How do they do it?????) This is my favorite photo so far. It is of my best friend's kitten, Gloves. (He is called Gloves because he has four white paws.)

Under The Microscope

I got a microscope for Christmas, It plugs into the computer. I took some photos of things, some of them couldn't be recognised, but try and see if you can guess what they are. WITHOUT looking at the caption!!!!!

This is our wood table

that is a match head

These are air bubbles in elderflower cordial

This is a close up of cotton textile fibre

That is a pine needle

this is a salt crystal

this is water

and that was cayenne pepper (pronounced ki-en)

Cool huh? Were you able to guess any of them, and were you right?

Getting The Tomato Seeds Ready For Planting Next Year

Today we were preparing the farm's tomato seeds for planting next year.about two weeks ago we picked the tomatoes, about ten of each variety and left them in the window to make sure they were fully ripe. And then, after three or four days we took out all the mushy stuff with all the seeds in it and put in to jars with the same amount again of water and left it to ferment for around a week, we did this because on the seeds there is a gelatinous coating to stop the seeds sprouting inside the tomatoes which is gotten rid of with fermentation.

after the week they looked like this

we washed out all the mold

and spread them out to dry. Once they are dry we will store them away till we are ready to plant them.

More Speed Measurements

Today we got some traffic cones and we put them 40 meters apart. I got on my unicycle and dad got out his stopwatch when I past the starting cone at normal unicycling speed he started it and when I past the finishing cone he stopped it. We did the same with dad on a normal bike, me walking, dad walking, me running as fast as I could, and dad running as fast as he could. Here is a commentary of the speeds we were going at.
And we're of, with dad running in the lead going at 22.5 kilometers per hour with a time of 6.4 seconds he looks like a clear winner, but who knows, someone else might catch up, and coming along in second place with a speed of 21.3 kilometers per hour with a time of 6.75 seconds is Leontien running, and here comes dad cycling and oh gosh, just look at him go, he's got a time of 6.65 going at a speed of 21.7 kilometers per hour. and now bring up 4th place is leontien unicycling with a speed of 7.2 kilometers an hour and with a fabulous time of 20 seconds, and here comes dad walking in fifth and just look at him walking at a speed of 6.7 kilometers an hour and with a time of 21.4 seconds and bringing up the rear is leontien walking, and I am sure that she is going to be upset about losing so can everyone in the stadium give her a big round of applause for trying!!!!!! This is Leontien commentating for the weird and random race!!!!

our version of an anemometer (aka toilet paper, a stopwatch and some long legs)

Today, the winds were so strong, that we decided to figure exactly how strong and how fast they actually were, so we built an anemometer (pronounced an-e-mom-e-ter) using a few pieces of tissue paper, a stopwatch, and my dad's long legs. We went on to the mound and dad stood at one end, me at the other and making sure the wind was blowing from him to me. He threw the tissue into the air and at the same time I started the stopwatch. As soon as the tissue was level with me, I stopped the stopwatch and dad counted how many of his meter long steps it took to reach me. It took 3.1 seconds to reach me and it was 39 meters from dad to me.
We need to convert 39 meters in 3.1 seconds into something more useful like how many kilometers per hour.
39 meters per 3.1 seconds
39 ÷  3.1 =12.5
12.5 meters per 1 second
This can be written as 12.5 m/s 
There are 3600 seconds in an hour
12.5 x 3,600 = 45,000meters per hour
45,000 ÷ 1000 = 45

So that means that the wind is going at a speed of 45 km/h.
We looked at the met.ie website predicted that we would be getting winds of of around 45 km/h but would also be getting gust of 90 to 130 km/h.

That is the weather for today, this is Leontien reporting from cloughjordan, have a nice day.

Wwoofers

Wwoofers ( WWOOF stands for World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) are people who volunteer on farms around the world. They help the farmers and the growers do work in return for food and accommodation. In Cloughjordan Community Farm we take Wwoofers on to help with planting, weeding and harvesting of vegetables. They also help in areas of the ecovillage land doing jobs like moving topsoil and trampling weeds in the forestry area.

We have Wwoofers from April til  the end of October. They work with our two veg growers, Bruce and Pat, generally doing jobs that take a long time and lots of team work to do; they seem to be doing a lot of weeding!!!

Most of our Wwoofers are aged from 18-27 and are a mixture of men and women. Some of them come on their own and some come with friends, some come to improve their English, some of them because they want to travel, but most of them come to learn about growing and to experience the community we have here.

The majority of them come from France, but some come from Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. At the moment we even have a family who live in the United Arab Emirates.

Wwoofers stay with us from about 2 weeks to a month. Normally they would stay with the farmer and the farmer's family, but here they stay at the Eco-village hostel. During the week members of the farm and the Eco-village sign up to cook them lunch and dinner (they make their own breakfast) and on Saturday and Sunday they cook for themselves.

I think Wwoofers are a great help and I like meeting them and working with them as they are very interesting people.

Book Review: The Bread Winner

This book is about an 11 year old girl called Parvana. She lives in Kabul in Afghanistan in a one roomed apartment. She lives there with her family; her father, her mother, her older sister Nooria, her younger sister Maryam and her little brother Ali.

When her father is put into prison by the Taliban, Parvana must become a "boy" and take up her father's job as a letter reader to earn money and by food for her family. Under the rule of the taliban, women have no rights and must always be accompanied by a male when going out.

Parvana's mother and the rest of the family, exept for her father who is still in prison, go away for Nooria's wedding. Warvana stays behind with a neighbour, Mrs Weera, to wait for her father, in case he gets let out of prison while they are away. Parvana finds a girl called Homa in an empty building and brings her home. Homa tells them that her city, where the rest of the family have gone for Nooria's wedding, has been taken over by the taliban.

Shortly afterwards her father is let out of prison. They set out on a journey to find the rest of the family, and they hope very much that they are alive. Her father dies shortly after starting their journey and Parvana must go on alone.
This story is exiting and sad at the same time , I enjoyed reading it very much and I think it its for readers aged 10-14.

The Trees Have All Been Planted In The Woodland

crab apple tree(fully grown, fruit and leaves)

 These are the different types of trees that have been planted in the  These are the different types of trees that have been planted in the woodland, we found some pictures of the trees when they are fully grown on the internet:

hawthorn blossom

hazel tree (fully grown with leaves and fruit)

cherry tree(flower)

downy birch(full grown and seeds)

oak tree(fully grown)

sweet chestnut(edible)

rowan tree or mountain ash(fully grown)

alder (tree and leaves)

holly bush (fully grown, ever green)

How Many Potatoes Are We Going To Get?

Problem:
We planted loads of potatoes at the community farm. How many potatoes are there going to be per family?

What we know:

• There are 20 beds of potatoes with two rows in each bed
• Each bed is about 125 metres long
• The potatoes where dropped by the planter around  35 centimetres apart

Solution:
How much was planted?

• There are 40 rows in total, each 125 metres long
• 40 x 125m = 5000m
• since there is 1000m in a km, we planted 5km of potatoes.

• the distance between potatoes is .35 metres
• 5000m ÷ .35 = 14285
• therefore we planted about 14285 seed potatoes.

Expected crop:
We looked it up and we found the average is 10 potatoes for every seed potato you plant, that means if we plant 14285 seed potatoes then we could expect a crop of 142850 potatoes.

In a book, my dad found that for every metre of seed potatoes you plant you get a crop of 2.5 kg of potatoes.

• 5000m x 2.5kg per metre = 12500kg of potatoes

How many per household:
At the moment there are 50 households but we hope that by harvest time we will have 75 households.

• 12500kg ÷ 75 = 166kg of potatoes
• 142850 ÷ 75 = 1905 potatoes

Conclusion:
If everything works out as we hope, each houshold will get about 1900 potatoes which should weigh about 166kg.

Planting Potatoes At The Farm On The Eco-village Land

I went to the farm on the eco-village land to plant potatoes. My job was to walk along behind and make sure that all of the potatoes got covered in soil because they sometimes don't. We planted at least 6 long beds the length of the field I was very tired!!!

 Suzanne and Mary sat on the back and filled the planter, while Pat drove the tractor

My Dad's Compost Pile

While we were at the allotments today dad stuck a thermometer in his compost pile and when he took it out the temperature was 68 degrees Celsius. That is very hot! We just checked our hot water and that is only 47 degrees. Dad says this is because all the bacteria inside the compost are eating everything and they give off heat.

Weeding The Garlic At The Garraun Lane Farm

 Today we went to the farm at garraun lane and weeded all the garlic. Suzanne, thomas, una, my dad and me did it, it took us 2 and a half hours start to finish.The reason we are weeding the garlic at this time of year is because it was planted in the autumn and the reason it took so long to weed is because it probably has not been weeded since it was planted and because most of the weeds were grass which is hard to get out with a hoe. Here are some photos:

Life On Top of The Mound

 We were on top of the mound today and we were looking in lots of the puddles to see if we could find any living things, and we did, and this is what we found:

The Hares

We saw a hare in the future woodland today, we were told that there are two of them so we went to have a look (don't worry, some one is coming to catch them and put them outside the fence). Here is a shot we got of one of them: