It's another day here in Steung Kach, Cambodia, and most notably my wife summoned the mystical powers of Thor for some hoe work.
Another New Friend 👦🏽
I'll get back to the fine art of hoeing later on in this post, but for now let's start with the introduction of one of our neighbor's kids. His name is Ah-Bohm, and he's not new to us, but he's new to you Hivers. When he's at home with his parents he has unlimited control of his mom's cell phone, and the countless hours of screen time and little interaction each day have made his language and social skills a little further behind than normal.
We do our best to give him full attention when he comes to our place, and especially try to ask him complex questions that he doesn't seem to get at home much. When his mom is here with him, he is out of control and in need of a phone screen to entertain him, and as soon as she leaves him with us he becomes very well-behaved and more talkative. Today I surprised him with an Indiana treat, popcorn, something he'd never seen before nor tasted.
While heating the stove for the popcorn, I let Ah-Bohm know popcorn explodes and expands, and this information was enough to send him running out of the house. With a little coaxing he came back inside, but he was definitely in fear of a massive explosion like he's used to seeing in all the cartoons he watches. With the stove off, Ah-Bohm cautiously tasted some kernels, and an instant popcorn lover was born.
Operation Erosion Control Is Unending ⛏️
Although the pictures don't do well to show how steep the slope is, this is the area most prone to collapse and erosion, and until we backfilled the land there was a semi-truck sized sinkhole here. I have been doing my best to slowly terrace this slope a bit, and while I'm at it I also whack the hillside with my shovel to help compact the clay. I've got one and a half tiers complete, so needless to say it's been slow progress.
I think 8 or 9 of these terraced pitches will take me all the way down to river level, and this will help to hold the majority of the hillside in place until roots begin helping to hold things together. It's too steep to safely traverse, so hopefully these narrow tiers will allow us to do some tree planting in the near future. I'd love to have coconuts lining the rim and various smaller fruit trees on the various lower tiers, with smaller plants filling the gaps in between. Time will tell if this is possible, and we may have to do some composting first before any tree will want to thrive on the hillside.
Cambodian Thor 🦸♀️
Even though the tractor did a lot to help with leveling the land as the trucks were dumping backfill dirt, the smaller areas near the houses have to be done by hand. For this reason we had a few extra loads of dirt dumped in various places so we can do this little by little when we have time.
A hoe is about the only tool that break through the sticky clay here, and it takes a bit of extra effort compared to working normal dirt. So even though my wife has no idea who Thor is, I like to imagine she summoned the strength of his hammer smashing abilities to help her work the hoe. She gets dizzy easily, so I don't want her working on the slopes for obvious reasons, because even I've had a few close calls while terracing, and would surely cartwheel all the way to river if I lost my footing.
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Return from 🍿 New Friends, Terracing, Popcorn Skepticism, & Cambodian Thor 🦸♀️ to Justin Parke's Web3 Blog
